A Second Edition of HKP?
Will there be a 2nd edition?
The short answer is not any time soon.
Although the publishers
have encouraged us
to work on a second edition of HKP, we're not
likely to do in the next couple of years because:
- We're all busy with other projects; and
- Our interests and focus have changed, so that none of us is
intimately familiar with the latest developments across all of
neural network theory.
One solution to (2) may be to bring another author or authors
on board, so it's quite possible that a second edition would
have 4 or more authors.
What would a second edition include?
Given the uncertainty about producing a second edition at all,
it's hard to say what it would contain. We've discussed the following
ideas:
- New material
- The book should be brought up to date by the addition
of material on the latest developments in neural network theory.
- Ties to other literature
- The book should provide a more substantive introduction to other
fields related to neural networks, including statistics and
evolutionary computation.
- Pedagogical improvements
- The book could be improved by reordering some material (e.g., putting
the Hopfield networks later), increasing clarity in sections that
have been problematic for readers, and perhaps changing the emphasis
(e.g., somewhat away from physics).
- Electronic resources
- The book should continue to provide an extensive bibliography of
the printed literature, but should also provide pointers to the
growing electronic literature and resources.
- Exercises and Problems
- Exercises, problems, and suggested projects might be added to
each chapter. However, that role is provided in part by these
online resources, perhaps making printed exercises largely
redundant. The online exercises can grow dynamically with the
contributions of many authors, but could not be incorporated
directly into the book for copyright reasons.
- Other pedagogical tools
- Since the book has been widely used as a course text, it
could be made more text-like with such devices as chapter
summaries, sidebars, worked examples, glossaries of terms,
review questions, etc.
- Printing improvement
- The present edition was printed at 300dpi with relatively
poor grayscales in the illustrations. Obviously this could
be greatly improved.
How Can I Contribute?
We welcome all comments and suggestions. You can send email to
Last Updated: 30-Mar-04