Introduction to Time Series and Forecasting Review

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(More customer reviews)Very good introductory book to ARMA models. Full of real-life examples that provide some intuitive insight about the issues that may arise when modelling time series and forecasting. Requires some initial knowledge in statistics and algebra but if you're involved in time series modelling, it should be your first book.

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This is an introduction to time series that emphasizes methods and analysis of data sets. The logic and tools of model-building for stationary and non-stationary time series are developed and numerous exercises, many of which make use of the included computer package, provide the reader with ample opportunity to develop skills. Statisticians and students will learn the latest methods in time series and forecasting, along with modern computational models and algorithms.

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Artificial General Intelligence (Cognitive Technologies) Review

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(More customer reviews)If you are interested in human-level artificial intelligence you probably should own this book. I liked reading the book and am glad I own it but there are criticisms. Most of the book is too qualitative. Even where prototype software has been deployed algorithms are not given, even in pseudocode. Too much of the book is speculation. I also think that too little attention has been paid to the control of complexity.

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Mechanics of Composite Materials with MATLAB Review

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(More customer reviews)
We are writing this review of the book as our response as authors to the other review posted on this page. This book is intended to be an introductory text for students and beginners of Mechanics of Composite Materials. The presentation is simple and brief. Furthermore, it is accompanied by a CD-ROM that has numerous MATLAB functions that can be used to do the basic calculations in this subject. And we stress that we emphasize the basic calculations with no attempt to introduce advanced topics.
It is true that the calculations in this book could also be done using EXCEL. However, it is not straightforward and very difficult to perform some of these calculations in EXCEL. In fact, EXCEL is not designed to handle matrices and matrix operations like MATLAB. The choice of MATLAB for this book is based on the fact that MATLAB is a Matrix Laboratory - it was specifically designed to handle matrices and matrix operations. And we know that these types of calculations are exactly those encountered in Mechanics of Composite Materials. Thus MATLAB and not EXCEL is the right choice for this kind of book.
The subject of damage initiation is mentioned briefly in a short chapter at the end of the book. Indeed this is an advanced topic that is not normally covered in texts on Mechanics of Composite Materials. The most popular books on Mechanics of Composite Materials (like the books of Kaw, Jones, Gibson, etc) do not even mention this advanced topic. The only book that we are aware of that shows some discussion of damage initiation is the book by Herakovich - but this is the exception not the rule. We have included a short chapter on damage initiation solely to introduce the subject and guide the reader where to find additional detailed information. Furthermore, we as authors have written another book especially on the topic on damage initiation in composite materials. The book is entitled "Advances in Damage Mechanics: Metals and Metal Matrix Composites" by Voyiadjis and Kattan, Second Edition, published by Elsevier in 2006. The interested reader may refer to this advanced book for details on damage initiation in composite materials.
We have included another short chapter on homogenization at the end of the book. Again this is an advanced topic that is not normally covered in other books on Mechanics of Composite Materials. We have included this short and brief chapter to introduce the topic and guide the reader where to find further information. The interested reader will have to look into advanced specialized books on homogenization such as the book by Nemat-Nasser. He will not find this information in any competing books on Mechanics of Composite Materials.
We feel that we are fully justified in leaving out the detailed presentation of these advanced topics of this book. Again, the book is intended for students and beginners who do not seek these advanced topics in an introductory book like ours. Finally, we should note that we included the complete Solutions Manual to most of the problems in the book at the end of the book and also on the accompanying CD-ROM. The rest of the book is a printout of the Solutions Manual which some people may erroneously perceive as MATLAB output.

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This textbook makes use of the popular computer program MATLAB as the major computer tool to study mechanics of composite materials. It is written specifically for students in engineering and materials science, examining step-by-step solutions of composite material mechanics problems using MATLAB. Each of the 12 chapters is well structured and includes a summary of the basic equations, MATLAB functions used in the chapter, solved examples and problems for students to solve. The main emphasis of Mechanics of Composite Materials with MATLAB is on learning the composite material mechanics computations and on understanding the underlying concepts. The solutions to most of the given problems appear in an appendix at the end of the book. The accompanying CD-ROM includes a set of MATLAB functions that are written by the authors specifically to be used with the book and a detailed solutions manual.

