Applied Languages Books

This may be a brilliant and insightful book, but as an audio CD it is impossible to listen to. I wish I had paid attention to the PW review, because it is all too apt. ("The Canadian author's bizarre, somewhat hypnotic reading style--with its randomly elongated vowels--is a cross between Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man character and a classic Yiddish whine.") Imagine what it would sound like if English were chanted like a Hebrew prayer by a computer generated voice . I still plan to read this highly praised book, but for me the audio version has been a complete disaster. I have given up on it.

this is a scholarly, as well as entertaining, book. I always say that if I'm not complaining, check my pulse. Well now I know why.
You'll laugh, and most importantly, you'll gain understanding.
Even my husband the shaygitz enjoyed it.

First of all full disclosure, possible conflict of interest: I know Michael Wex and think he is a genius. I would buy anything he writes, records, I don't care. His shopping lists are probably more exciting than half of the stuff in print today. So, I don't pretend to be neutral.

Recently I spent four days listening to him lecture at the annual Klezkamp get together. I couldn't stop laughing. My sister sat next to me. She was laughing so hard I thought she might need emergency medical care.

The material is potentially beyond dull. Wex's genius is that he makes it dance and makes me beg for more. Granted, I am a Yiddishist and love the language and culture. Also, I come from a similar background having sat in a yeshiva (rabbinical seminary) for several years, so I identify with much of what he discusses. However, as the old commercial for Levy's rye bread went, "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's." Anyone with the least interest in European Jewish culture will find this work to be a gold mine.

Why? Because what he says ( writes in his book) is, as far as I know, totally original. There is so much sentimental nonsense written about Yiddish and European Jewry. This book totally strips that away. Here you get the real, unvarnished thing.

Some people complain about his voice. For me, it is the perfect voice for this book. It is the quintessential Eastern European Jewish voice with a beautiful Canadian undertone. The tone, the flow, the candence are all classic kvetch with a generous contribution from Leonard Cohen. I grew up with many people who spoke this way. I find it totally wonderful that the publisher would have Michael read his own work; it is a stroke of genius. I listened to the entire set in my car. At times I laughed so hard I was afraid the police would pull me over. " Your honor, I was overcome with an eruptive kvetch. What can I say?"

Now I'm listening to it again. And then I'll probably do it again, and again.....

Like most previous reviewers, I loved this book. I did want to mention that the audio version, narrated by the author, is problematic. On the positive front, the author pronounces Yiddish correctly! The problem is in how he pronounces English. He has a very odd way of speaking, with the last word of each sentence articulated very slowly (str-e-e-e-etched out) and about three notes lower than every other word in the sentence. Every sentence ends with a melodic downturn. I found it quite maddening and really had trouble enjoying the book because of it. You may want to be careful if you plan to buy the audio book because his diction is really rather odd.

Publisher's Weekly has it right. I found the author's voice annoying almost to the point to not being able to listen. But I stuck with it because the book is full of valuable information. And then just when I thought I couldn't stand it any more, he came up with a zinger that I found hilarious. So, my advice is if you can ignore or get used to the whiney voice, try to listen for the content and humor.

I find this book useful, however it is missing one important item, all of the forms need to be put on a CD that accompanies the book. There is lots of good information throughout the book.

As project manager for a new magazine by the school of business, I find the book especially useful to set-up item completion time-lines and structure multiple tasks for better coordination with our editor in chief.
[Graduate Teaching Assistant]

I am using this book as a first-time school newspaper advisor. The book has printable worksheets and lots of helpful guides.

I would suggest it being used for students who are at or above grade level, or doing the activities with partners, as many of the activities are very high level.

Having been a high school newspaper adviser (notice, "adviser" and not "advisor"?) for 8 years, I am like the other reviewer who wishes this book would have been available much earlier. As it is, my first year of teaching in 1993 included four preps: English 10 Honors, English 9, newspaper, and yearbook. (Anybody want to say "Year of Insanity"?) While I did survive, I struggled that year because the resources for publication advisers are very few. Starting almost from scratch and given very little in support, I ended up putting together my own bound journalism resource book, which is similar in many ways to Osborn's work. But the "Survival Guide" I bought last year is still worthwhile for me to have on hand because it has a number of "cool" sheets that can be photocopied. (Kudos for the wire spine that make turning pages and laying them on the photocopier simple!) Only those who have advised high school publications can fully appreciate the words of wisdom Osborn has because she has obviously been there, done that. Every principal should order a copy for the school's journalism teacher. I certainly plan on utilizing mine in the years to come.

