Spreadsheet Modeling for Business Decisions w/St CD, @RISK & Crystal Ball Access Cards Review

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(More customer reviews)The idea behind this book is excellent, covering the practical aspects of statistics (and some management science) required in business. However, the text is riddled with errors and the explanation of the underlying concepts leaves much to be desired. The only thing that prevented me from rating it 1 star is the useful guides on solving problems within Excel and its add-ins, albeit that old versions of the software are used. There are much better books available.

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Spreadsheet Modeling for Business Decisions focuses on five fundamental topics of business decision modeling; emphasizing the effective communication of results to the appropriate business decision maker.The topics include spreadsheet modeling, data management and modeling, simulation and linear regression modeling, and decision making under uncertainty. The text strives to educate managers in the process of becoming more effective and efficient problem solvers by providing the most important and useful topics within business decision models while at the same time preparing students to apply those topics to real-world problems, to integrate the use of common software packages into their analysis and solutions, and to prepare written and verbal conclusions from that analysis.

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Monte Carlo Simulation in Statistical Physics: An Introduction (Graduate Texts in Physics) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a nice little book written by two experts of the field. This edition is only an expanded version of earlier editions (by addition of two new chapters, the core of the book chapter 1 to 3 hasn't change at all). The book covers monte carlo techniques through various well-known examples (Ising model, random walk, percolation, self-avoiding random walk). I enjoyed reading the first 3 chapters of the book. In particular, chapter 3 guides the readers and gives them the chance to practice what they should have learned in previous chapter (through 53 exercises). The following 2 chapters (chapter 4 and 5) are not as nicely written. Moreover, there are some serious shortcoming in the book. (1) All codes are written in Fortran. While everyone who can program can easily understand the codes, Fortran belongs to the past and could have been ok for physics students during late 80's (first edition) but not for those at 2006. (2) The guide (chapter 3) should have been the last chapter and have covered subjects in chapters 4 and 5 (3) As I mentioned before, chapter 4 and 5 are not well-organized. (4) The book in general stresses too much on finite-size effects. However, it is an important subject and it tells us how we can scale our simulation result to more realistic cases. By my judgement, the book gives wrong impression about the degree of its importance.
I recommend graduate students who are serious about learning monte carlo methods to read Newman and Barkema book (Monte Carlo Methods in Statistical Physics) instead since it provides a broader view about the subject. Although I highly recommend those who are interested in the subject to go through chapter 3. It is fun and very instructive.


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Fundamentals of Atmospheric Modeling Review

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(More customer reviews)This is Mr. Jacobson's latest update to his unique text on the mathematical modeling of the atmosphere. I think it would be impossible to fully utilize this book if you have not already mastered college level physics, organic chemistry, calculus, both ordinary and partial differential equations, and numerical analysis and have some knowledge of atmospheric science. There are plenty of computer projects spread throughout this book too, so I guess a further requirement would be familiarity with a programming language, preferably MATLAB. This book basically merges all of these fields together in order to develop numerical models of atmospheric behavior. In fact, it looks like it would be a tough read for anyone who is not a graduate student of both atmospheric science and mathematics. By cross-referencing this book's material with old textbooks I was able to get through chapter 5 OK, but I hit a wall when I got to the material on numerical solutions to partial differential equations in chapter six. My advice for scientists and engineers that need to know more about the atmosphere, meteorology, and the accompanying mathematics so that they can do some modeling but don't have the Ph.D. pedigree necessary to get the most out of this book might want to invest in two other particular volumes:
1. "Meteorology Today : An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and the Environment" by Ahrens. It is well-written and easy to read. Plus, it splits the difference between science-fair style books written for high schoolers and terse texts that read like a Ph.D. thesis. Buy it used without the CD or Infotrak and save yourself some money though!
2. "Meteorology for Scientists and Engineers : A Technical Companion Book to C. Donald Ahrens' Meteorology Today" by Stull. It provides the mathematical equations needed for a higher level of understanding of meteorology. The organization is mapped directly to the Ahrens book, and it contains detailed math and physics that expand upon concepts presented in Ahrens' text, as well as numerous solved problems.
Amazon does not have the table of contents for the latest edition of Jacobson's book, so I show that here:
1 Introduction
2 Atmospheric structure, composition, and thermodynamics
3 The continuity and thermodynamic energy equations
4 The momentum equation in Cartesian & spherical coordinates
5 Vertical-coordinate conversions
6 Numerical solutions to partial differential equations
7 Finite-differencing the equations of atmospheric dynamics
8 Boundary-layer and surface processes
9 Radiative energy transfer
10 Gas-phase species, chemical reactions, and reaction rates
11 Urban, free-tropospheric, and stratospheric chemistry
12 Methods of solving chemical ODE's
13 Particle components, size distributions, and size structures
14 Aerosol emission and nucleation
15 Coagulation
16 Condensation, evaporation, deposition, and sublimation
17 Chemical equilibrium and dissolution processes
18 Cloud thermodynamics and dynamics
19 Irreversible aqueous chemistry
20 Sedimentation, dry deposition, and air-sea exchange
21 Model design, application, and testing


