Kevin Murphy Books

Gary S. Becker and Kevin M. Murphy explore the market behavior in a social environment most magnificiently in this book. The insight that I have gained through reading this book cannot be measured by a mere mortal. Furthermore, it astounds me that the sales rank for this book is 72,711, when on my bookshelf it is number 1! This is a must buy for anyone, even if you have no prior knowledge of economics.

This book assumes much prior economic knowledge on the part of the reader. If you are looking for an intuitive, digestable text that highlights the relationships between social and market forces... THIS IS NOT IT.
Becker's ideas, though compelling, are often lost in the academic murk of sophisticated formulas and equation analysis. For example, the first three pages of the opening chapter talk extensively about derivatives of utility functions as they relate to social capital. It felt like I was back in calculus or finance class. This book reads like a textbook. I don't recommend it for anyone with less than an intermediate, working understanding of economic theory.

After reading Guide to the Technocracy and being totally impressed, I expected nothing less for the Guide to the Traditions. Instead of a smooth flowing book with well-organized facts about the Traditions, I got a big book filled with a ton of unnecessary details. It was true that the information was in the book, but one has to wade through a tidal wave of in-character fiction to get to them.

The book did have some useful information, if you're patient enough to get to them. The detailed history of the Traditions was a fascinating read but nothing new. Most of the main points were in the core book and if you've read all the Tradition books, you've heard it all before from 9 different points of view. Another good thing about the book was that it stressed the need for the Traditions to adapt to the modern era and described a handful of cliques that did just that. One of the best sections in the book was the section on paradigms. It will really help new players grasp the most important concept for a mage.

In terms of things I didn't like, the book was just too lengthy. The introduction of adversarial backgrounds was neat but I didn't think they were necessary. Those were things that should be handled with role-playing rather than experience and freebie points.

So is this book worthy of purchase? For Mage storytellers and players who want to collect everything in the series the answer is yes. For casual gamers I would say no if you already have the core book and perhaps the Storyteller's Companion. If you also have Mage Sorcerer's Crusade and a handful of 2nd and Revised edition Tradition books than this book will not be worth it. If you love the Traditions and need to know about the structure and general practices than this book might be helpful.

This book, is very good, don't get me wrong. It is longer then the mage core book infact and most of this is in-character information. This is slightly annoying because of the amount of information one needs to wade through.

The book is organized into a few key sections. One details paradigms, new tradition factions and even pan-trandition groups. Another chapter has "crunchy" stuff, like wonders and new backgrounds. An interesting thing about the Wonders is their are things called Tradition swords. Each one has a magical ability that makes it a very powerful weapon.

The most noted chapter though is the history chapter. It is giant! It has information on different time periods and regions. Most notable is that if they were talking about Vikings they'd give examples of traditions who have people with Viking related paradigms. I'd call this info overload.

This book is very good.... but well... it's way to much useless information hiding important things. White-Wolf could have used it's writting space better.

Okay, so the Reckoning has come and gone. This book provides a lot of additional backgrounds and information of the Traditions, some on the Crafts, and A LOT on specific factions in the Council. It brings things up to speed and makes thing seem a little more modern. Also, it has some new backgrounds, traits, and cool stuff. If you play Mage, you need it.

After reading Guide to the Technocracy and being totally impressed, I expected nothing less for the Guide to the Traditions. Instead of a smooth flowing book with well-organized facts about the Traditions, I got a big book filled with a ton of unnecessary details. It was true that the information was in the book, but one has to wade through a tidal wave of in-character fiction to get to them.

The book did have some useful information, if you're patient enough to get to them. The detailed history of the Traditions was a fascinating read but nothing new. Most of the main points were in the core book and if you've read all the Tradition books, you've heard it all before from 9 different points of view. Another good thing about the book was that it stressed the need for the Traditions to adapt to the modern era and described a handful of cliques that did just that. One of the best sections in the book was the section on paradigms. It will really help new players grasp the most important concept for a mage.

In terms of things I didn't like, the book was just too lengthy. The introduction of adversarial backgrounds was neat but I didn't think they were necessary. Those were things that should be handled with role-playing rather than experience and freebie points.

So is this book worthy of purchase? For Mage storytellers and players who want to collect everything in the series the answer is yes. For casual gamers I would say no if you already have the core book and perhaps the Storyteller's Companion. If you also have Mage Sorcerer's Crusade and a handful of 2nd and Revised edition Tradition books than this book will not be worth it. If you love the Traditions and need to know about the structure and general practices than this book might be helpful.