It might be because I am teaching middle school journalism but I found the worksheets in this book to be pretty high end. Although I do recomend the book for survival I would recomend Judith Ann Isaacs books on Secondary School Journalism if you want to excell. The only problem is this other book is really hard to find.

Elements of the Theory of Computation (2nd Edition) I just got through reading other book and I realized the only reason I understood it at all was that I had read this book.When I first read this book I thought some of the parts elementary, but comparing it to the above text I realized it was doing the job of teaching by giving good illustrations of the processes involved.

If you are a computer scientist who would like to delve into the foundations of computing for the first time, this is the perfect book for you. The author uses unlimited register machines as his computing model, then shows equivalence with this model and other models , such as the Turing machine. The reader should find more advanced topics, such Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, the Recursion Theorem's, and Reducibility to be quite accessible.

This introduction for undergrads assumes no specifics other than general experience in college math. The writing is clear and exercises are interspersed and follow naturally from the explanations. Proofs are explanatory and easy to follow, though often rather informal.

However, it looses some of its best qualities about halfway through the book. The early chapters give excellent context and motivation, but by chapter 4 that is mostly gone. It seems that the push to cover more topics is what led to making the introduction of new topics more and more brief. The later chapters give little feeling for how it all fits together and why we should care. You can look up the same topics in Rogers or Odifreddi to get an idea of the interesting things that could have been said.

Cutland's book "Computability: An Introduction to Recursive Function Theory" is without doubt the best introduction to recursion theory available on the market. Elementary Recursion Theory is a logician's expression for theoretical computer science, with an emphasis on negative results, i.e. what computers cannot do. Cutland could have exploited Church's Thesis in the manner of H. Rogers, and this could have perhaps make the book readable for a larger public from the human science. Instead Cutland defines the computable functions in a rather standard way through the use of the Register Machine. Then all the basic chapter of recursion theory are introduced, including a gentle explanation of Kleene second recursion theorem, on recursive operators, on formal arithmetic and Godel's incompleteness theorem, Post creative and productive sets. It contains a chapter on Blum complexity theory, with the gap theorem and Blum's speed-up theorem. The book is a must for those who want to penetrate this fundamental subject.

This is a well-written book, and gives a satisfying account of the field of recursion theory. It covers basic aspects of recursion theory, Godel numbering, the structure of recursive and recursively enumerable sets, and even a brief (and quite sketchy) foray into complexity results at the end. It is, however, worth deciding whether you are in the target audience before making a purchase.

If you are trying to make a first transition over into theory topics from, say, a career of practical software development tasks, then this is the wrong book. Try Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation instead. Sipser is more willing to spend time on demonstrating the intuitive picture, and relies less on formal mathematical arguments. This book can come later to fill in some of the mathematical properties.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, this is a passable but mediocre reference book for recursion theory. It omits major topics, such as the arithmetic hierarchy. It deviates considerably from other traditional treatments. These decisions will get annoying if you plan to read bits and pieces rather than learn in sequence according to the author's presentation. A better reference is Hartley Rogers' Theory of Recursive Functions and Effective Computability.

Buy this book if you are in the middle. It's a great book if you've seen some decidability results, but not a formal mathematical treatment; and if you intend to follow the book and learn what it decides rather than look up specific topics. In that situation, it's hard to see how you could do better.

The cross entropy method (CE) is a modern technique attacking optimization and estimation problems by simulation. It has been introduced by the first author and it is elaborated thoroughly in this book. The reader will find a lucid introductory chapter into the subject followed by the core of the book consisting of a chapter where CE returns an iterative algorithm for adaptive importance sampling simulation, and a chapter where CE is transformed into a randomized algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems. The book concludes with several chapters with applications including detailed numerical results and some Matlab codes.

I read the book with great pleasure because it is a well written exposition of a fascinating method containing many illustrative examples and realistic applications. I think that it is appropriate for both practitioners and theorists in simulation and optimization. While reading the book I got encouraged to apply CE to several other problems because the CE basics seems so simple while the results are marvellous. I am interested specifically in rare event simulation so I focused on reading the simulation part where I found many inspiring new ideas. In fact, I applied CE to a reliability problem and obtained results far better than existing methods. The simulation chapter is the most mathematically oriented, for instance it gives a proof of convergence and it contains recent developments in simulation of rare events with heavy tails.

I can recommend this book to everyone who likes to learn new ways for solving estimation and optimization problems.