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Object-Process Methodology Review

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(More customer reviews)I have used many methodologies over my career. Most of them are based around the object-oriented and structured design paradigms. I found out about OPM quite by accident about a year ago. I've been using it ever since. I have used it to model both hardware and software systems, as well as for business process modeling. It is an excellent methodology and I recommend it for anyone developing any kind of system.
One of the nice things about OPM is that it is easy: I was able to get a team "up-and-running" with the methodology in less than an hour of teaching them some basic concepts (try doing that with UML). Another feature is that you can use this for any type of project; you are not locked into a structured or object-oriented mindset like structured analysis or UML. OPM can handle both types of concepts with ease.
Finally, this methodology is fast. It is just easier and more intuitive to model in an OPM fashion. I've also found that others can comprehend the OPM models better than other methodologies too.
I used to be a UML advocate until I found OPM. I have found concepts that are difficult to model in UML are quite easy to model in OPM. It is just more flexible.
The book is really good by the way. It is very complete and gives plenty of good exammples. I congratulate Dov Dori and his team for providing something that all engineering disciplines can use to design their systems.

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Object-Process Methodology (OPM) is an intuitive approach to systems engineering. This book presents the theory and practice of OPM with examples from various industry segments and engineering disciplines, as well as daily life. OPM is a generic, domain independent approach that is applicable almost anywhere in systems engineering.

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Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development (Neural Networks and Connectionist Modeling) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book contains some thoughtful reasons for believing that many evolutionary psychologists overestimate how much information about the human mind is encoded in genes. However, it is mixed in with some highly technical developmental neurobiology that only a few specialists are likely to find interesting.
For nonspecialists, David Buller's book Adapting Minds says similar things about innateness in a style that is more suited for laymen.

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Rethinking Innateness asks the question, "What does it really mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way.One of the key contributions of Rethinking Innateness is a taxonomy of ways in which a behavior can be innate. These include constraints at the level of representation, architecture, and timing; typically, behaviors arise through the interaction of constraints at several of these levels.The ideas are explored through dynamic models inspired by a new kind of "developmental connectionism," a marriage of connectionist models and developmental neurobiology, forming a new theoretical framework for the study of behavioral development. While relying heavily on the conceptual and computational tools provided by connectionism, Rethinking Innateness also identifies ways in which these tools need to be enriched by closer attention to biology.

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Introduction to Graphical Modelling Review

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(More customer reviews)Because graphic methods are very popular in statistics, when you read the title you might think this is a book on the use of graphics in statistics. That is not what the book is about. The directed graph on the cover might be a hint for some.
The book deals with the theory of undirected and directed graphs which has applications to causal modeling in statistics and the development of expert systems (which Edwards claim are now more commonly referred to as probabilistic networks).
This subject is being made popular again based on the recent work of Edwards, Pearl, Rubin and a few others. The book incorporate the approach in many classical statistical problems. This is not commonly seen except in specialized texts on latent variable models.
Edwards discusses implementation of the methods with the freeware MIMS that is available in Denmark and on the web. The book is very well written and applications in MIMS are given throughout the text. Edwards also provides us with an excellent list of references (over 200 with many on causal modeling).
The software LISREL produced by researchers in the US at UCLA for latent variable and path analyses is only briefly mentioned on page 217. The lack of coverage of American and British publications on this topic is the only drawback I see.


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A useful introduction to this topic for both students and researchers, with an emphasis on applications and practicalities rather than on a formal development. It is based on the popular software package for graphical modelling, MIM, freely available for downloading from the Internet. Following a description of some of the basic ideas of graphical modelling, subsequent chapters describe particular families of models, including log-linear models, Gaussian models, and models for mixed discrete and continuous variables. Further chapters cover hypothesis testing and model selection. Chapters 7 and 8 are new to this second edition and describe the use of directed, chain, and other graphs, complete with a summary of recent work on causal inference.

