When we think about what makes a programming book good, what separates a classic from a run-of-the-mill for-dummies-learn-in-X-days book, it's not hard to get to the conclusion that the examples are an important piece of what we perceive as quality. I would say that this is even more so for books on programming languages: K&R had great examples; Practical Common Lisp has great examples that are now being copied by many authors; the list could go on.
So it was not that surprising to discover that one of the reasons of all the praise received by Dr. Jon Harrop's book OCaml for Scientists is its set of examples. There are even two entire chapters devoted to examples, the first for simple and the second for more significative ones. They are really good: well-chosen, interesting and well-written. Most of them have a scientific flavor, in keeping with the book's title, but to me this is a plus. Also, I don't recall seeing wavelet transforms as examples in a programming language book before; originality also counts.
The book's title is accurate: it is a book about OCaml primarily targeted for scientific applications. But most of the topics covered are really useful to anyone wanting to learn the OCaml language. Of all the ten chapters, I would say only one -- Chapter 4, Numerical Analysis -- is mostly directed to scientists. Well, probably game programmers too. And programmers of computer graphics applications, and anyone using floating-point arithmetic. Anyway, the other chapters that have somewhat of a scientific bent are: Chapter 6, Visualization, which is really about how to use OpenGL and GLUT in OCaml, which is quite cool in itself; and Chapter 10, Complete Examples, but each example is well explained and can be (mostly) understood without previous knowledge.
To give some idea about the book's contents, here is a quick tour: Chapter 1 is a quick introduction, covering most important concepts of the core language. Chapter 2 is about how to structure bigger programs, including function nesting, modules, objects, and how to manage dependencies and compilation. Chapter 3 is a very interesting chapter on data structures in OCaml, beginning with a section on algorithmic complexity; it covers the more important containers provided in the library, and also how to implement and work with trees. Chapter 4 is the one about numerical analysis, covering the basics about doing calculations with limited-precision numbers, and how to use more precise forms of arithmetic. Chapter 5 tackles input and output in OCaml, going beyond the call of duty to present the lexer generator (ocamllex) and parser generator (ocamlyacc) in the OCaml toolset. Chapter 6 is about visualization with OpenGL and GLUT, Chapter 7 is a very good one about optimization, and Chapter 8 a very useful one about libraries. The final two chapters have examples, and don't be fooled by the title of Chapter 9, Simple Examples. There is good stuff there. There are also two appendices, about more advanced features and troubleshooting advice respectivelly.
To be fair, the book has some small weaknesses that, in the end, are not that important, if you consider its target audience and what's common OCaml style. One is the treatment of objects: it is very cursory, and one of the examples (about real and complex numbers) could easily be considered a bad case of OO design. Considering most OCaml programmers rarely use objects, this is not so troubling. The other weakness I'd like to cite is more of a wish from my part: I wish there were more about advanced topics, especially functors (only very lightly touched in Appendix A).
But it's really a very good book about OCaml, both for beginners and for people with some previous exposure to it. It has advice on good programming style throughout, great examples (shown in color, properly syntax-highlighted), and distilled practical experience on some important topics (optimization, using libraries) that is hard to get elsewhere. It is remarkable not only in the very restricted universe of OCaml books, but as a programming book, in general: it stands between the best I've seen.