This is a great book intended for practitioners and "light" theoreticians. It contains precise explanations that show how to use the cross entropy method efficiently for both estimation of rare events and for optimization. The code is valuable and covers a large variety of applications. The book is deductive and easy to follow, and not cluttered with too much notations.

I really liked the applications chapters - easy to follow and show what all the fuss is about. Seems like the kind of book you'd like to have around if you're actually solving optimization problems.

This book provides an excellent introduction to the Cross-Entropy (CE) method, which is a new and interesting method for the estimation of rare event probabilities and combinatorial optimisation.

The book contains all of the material required by a practitioner or researcher to get started with the CE method. The fact that accompanying Matlab code is freely available renders this field especially accessible to new-comers.

The book has a strong practical flavour, and is easy to read. It will be of interest to anybody working in the field of Monte-Carlo simulation and/or stochastic optimisation.

Although Cross Entropy is a relatively new methodology in optimization, there has seen an "explosion" of new articles offering theoretical extensions and new applications in the last few years. Hence, this book comes just in time to review the state of the art and help "new comers" enter this field. The method is presented in a clear, easy-to-follow manner and the best part of the book, in my opinion, is the focus on several areas of application where tough problems were already solved with CE. I have recently used this book to support a novel CE application to project management and found it extremely useful. I think it should become a standard piece in the "tool-box" of both scholars and practicionairs interested in optimization.

The cross-entropy method is an exciting new technique for rare event simulation and stochastic optimization.
The book unfortunately is a 99% copy and paste of the public available tutorials and papers. I bought the book before looking in the internet, so do not do the same mistake by me.

Furthermore it is quite disappointing if every chapter is written in a highly redundant manner(which follows automatically if every chapter is a paper on its own).

The topic and method is great but the book doesnt add much what the papers wont tell.

Don't get me wrong - Ms. Bannister has done a laudable job with this "instructional manual." The only point I feel compelled to make is this "survival guide" is "97%" better suited for a first year school librarian. After a full year "on the job", most of her book's contents are researched and dealt with - by necessity. Read this book the summer before starting as a first year school librarian or after being away from the profession for a few years.

This book truely is a survival guide! As a new media specialist I was basically clueless about how to get started. This book offers suggestions for everything a media specialist has to deal within an elementary school. It offers everything from positioning furnisher, sample activities/lesson plans, reproducible worksheets and letters, etc. This book is easy to read and understand. I would recommend it to all new media specialist or veterans looking for new ideas.

This book, which I discovered in a catalog from World Almanac, I believe, was a very useful asset in my two years of learning experience as an emerging librarian. I found information which was verified in my graduate school coursework to gain my Masters' Degree in Library Science. Later, I found many recommendations and commendations for this volume. I will continue to return to this book for resources and ideas and good basic aids to the librarian in an elementary school. Additionally, their are great ideas that can translate to middle school and high school librarians and their many, multi-tasking roles!

That's what this book does. It helps very much.
It has forms, charts, letters, and patterns to
help you. Topics such as physical organization
of the library, how to build
support for your programs, discipline,
storytimes, and booktalks are just a
few of the many subjects covered in this book.

It goes beyond what you learn in school and it is
all in this one handy volume.

As a recently certified school library media specialist, I was excited to see this title. I purchased it without checking the date. Big mistake. The book has more information on card catalogs than computerized catalog systems. The information on planning and lessons was very basic. The "chapter" on dicipline is 9 pages long (3 pages of reproducibles). I was hoping for information on weeding, collection development and promoting the library to students, and actual lesson ideas. This book does not deliver. It may have been useful 14 years ago, but should not be considered today. Any introductory class on educational media or library science will cover all of this and more.

Nice introduction to linear programming, but new standard definitions have already arrived, making many "good books" obsolete. The book sometimes isn't very clear and should be more explicit and should give more examples.

Looking from outside, the book seems very good. However, when you open the cover you are shocked by the press quality. It seems like the book just came from an illegal copy shop. Sometimes you can not read small indices in formulas. For a book having this context, a better press quality should be used. I could make a better copy with a copy machine. The paper quality is around average.

I have profitably used the book to apply constrained minimization procedures in the field of computational contact mechanics. I think it is not a secret that quite often books on mathematics are written from matematicians for matematicians. Hence it is quite hard for engineers both to read and to extract valuable information from them. With this respect this book is a shining star. It presents the topics in a very precise but clear and understandable way. Moreover the notation also is the best compromise between coinciseness and clarity. Matematicians, please, look at this book and follow such style; we engineer desperately need to communicate with you.