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Lattice Boltzmann Modeling: An Introduction for Geoscientists and Engineers Review

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(More customer reviews)I most value this book for its brief and lucid introductions to the physics (e.g. multiphase flows) that can be incorporated into lattice Boltzmann methods.
As far as the lattice Boltzmann method is concerned, I soon found myself relying on papers in literature rather than this book (although it has to be said that this book thoroughly references publications in literature).
My main criticisms arise from following points:
* as a quick start guide, this book falls short in not discussing issues like initialisation and the general streaming-collision framework. I found the latter particularly confusing, since their code snippets suggest that they solve a slightly different equation than the one analytically described in the book. Moreover, the extension from 2D to 3D (which is left to the reader) is not as trivial as the book suggests (e.g. for the boundary conditions).
* the book gives an introduction to phenomenological models for e.g. multiphase flows. If you are an engineer or geoscientist, you might want to use models that are quantitatively more correct.
* The book doesn't go beyond lattice-Boltzmann toy models. If you want to do something "real" with lattice-Boltzmann, you will need to address more advanced issues (like how to deal with curved boundaries, or with higher-order lattices). While one cannot expect from the scope of this book to address those issues directly, it is a pity that the book doesn't prepare in any way for those issues. So probably, you'll have to throw away your code and start all over again if you ever want to model something more.
* Due to ongoing research, this book starts to become outdated. In part because the book introduces lattice-Boltzmann models from lattice-gas cellular automata (as they evolved historically), instead of being directly based on the Boltzmann transport equation (as is more common nowadays).
Overall, I quickly abandoned this book while writing my lattice-Boltzmann code. Nevertheless, you can probably have a lot of fun with the models proposed in the book, as long as you don't want to do anything too useful with it.


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Modeling Survival Data: Extending the Cox Model (Statistics for Biology and Health) Review

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(More customer reviews)Terry Therneau is a research statistician at the Mayo Clinic and Patricia Grambsch is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Minnesota. The Cox proportional hazards model has been one of the key methods for analyzing survival data with covariates for the last 25 years. Proportionality is a key assumption that limits its use. There has long been a need to find methods which diagnose when the hazard rates are not proportional and provide alternative methods in such situations. Using the theory of counting processes the authors are able to extend the Cox model to more general situations including multiple/correlated event data using either marginal models or random effects (frailty) models. Time dependent covariates are also covered. Some of the theory of martigales and counting processes is included to make the book self-contained. Generalized residuals are used to identify outlying and influential observations (analogous to ordinary regression) and also to assess the proportional hazards assumption.
Although the topics are advanced and the mathematical level is high the book is designed for practitioners, emphasizing applications and providing numerous examples, many from the authors' experience. Statistical analyses are done in SAS and SPlus. The authors tend to use SAS for data management and analysis and SPlus for diagnostics and other plots. Therneau is an expert programmer who has written much of the necessary software in both systems.
Therneau gave an excellent short course that I attended a couple of years ago at the Joint Statistical Meetings based on a draft of the text. The finished product is as good as I expected.
The appendices include SAS and S-Plus tutorials on survival analysis and provide SAS Macros and S functions to apply the new methodology.
The book is now (December 2008) in its 6th printing which is another testament to its value and popularity and a nice deal at amazon's current price of $87. But O'Quigley's book is out now too. So maybe Terry and Patricia should be thinking about doing a revision if they don't already have one in the works.


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This book is for statistical practitioners, particularly those who design and analyze studies for survival and event history data. Building on recent developments motivated by counting process and martingale theory, it shows the reader how to extend the Cox model to analyze multiple/correlated event data using marginal and random effects. The focus is on actual data examples, the analysis and interpretation of results, and computation. The book shows how these new methods can be implemented in SAS and S-Plus, including computer code, worked examples, and data sets.

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Expert Trading Systems: Modeling Financial Markets with Kernel Regression Review

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(More customer reviews)The book is actually quite good and Kernel Regression might very well be a good modelling technique. What destroys much of the credibility is that the author is actually the founder of a company that produces KR software. This fact isn't mentioned ANYWHERE in the book. The author just HAPPENS to use a specific software in all his examples. Guess what software? You have to go to the company website to find the connection.
If we set that aside, the book is well written and interesting. Not for the math impaired, though. University level math and statistics needed to be enjoyed in full.

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