This text was interesting and informative, but belabored the value of minimum effect hypothesis testing and pretty much ignored confidence intervals as an alternative. Worse, this book contains some mistakes: the noncentral F distribution formula (A3 in Appendix A) is written with parameters that are not explained, and also the authors state that the classical hypothesis testing is false "by definition". This is simply not true; it may be false more often than not, but it is not false by definition. But the worst shortcomings of this book are that it propagates the use of statistical tables instead of clearly explaining the underlying formulae. With ubiquitous computers, it is ridiculous to think that people still need to consult tables, which are restrictive in the alpha values. After reading this text, it is clear that power depends on effect size, alpha, the standard deviations of the treated and untreated populations, and the sample size, but nowhere do the authors clearly show what this functional relationship is. I guess they think that gamma functions and the like are just too difficult mathematics and force people to blindly work with tables in a haze of confusion, wondering the functional relationship of these variables. Finally, they do point out the desired relative seriousness of type I vs. type II errors (a major plus) but fail to emphasize this point as much as it deserves. For example, if there is no a priori reason to favor type I over type II errors or vice versa, then these should be set equal to each other and the sample size calculated from the formulae. Using power = 0.8 with alpha = 0.1 may be acceptable in their field of psychology but is incongruous with the point that they belabor - that type II errors are typically more serious. In conclusion, I would say to read this book from a library and hold off on buying until they (hopefully) correct these flaws in a second edition. Unfortunately, I have yet to see a better text that does clearly explain the functional relationship between the variables involved in power calculations.

The book presents a very interesting method: reducing power analysis to the F distribution. The authors provide very compelling and convincing arguments for the use of power analysis. At times you feel as if their arguments are not well referenced or backed-up, however, especially if you have read a number of technically-oriented statistical texts. Nevertheless, the arguments are provided a good intuitive feel.

The one problem with the book is its editing, or lack thereof. For example, on page 49 the following appears: "If you set a more stringent alpha (e.g., a = .01) is set,..". The sentence was clearly edited, but the edited-out part was left in. This happens in multiple places. Also, on page 41, the (non)-word "irged" is used instead of "urged." All of this should have been caught and fixed prior to publication and prior to asking for $22.50 for the book. I can understand a few errors making it into the final printed edition, but this bordered on ridiculous. I would say that the editorial errors actually became a distraction and took away from the central theme of the book.

This book is clearly and concisely written and provides both an introduction to power analysis and a description of a single set of procedures for power analysis when using any of the procedures covered by the general linear model. If you're familiar with power analysis it's fairly easy to skip the sections you don't need to read without impairing your ability to follow the development of the power analysis model.

Murphy and Myors also take some positions which are debatable (especially by those of us who often don't have the luxury of restricting our sample sizes) but always well argued.

I liked this book because it helped me to understand the World of Darkness better. It helped my Chronical to reach new heights. I made me relize how cool this game could really be. Look whoevers reading this if you are new to the World of Darkness or just need new ideas then this book is for you.This is the long lost holy grail for WoD

I admit that I bought this book because it had an all-too-rare Changeling: The Dreaming story in it. Turns out, it's the last story in the book, is only a handful of pages and not even remotely resembling the actual plot, rules or storyline of the game. I DID read through all of the stories though and here's my take.

The Five Petals of the Lotus by Kevin Andrew Murphy (Kindred of the East) was a pretty ho-hum opening to the book. They didn't bother cluing you in on game terms or anything so if you're not familiar with the system (as I was not) it took a bit to force you way through things which simply weren't explained. Didn't really go anywhere and you didn't feel like you accomplished anything when it was done. It also ends rather abruptly. The concept seems interesting enough, and perhaps if given a full novel treatment it could have been good, but as it stands it just wasn't anything that great.

The Silver Crown by William Bridges (Werewolf: The Apocalypse) came up next and it was pretty decent. Again, I'm not all that familiar with Werewolf, but while they didn't really explain things per se, you didn't feel left out of the story. It flowed along well enough, telling the tale of the Heir to the throne's return to werewolf society, his challenge (and loss) to claim his crown, and his quest within the Umbra for a legendary treasure to help remove the Wyrm infestation threatening his homeland.

Mister Magick by Edo Van Belkom (Mage: The Ascension) was probably the best story of the lot. It actually made me interested in reading up some more on the Mage series. It's quite long actually, and starts off as the growing-up story of an impoverished kid in Canada and his love of stage magic. It progresses through his journey to stardom and his meeting and eventual apprentiship to a famous magician - and Mage. Has a good overall story and brings you along on the generalities of the Mage world.