Luenberger's optimization book is very good and well worth having. However, it should be noted that the "new" 2004 edition published by Springer-Verlag is nothing more than an exact reprint of the 1984 2nd edition that was formerly published by Addison-Wesley. Accordingly, a good used copy may be more worthwhile than an overpriced "new" one.

This is the fourth such case I have come across wherein a publisher chooses to engage in such misleading marketing practices. The other three are "Engineering Optimization - Methods and Applications" by Reklaitis (1983), "Hydraulic Control Systems" by Merrit (1967), and "Dynamic Systems" also by Luenberger (1979). All three are now being sold as new publications by Wiley (according to Amazon). I suspect there are many other examples as well.

I have the 1977 edition from my father's MIT days. I am a Mathematician and I can verify that the book written in 1977 is of the same style that good books have today! A book is not made obsolete because some new "elegant" terms arise. Ok Luenberger did not know about Interior Point Algorithms and to tell you the truth why should he? I do not know other editions but in the first edition in chapter 7 "Basic Descent Methods" everyone who is able to read clearly and unbiased the second paragraph will agree with me that Interion Point Algorithms IS NOTHING NEW in the theory of MATHEMATICS!!! What you need to know ,the magic, is in the chapters 7-11. From there you can read everything else you like and get in touch with what is about to come in the next 25 years(See Ye : "Interion Point Algorithms"). But remember you are already in stars before reading the new books...

Bought Matlab. This company spends more time/resources making sure you don't steal it (ie allowing you to install it on your own computers hassle-free)...then it does in working the bugs out. It is advertised as working with Os X....GOOD LUCK getting it to run right. This stupid program was so important that I had to run out and buy an Intel iMac..Install that Bootcamp/Windows OS "thing", and install Matlab on the pc side so that I could have stable environment. This P.O.S. is NOT Mac compatible... Sooo...having said that....whatcha think?

Dear Matlab Folks: drop the RETARDED activation scheme which ONLY hurts LEGITIMATE users ( you can find lots of cracked versions in the newsgroups btw) and make this program WORK.

I am not a full time computer programmer. In spite of my limited programming experience, I was able to follow the lessons in this book. The information is presented in a logical sequence and fully explained and illustrated. As the title suggests, this book is for engineers who need answers for their own use and is not intended to show you how to make fancy illustrations for presentations.
There are two shortcomings that bothered me. One is the lack of a table at the end of each chapter listing the other commands and functions that do almost the same thing as the ones covered in the chapter. This would increase this book's usefulness as a reference. The other problem is the end of each chapter having an illustration of some interesting engineering project or concept. One claimed that Matlab could be used to drastically improve the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles. The other was a half baked political statement to the effect that you would be better off giving irrevocable control of your life over to a group of people who have a history of looking after their own interests first and others second. Of course this suggestion was worded in an appealing style.

The book is a good start to MATLAB students but there is a lot of errors in the text. Despite the author's appeal asking everybody to show him the errors, I think it would be better to rewrite the book, mainly because his work could be more useful if he insert a specific chapter about I/O operations, which is, in my opinion, the most dificult thing to do in MATLAB. Examples of I/O operations with several data formats would be useful too.

This is a great book for learning Matlab. It starts from very, very basic stuff, and picks up at a steady pace, teaching u tons of things with ease. This is the official book of my College Course "Computer Programming for Mechanical Engineers", and I'm doing great in it with the help of this book.

This is a great text. Easy to read and many good examples illustrated in the book allow you to quickly pick up MATLAB, especially the GUI section. It's very clear and up-to-date. Unlike some other texts just tell you the inefficient Matlab 4.x code for the GUI programing.

*I am a undergraduate engineering student by the way.

I could neither read the book cover to cover nor expect anyone will accomplish this with sanity. This book is written as a text book that student will buy class notes instead or a self-promotion material which left untouched; Almost all supporting material are assembled from various sources. The author claim it's done to protect its customer's privacy but the result does not make sense and appear to be too much artificial. Besides the lack of "real" hard evidence to demostrate the author's theory, there are too many opinions from places to places. We don't assume a cause of an event by collecting opinions from a group of people. Only an controled experient can proof a theory. Over all the book is poorly written. However, it serve as a good weapon through corporate ladder. It can be uses in two way. Pick it up and hit someone. Its hard cover and weight can result a deadly attack. Otherwise one can pick up technical terms through out the book and make anyone in front of you shut up.