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3d Car Modeling with Rhinoceros Review

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Modeling With NLP Review

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(More customer reviews)I ordered this book last year and have read it many times over. Robert succeeds in s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g out not only how to model, but how to detect patterns and replicate them. Patterns both cognitive and/or physical. He provides a framework upon which to organize all of your resources (NLP and otherwise) to get exactly what you want. What if you looked at the world in a way that everything around you was yours for the *learning* such as things which we label as 'talents', 'athletic skill', or even 'IQ'? What if everyone is truly an example of excellence, and you had the key to replicate that excellence?
I recently went to Rex Sikes' outstanding Master Prac / Modelling Seminar. This book is a welcome addition to the material presented by Rex. For those who haven't signed up for his seminar yet, this is the best book on modelling I've found.
Through modelling, the world is your oyster.

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The hard cover version is not available any more.The paper back version is available.The ISBN# is0-916990-46-X. If you can not order this book from Amazon.com.Please contact us at metapub@prodigy.net.

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Heavy-Tail Phenomena: Probabilistic and Statistical Modeling (Springer Series in Operations Research and Financial Engineering) Review

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(More customer reviews)Sid Resnick taught me stochastic processes when I was a graduate student at Stanford. He is an exceptional lecturer who really stimulates the students. I don't think I ever had a boring lecture from him even though probability theory and stochastic processes can at times be very dry subjects.
Over the many years since then Sid has moved on and spent many fruitful years at Colorado State and now Cornell. In addition to his many excellent papers and his fine collaborative work with Richard Davis, he has written a large number of very interesting and thought provoking texts on extreme value theory, stochastic processes and probability theory. I have a deep appreciation for his contributions to the theory of extremes as that has also been one of my research areas and was the topic of my Ph.D. dissertation. This is the second outstanding book Resnick has written on extremes. This one has more of a modelling flavor to it with an eye toward financial applications. It seems these days that much of the research in time series modelling and stochastic processes is motivated by applications in finance. This is certainly also the case with extreme value models as can be seen by the many fine books on extremes that have appeared recently.
This book shows the theory and applications of models for heavy-tailed distributions. Resnick makes a very good point about insurance claim cost. This was certainly a phenomena I had to deal with when modeling workers compensation insurance claims at Risk Data Corporation. It is also interesting to see coverage about what is needed to consistently estimate extreme values by bootstrapping.
Time series models that deal with heavy-tailed distributions are also mentioned.

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This comprehensive text gives an interesting and useful blend of the mathematical, probabilistic and statistical tools used in heavy-tail analysis. It is uniquely devoted to heavy-tails and emphasizes both probability modeling and statistical methods for fitting models.Prerequisites for the reader include a prior course in stochastic processes and probability, some statistical background, some familiarity with time series analysis, and ability to use a statistics package. This work will serve second-year graduate students and researchers in the areas of applied mathematics, statistics, operations research, electrical engineering, and economics.

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Catastrophe Modeling: A New Approach to Managing Risk (Huebner International Series on Risk, Insurance and Economic Security) Review

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(More customer reviews)An excellent survey of disaster insurance premium estimation. The volume is written by a variety of contributors, but they follow an outline predetermined by the editors. The material starts with an introduction to natural disasters (hurricanes and earthquakes), then reviews the primary 'technique' recommended by the authors: using GIS databases and sophisticated computer models to predict disaster costs (disaster models). Unfortunately, the details of running these models are hard to communicate without giving the reader access to an interface of a sample model.
Despite this difficulty, there is an excellent chapter detailing the legal battles between the insurance industry and consumer advocates. The battle was fought after the Northridge, CA earthquake, and the GIS data and disaster models were the heavy artillery employed by the insurance brokers. The authors review difficult issues regarding 'fair premium price' determination for regulated retail insurance policies. The purchasers of disaster insurance tend to see the brokers collecting risk-free profits. The brokers counter that the Northridge earthquake insurance payouts exceed all the premiums paid in California for over 20 years. Elsewhere the authors mention hurricane Andrew insurance payouts exceeded all insurance payments ever collected in Florida.
The final chapter covers 'terrorism insurance', and represents an excellent survey of issues facing the insurance industry after September 11. One of the interesting issues raised in the mismatch between industry assessment of 'fair premium' and public assumptions that a 9/11 type disaster could not happen, again. At least this is what sale of terrorism insurance demonstrates.
The book will probably suggest more questions than it answers. In particular, the chapter on terrorism raises interesting issues about 'governmental' coverage versus 'private' coverage. At a certain level, victims of terrorism can expect taxpayers to 'aid' those suffering from the disaster. 'Aid' is another term for insurance, but 'coverage' is universal and payments hidden in various taxes. Coming up with fair 'retail terrorism insurance premiums' seems beyond the capabilities of the US insurance system. The problems are structural and won't go away any time soon.

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