300 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SYSTEMS, MAN, AND CYBERNETICS, MAY 1973

Book Reviewss
Graph Theory-Wataru Mayeda (New York: Interscience, 1972, influence on their development. This book, in fact, represents a sum-
588 pp.). Reviewed by Wai-Kai Chen, Department of Electrical Engineer- mary of his personal contribution in this area.
ing, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701. All in all, the author has produced a worthwhile book which can
be highly recommended. He has provided a valuable service, not only
This is the sixth book written by an electrical engineer on this to engineers, but to mathematicians as well. It is an excellent scholarly
subject. (The others were written by Seshu and Reed [1], Kim and study of graph theory and its applications.
Chien [2], Reed [3], Chan [4], and Chen [5].) It presents a reasonably
REFERENCES
comprehensive account of the theory of graphs and its applications.
It is aimed primarily at the electrical engineers who work in the [1] S. Seshu and M. B. Reed, Linear Graphs and Electrical Networks. Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley, 1961.
fields of circuits, electronics, computers, and communications. [2] W. H. Kim and R. T. Chien, Topological Analysis and Synthesis of Communication
Networks. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1962.
The book has 14 chapters, and may be grouped into four parts. [3] M. B. Reed, Foundation for Electric Network Theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
The first part (Chapters 1-6 and 9) is devoted to the study of the theory Prentice-Hall, 1961.
[4] S. P. Chan, Introductory Topological Analysis of Electrical Networks. New York:
of graphs that is closely related to engineering applications. In addition Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.
[5] W. K. Chen, Applied Graph Theory. New York: American Elsevier, 1971 and
to the usual definitions and examples of graph theory, it also covers Amsterdam, The Netherlands: North-Holland, 1972.
materials such as the properties of a collection of paths, the generation
of cut sets and trees, and the determination of the existence of a
directed circuit in a directed graph. It should be mentioned that the
definition of linear dependence of sets on page 76 is not clear and may
prove to be very confusing for someone unfamiliar with the concept. Dynamic Programming and Partial DifferentialEquations-E. Angel and
Unlike Seshu and Reed's book, simplified proofs of Kuratowski's R. Bellman (New York: Academic Press, 1972, 204 pp.). Reviewed by
conditions for nonplanar graphs and Tutte's conditions on the realiz- John Casti, Department of Mathematics, Systems, and Industrial
ability of cut-set matrices are provided. This is especially significant Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
in view of the fact that the original proofs, aside from being extremely
long, depend on many algebraic topological concepts that are not One of the primary concerns of contemporary numerical analysis
familiar to most engineers. and, more generally, scientific computing, is the generation of efficient
The remaining three parts are devoted to applications. The second algorithms for the rapid accurate solution of partial differential
part (Chapters 7, 8, and 10) deals with topological analysis of electrical equations. The book under review combines two basic ideas, one old
networks. Its content is fairly standard and its development is parallel and one new, to generate rather novel and seemingly effective pro-
to that in Seshu and Reed except that the directed-tree (unistor) cedures for the solution of elliptic and parabolic partial differential
approach is included and the flow-graph technique is treated in greater equations. The old idea, Dirichlet's principle, is used to reformulate
detail. The next part (Chapters 12 and 13) is concerned with com- the given problem as a variational problem, while the new idea,
munication nets both edge-weighted and vertex-weighted nets being dynamic programming, is utilized to resolve the resulting variational
considered. It defines and characterizes the terminal-capacity matrix problem.
for both directed and undirected graphs. Also, for the edge-weighted The first four chapters are introductory in nature, taking the reader
case, the problems of lossy nets and flow reliability are discussed. The through an elementary course in quadratic variational problems,
last part (Chapters 11 and 14) is devoted to switching theory and system dynamic programming, and the potential equation. In Chapter 5
diagnosis. The systems considered here are those that can be represented dynamic programming is used to solve the potential equation in a
by blocks and links, where a block performs a certain function and a rectangle. Extensions are given to enable one to also solve the problem
link transmits information between blocks. The distinguishability of in certain types of irregular regions composed of combinations of
faults in this type of system is presented for the first time in book form. rectangles. Chapter 6 is a brief discussion of invariant imbedding and
The book concludes with an extensive bibliography (18 pages) which its relationship to dynamic programming and the treatment of partial
should prove useful to all researchers in the field. However, none of differential equations.
the references in the bibliography are cited specifically in the text. For applications, the most important chapter in the book is on
For this reason, the reader who is not already familiar with the irregular regions. The true strength of the dynamic programming
literature will probably find it difficult to identify the papers of interest approach is exhibited in this chapter, where it is shown that rather
to him. A dozen or so problems are given at the end of each chapter. general regions can be considered with scarcely more difficulty than
In all, there are 173 problems. that associated with a rectangular region. A number of examples are
By contributing prolifically to the literature of graph theory and its given to illustrate the procedures involved. The book concludes with
applications during the past 16 years, the author has had a profound chapters on special computational methods, unconventional dif-