Comparison of AI Textbooks

This page lists some of the many books that are meant as introductory AI texts, or as supplementary programming texts that are useful in AI courses. (The official name of each book has "Artificial Intelligence" in the title which we have abbreviated as "AI".) We provide pointers to the home pages and supplementary online code (when they exist). For the "top ten" books (unofficially, according to our own perceptions of popularity, and in no particular order), we list tables of statistics, bibliography; most cited authors; and topics covered.

 
"Top Ten" AI Texts Authors Publisher Year Code 
AI: A Modern Approach  Russell & Norvig  Prentice Hall  1995  622K Lisp 
AI: A New Synthesis Nilsson Morgan Kaufmann 1998 None
Computational Intelligence Poole, Mackworth & Goebel Oxford 1998 Prolog
AI (3rd ed.)  Winston  Addison-Wesley 1992  55K Lisp 
AI (2nd ed.)  Rich & Knight  McGraw-Hill 1991  33K Lisp 
Essentials of AI  Ginsberg  Morgan Kaufmann 1993  None 
AI: Theory and Practice  Dean, Allen & Aloimonos  Benjamin Cummings 1995  419K Lisp, C++ 
AI: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving  Luger & Stubbelfield  Benjamin Cummings 1993  68K Lisp, Prolog 
Mathematical Methods in AI  Bender  IEEE Computer Press 1996  None 
The Elements of AI Using Common Lisp  Tanimoto  Freeman 1995  318K Lisp 
Other Intro AI Texts Authors Publisher Year Code 
Introduction to AI  Charniak & McDermott  Addison-Wesley 1985  None 
Principles of AI  Nilsson  Morgan Kaufmann 1986  None 
Logical Foundations of AI  Genesereth & Nilsson  Morgan Kaufmann 1987  None 
Paradigms of AI Programming  Norvig  Morgan Kaufmann 1992  481K Lisp 
The Age of Intelligent Machines  Kurzweil  MIT Press 1992  None 
AI with Common Lisp Fundamentals Noyes  D C Heath 1992 Lisp on floppy
Formal Concepts in AI  Shinghal  Chapman & Hall 1992 None 
AI (Handbook of Perception and Cognition)  Boden  MIT Press 1996  None 
AI: Machine Implementation of Knowledge and Learning  Firebaugh & Michie  PWS 1997 ? 
Lisp Texts Authors Publisher Year Code 
Paradigms of AI Programming  Norvig  Morgan Kaufmann 1992  481K Lisp 
AI Programming  Charniak, Riesbeck, McDermott & Meehan  Lawrence Erlbaum  1987  ? 
Building Problem Solvers  Forbus & de Kleer  MIT Press  1993  Lisp 
Lisp  Winston & Horn  Addison-Wesley  1989  Lisp 
Common Lisp: the Language (2nd ed.)  Steele  Digital Press  1990  None 
ANSI Common Lisp  Graham  Prentice Hall  1995  Lisp 
On Lisp  Graham  Prentice Hall  1994  Lisp 
Common LispCraft  Wilensky  Norton  19??  None 
A Gentle Introduction to Common Lisp  Touretzky  Benjamin Cummings  1990  Lisp 
The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs  Sussman & Abelson  MIT Press  1996  Scheme 
Common Lisp: An Interactive Approach  Shapiro  Freeman  1992  None 
Prolog Texts Authors Publisher Year Code 
Prolog Programming for AI  Bratko  Addison-Wesley  1990  ? 
AI Techniques in Prolog  Shoham  Morgan Kaufmann  1994  Prolog 
Programming in Prolog (3rd edition)  Clocksin & Mellish  Springer-Verlag  1987  ? 
The Craft of Prolog  O'Keefe  MIT Press  1990  ? 

Statistics

The following table gives the number of chapters, pages, exercises, bibliographic entries, and number of column-pages of index entries in each book, as well as the average number of pages per chapter, exercises per page. Use these statistics for whatever purpose you like.

 
  Russell 
Norvig 		 Winston  Rich 
Knight 		 Ginsberg  Dean 
et al. 		 Luger 
Stub. 		 Bender  Tanimoto  Nilsson  Poole 
et al.
Chapters  27  29  22  19  10  16  14  15  25  12
Pages  932  737  621  430  563  740  636  825  513 
Exercises  302  188  144  235  142  235  328  249  146 
Bibliography 1095  523  438  264  248  429  346  311? 588 
Index  84  20  16  20  22  30  40  55  42 
Pages/Chapter 35  25  28  23  56  46  45  55  20 
Exercises/Page .32  .25  .23  .54  .25  .32  .51  .30  .28 

Bibliography

The following table gives the number of bibliographic entries for each book, sorted by the year of each entry. This gives you a (very coarse) idea of whether a text covers modern developments, whether it has broad historical coverage, etc.

