Tsutomu Sasao - Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan The material covered in this book is quite unique especially for p- ple who are reading English, since such material is quite hard to ?nd in the U.S. literature. German and Russian people have independently developed their theories, but such work is not well known in the U.S. societies. On the other hand, the theories developed in the U.S. are not conveyed to the other places. Thus, the same theory is re-invented or re-discovered in various places. For example, the switching theory was developed independently in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, almost at the same time [4, 18, 19]. Thus, the same notions are represented by di?- ent terminologies. For example, the Shegalkin polynomial is often called complement-free ring-sum, Reed-Muller expression [10], or Positive - larityReed-Mullerexpression [19].Anyway,itisquitedesirablethatsuch a unique book like this is written in English, and many people can read it without any di?culties. The authors have developed a logic system called XBOOLE.Itp- forms logical operations on the given functions. With XBOOLE, the readers can solve the problems given in the book. Many examples and complete solutions to the problems are shown, so the readers can study at home. I believe that the book containing many exercises and their solutions [9] is quite useful not only for the students, but also the p- fessors.

The greatly expanded and updated 3rd edition of this textbook offers the reader a comprehensive introduction to the concepts of logic functions and equations and their applications across computer science and engineering. The authors’ approach emphasizes a thorough understanding of the fundamental principles as well as numerical and computer-based solution methods. The book provides insight into applications across propositional logic, binary arithmetic, coding, cryptography, complexity, logic design, and artificial intelligence. Updated throughout, some major additions for the 3rd edition include: a new chapter about the concepts contributing to the power of XBOOLE; a new chapter that introduces into the application of the XBOOLE-Monitor XBM 2; many tasks that support the readers in amplifying the learned content at the end of the chapters; solutions of a large subset of these tasks to confirm learning success; challenging tasks that need the power of the XBOOLE software for their solution. The XBOOLE-monitor XBM 2 software is used to solve the exercises; in this way the time-consuming and error-prone manipulation on the bit level is moved to an ordinary PC, more realistic tasks can be solved, and the challenges of thinking about algorithms leads to a higher level of education.

The greatly expanded and updated 3rd edition of this textbook offers the reader a comprehensive introduction to the concepts of logic functions and equations and their applications across computer science and engineering. The authors' approach emphasizes a thorough understanding of the fundamental principles as well as numerical and computer-based solution methods. The book provides insight into applications across propositional logic, binary arithmetic, coding, cryptography, complexity, logic design, and artificial intelligence. Updated throughout, some major additions for the 3rd edition include: a new chapter about the concepts contributing to the power of XBOOLE; a new chapter that introduces into the application of the XBOOLE-Monitor XBM 2; many tasks that support the readers in amplifying the learned content at the end of the chapters; solutions of a large subset of these tasks to confirm learning success; challenging tasks that need the power of the XBOOLE software for their solution. The XBOOLE-monitor XBM 2 software is used to solve the exercises; in this way the time-consuming and error-prone manipulation on the bit level is moved to an ordinary PC, more realistic tasks can be solved, and the challenges of thinking about algorithms leads to a higher level of education.

Tsutomu Sasao - Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan The material covered in this book is quite unique especially for p- ple who are reading English, since such material is quite hard to ?nd in the U.S. literature. German and Russian people have independently developed their theories, but such work is not well known in the U.S. societies. On the other hand, the theories developed in the U.S. are not conveyed to the other places. Thus, the same theory is re-invented or re-discovered in various places. For example, the switching theory was developed independently in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, almost at the same time [4, 18, 19]. Thus, the same notions are represented by di?- ent terminologies. For example, the Shegalkin polynomial is often called complement-free ring-sum, Reed-Muller expression [10], or Positive - larityReed-Mullerexpression [19].Anyway,itisquitedesirablethatsuch a unique book like this is written in English, and many people can read it without any di?culties. The authors have developed a logic system called XBOOLE.Itp- forms logical operations on the given functions. With XBOOLE, the readers can solve the problems given in the book. Many examples and complete solutions to the problems are shown, so the readers can study at home. I believe that the book containing many exercises and their solutions [9] is quite useful not only for the students, but also the p- fessors.