Beyond the Shroud by Rick Hautala (Wraith: The Oblivion) was by far and without a doubt the WORST story in the book. It was simply a HORROR. First off, I can't ever imagine, if the game was anything like the story, that anyone would ever in their right mind, want to play this unbelievably depressing and repetitively boring game. The story itself is well over two hundred pages and only had plot for about fifty. I don't know how many times you can read about the main character feeling disoriented, lost for time, falling in a pit of blackness, feeling the darkness pulling at him, thinking that he should just give up (and then, mustering his courage not to - until the next scene where we repeat ad nasuem), the fact that everything is distant and muffled, etc. etc. etc. but my gods, it just drags on. This story just shouldn't be. There are no redeeming qualities to it and it's just a huge waste of paper.

The Muse by Jody Lynn Nye (Changeling: The Dreaming) wraps up the book with a scant TWENTY PAGES (were most stories took around a couple HUNDRED pages). But, it doesn't matter because I don't know what it's trying to talk about, but it's certainly not Changeling. Yeah, there's some vague, kithless and undescribed fae who's inspiring some artist and then there's also some faceless "seelie" (again, no kith, description or even physical characters) trying to stop her from reopening a gate to Arcadia. But...there are so many things wrong with this story, that listing them would take up more pages then the story itself. It's such a shame that no one took the time to tap this HUGE resource of Changeling storyline into fiction and novel (possessing only the Immortal Eyes Novel Trilogy, The Vampire/Changeling cross-over "Pomegranates Full and Fine", and the anthology "The Splendor Falls" as the entire novel catalog). I mean, it's a game about the limitless possibility of Dreams for crying out loud! *sighs*

Anyway, the Werewolf and the Mage stories were the only ones worth reading. The book's in no way worth it's $15.99 cover price, but if you can borrow it from the library or a friend, those two tales aren't half-bad. Beyond that, I'd say pass this one by.

this is one of the worst math books i've ever had - maybe even the worst, and i'm an mechanical engineering major (so i've seen a fair few)! The book doesnt explain why, it gives a few brief examples to simplified elementary problems, and then leaves the subject. When you need to look up how do to a more complicated problem, there is no example or method listed to do it.

I was assigned this book to teach Calculus to business majors. To call it horrid would be an understatement. Important concepts are only briefly touched upon in examples (such as function composition) and takes unacceptable liberties (saying things like "it is sufficient to think of e as 2.7"). Too much time is spent on trivialities and busywork, rather than examples that would nail the concept down to the student. The book introduces the concept of the derivative before the limit - that's like learning to ride a bike before you know how to walk!

I've never seen a Calc book worse than this. If I had my druthers, I'd use Stewart for my class. It's not perfect, but at least my students would understand how the limit relates to the derivative, rather than have it introduced and immediately dimissed.

The book explains the material in sufficient details and supports it with easy to understand examples. Also, the exercises and assignments are of appropriate level of difficulty. Overall, I think the authors have done a great job.

I was raised in, and lived most of my adult life in, New York's Greenwich Village. I purchased this book thinking that I might see some of the many homes I knew, both famous and infamous, as well as the streets of that neighborhood. -- Well, if that's what you hope for, too, then move on.... This book looks like ANY recent copy of Architectural Digest, showing ANY rich & well-to-do home in ANY city or town. Nothing about this picture book looks like Greenwich Village. It's strickly a high-end type of generic furniture catalog. A real waste of cash.

Ugh. What a turkey. There's nothing worth having here: The rotes are uninteresting and uninspiring, the information on Mage-ly Seattle is silly and unbalanced and that leaves the information on the "signature characters" used in the examples in the rule books. Surely there's a better way to spend your money.

My psychometrics class (in a doctoral psychology program) was assigned this book as the primary textbook. While it gives a decent foundation for some psychometrics principles, it does a horrible job of explaining the nitty-gritty details, particularly because the book contains numerous typographic errors. The professor ended up awarding quite a bit of extra credit to the numerous students who caught typographic errors. The errors definitely create an obstacle to learning the material, and sometimes the errors actually seem to skew the direction of the material. Even numerical errors occur, such as replacing a negative sign (-) with the number 2. Terrible for a textbook whose backbone is statistics!

The book is very misleading. On the outside it appears to have several pages of popups, but on opening the book, there are several illustrations, but only one popup scene of the entire cantina. The author should have given the reader several diffirent popup scenes.