 
  Russell 
Norvig 		 Winston  Rich 
Knight 		 Ginsberg  Dean 
et al. 		 Luger 
Stub. 		 Bender  Tanimoto  Nilsson Poole
et al.
1600-1699  2  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
1700-1799  2  0  0  1  0  2  0  1  1
1800-1899  11  0  0  0  0  4  1  0  3
1900-1949  48  0  3  5  1  11  2  3  5
1950-1959  60  8  8  2  3  17  4  6  16
1960-1969  124  26  31  15  13  33  7  45  46
1970-1979  181  163  95  44  43  105  15  102  73
1980-1989  385  264  288  141  132  223  107  153  171
1990-1999  282  62  13  56  56  34  210  1  273
1990-1999  26%  12%  3%  21%  23%  8%  61%  0%  46%
Total  1095  523  438  264  248  429  346  311  588

Main Characters

Here we show the ten most cited authors in each book. This should give you an idea of who (and by extension what) each book considers most important. If you want all the details, we have a more complete table of citation counts for authors.

 
Total Russell 
Norvig		 Winston Rich 
Knight		 Ginsberg Dean 
et al.		 Luger 
Stub.		 Bender Tanimoto Noyes Poole
et al.
Newell Nilsson Winston Schank Ginsberg Dean Simon Pearl Winston Newell
Simon Newell Berliner Nilsson Nilsson Aloimonos Newell Russell Nilsson Simon
Nilsson Turing Davis Simon Feigenbaum Charniak Luger Ginsberg Minsky McCarthy
Minsky Russell de Kleer Newell McCarthy Allen Nilsson Shafer Lenat Minsky
McCarthy Pearl Michalski Mitchell Lenat McCarthy Mitchell Nute McCarthy Winograd
Pearl Genesereth Bobrow Lenat McDermott McDermott Winograd Charniak McDermott Schank
Lenat Michie Horn Minsky Mitchell Marr Wos Newell Newell Papert
Mitchell Simon Minsky Pearl Allen Nute Feigenbaum Norvig Bobrow Polya
Winston McCarthy Charniak Berliner Genesereth Pearl Quinlan Reiter Charniak Weizenbaum
Schank Minsky Lenat Fahlman Grosz Shoham Schank Wefald Feigenbaum Lenat

Topics

The following table has chapter/topics in the leftmost column, and for each of the nine books, the chapter number(s) that are devoted to each topic. If a book covers a topic with less than a chapter (but more than a page), it gets a "+". For example, all books cover game playing, but some combine it with the chapter we have labelled "Search" and thus get a "+" under "Games".

Note that we use our terminology throughout; thus the "Knowledge Representation" topic covers the idea of representing the content of real world concepts. Other books have chapters with "KR" in the title that refer to the implementation of KR languages or control schemes; such chapters would be listed under "Logical Systems" or "Inference mechanisms", depending on the emphasis of the chapter.

You can also see the ACM Classification Scheme for AI with references to where each topic is covered in AIMA, or the US Patent Office list of classifications.

 
  Russell 
Norvig		 Winston Rich 
Knight 		 Ginsberg Dean 
et al.		 Luger 
Stub.		 Bender Tanimoto Noyes  Poole
et al.
Introduction  1 1  1  1,2  1  1  1  1  1 
Agents  2   +  +  +         
Problem Solving 3 3,4  2  3  +  3  2  +  10 
Search  4 5  3  4  4  4  +  5  5 
Games  5 6  12  5  +  +  +  +  + 
Logic  6 13  4  6,7  3  2  3  4  8 
First-Order Logic  7 +  5  8  +  +  4  +  + 
Knowledge Representation  8 10  10,19 +  6  +  5  +  + 
Inference  9 +  6  9  +  11  +  6  + 
Logical Systems 10 7  11,20 18  +  5,8,15 +  3,11  9 
Planning 1  11 15  13  14  7  +  +  +  + 
Planning 2  12       +         
Plan Execution  13   +    +         
Uncertainty 14   7,8  12  8  +  7,9,12  7  + 
Belief Nets  15     +  8    8     
Decision Theory 16       8      +   
Complex Decisions 17                
Learning  18 16-21 17  15  5  12  10,13  8  12 
Neural Nets  19 22-24 18  +  +  +  11    13 
Reinforcement Learning  20   +    +         
Knowledge in Learning  21 17  +  +  +  +  +  +   
Language 1  22 29  14  17  10  10  +  9  6 
Language 2  23 28  15  +  +  +    +  + 
Perception  24 26,27 21  16  9    +  10  7 
Robotics  25 5  +        +  +  11 
Philosophy  26     +    +    +  16 
Future  27   22  19    16    12   
 
CBR    19  +  +    +  +     
Cognitive Modelling  + 8  +      +      + 
Constraint Propagation + 11,12 +  +    +    +   
Multiagent AI +    16      +    +  14 
Genetic Al + 25  +    +  +  +    + 
Lisp          2  7,14    2  2,3 
Nonmonotonic Reasoning  + +  +  11  3  +  6  +  + 
Prolog  +       +  6,13  +  +  15 
Semantic Nets/Frames + 2,9  9  13  +  9  +  +  4 
Truth Maintenance + 14  +  10  +  +  +    + 
  Russell 
Norvig		 Winston Rich 
Knight 		 Ginsberg Dean 
et al.		 Luger 
Stub.		 Bender Tanimoto Noyes 

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