Excellent Value
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This is an excellent book, which should prove an invaluable reference to anyone with an interest in performing computations involving group theory. The material is very accessible, so that most of the book should be understandable to computer programmers, and there is an excellent list of references at the end of the book.
After a brief introductory review of the history of the subject there is a chapter summarising most of the basic results in group theory. Although this chapter might not be of much interest to professional mathematicians I found it very useful to have such a concise reference.
There follow chapters on permutation groups, coset enumeration and subgroup presentations, matrix groups (with a fair amount of linear algebra), polycyclic groups and quotient algorithms, rewriting systems and automatic groups, with detailed discussion and pseudo-code for a host of algorithms and procedures. Personally, I would have preferred the pseudo-code to be in a more C like, though as written it may well suit most potential readers more.
The writing is usually very clear and lively, reminiscent, to this reader, of the "Numerical Recipes in ..." books.
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