Shrager.pa@XEROX.COM (05/18/86)
Conference proceedings are often published as books for which the authors have not taken the time to construct a proper index. The index for the most recent machine learning book (ML3), is extremely poor. In a book containing 77 articles, claiming to be a "guide to current research", the index is clearly the most important part of the book. It is a shame that this is really a valuable source of summary articles because its success will lead the publisher and authors to believe that they can sell poorly indexed books. Although ML3 is a summary of current research, it is surely no guide. If one's research is actually guided by consideration of the index to ML3, then the authors and publisher have done a disservice to the field. In this particular case, I am surprised that this book wasn't properly indexed. The authors were asked to submit SCRIBE source for their papers and could easily have been asked to also include index entries either in the source, or selected from a list of keywords. I encourage those who feel that they must buy ML3 to ignore the index, and to write a letter to the authors author and publishers complaining about its index. The 22 cents spent on stamps, and the hour spent writing, are nominal with respect to the service you may be doing yourself and the field in the future. -- Jeff