What's good about this book: The mention of function point vs lines of code. The importance of software measurement and it's value. Lastly, it provide you an template of basline report if the CEO ever ask.

What put this book useless: neither example nor explaination on how to calculate function point from a spec or project files. The detailed work require too much labor to accomplish.

Conclusion: a minimum software measurement is essential to evaluate a team's performance. a size of code / bug rate and few other key variables can show the quality and progress of an project. Thus a project schedule can be forcasted and updated. But we need to ask if the author had pushed the case to the extreme so the business solely based on selling measurment report like himself can exist and keep sucking our money.

It's hard to encapsulate in a few words what this book has done for me since I've started reading it. If you're part of any stage of your company's development cycle and care about the quality of the products you deliver ... this is a must read. Chris Showers Inmar Enterprises

I bought this book as a suppliment to Software Engineering Economics, by Boehm, because of it's later publication date. However, once I read the book I believe that the Boehm should be a suppliment to this work. Before reading this book I was unfamiliar with function points. We are now implementing them in our company. If this book does not bridge the gap between technical and management it goes a long way toward that end.

Software engineering is not a discipline backed by science; it has many theories but few metrics and objective data to evaluate the theories. However, software must be built, people are hired to meet important business goals, and projects and careers are dependent on an accurate assessment of project factors. Jones' book supplies an objective way for software engineering managers to compare their projects against empirical data gathered from over 6700 software projects. The next time a manager challenges your effort and schedule estimates, you can turn to Jones' book (Chapter 3 is a must read for even time pressed managers and the charts alone worth the value of the book) and find the objective data to back you up. Neil Olsen

How To Win Friends And Influence People is a classic. Truly a life-changing book. Unfortunately, THIS republication of the book has such small typesize... probably only 8 or 9 pt.... that it is unreadable. Too bad that the publishers decided to save a few pennies by crunching the text. They killed the book.

Cómo Ganar Amigos E Influir Sobre Las Personas es un libro clásico. De verdad, es un libro que puede cambiar la vida de uno. Desafortunadamente ESTA impresión del libro usó letra tan pequeña que ni se puede leerla... quizás es tamaño 8 o 9. Parece que la imprenta decidió de ahorrar unos centavos por cortar el # de páginas, y en el proceso mató al libro.

Is a very good book, it gives you a lot of examples of what to do. I think it is one of the best books out there about the topic.

desde mucho tiempo habia oido hablar de este libro y me parecia un poco cursi,hasta que me lo encontre en la casa de un amigo. inmediatamente empeze a leerlo y fue; unico el placer de darem cuenta algo tan sencillo, como el como comportarme estuviera tan mal en mi,cuando solo tenia que analizar y hacer las cosas mucho mejor, y hasta con menor esfuerzo. me abrio y sigue habriendo los ojos a muchos aspectos de mi vida vitales para mi desarrollo personal y con los demas. y no..es, que estuviera tan mal pero no hiba a llegar a ningun lado como hiba. en el cielo le lleguen mis gracias dr Dale

Después de más de 60 años de escrito, el libro del señor Dale Carnegie continúa vigente. Cómo es esto posible? Pues muy fácil, las excelentes ideas allí expuestas, no han sido adoptadas por muchos, a pesar de haber vendido millones de copias. El hombre común y corriente es fácilmente impresionable cuando se le presentan conceptos que prometen un cambio radical en su vida, sin embargo luego del entusiasmo inicial, todas estas ideas son olvidadas, tales son los casos famosos de libros de autores como Og Mandino o Wayne Dryer. En su libro, el señor Carnegie insiste en la re-lectura una y otra vez, y en la aplicación constante de los conceptos allí expuestos, ya que sabe que de otra manera sus palabras no dejarán huella. Las ideas que el señor Carnegie presenta en su texto son demasiado obvias, tan obvias que nadie las nota en su propia vida; sólo cuando el autor las muestra de tal manera que no se pueden negar, es en ese momento cuando el lector se enfrenta con la realidad. Todos nos sorprendemos ya que el señor Carnegie, apoyado en testimonios e historias de personajes famosos, logra mostrarnos tantos y tan distintos errores que cometemos a diario. Pero sobre todo, nos sorprendemos con la solución que nos presenta para superar esos errores. De manera magistral el autor apela al mismo egoísmo de cada uno para trabajar de manera inversa, es decir, hacerle creer a los demás que siempre hacemos lo que ellos quieren. Y al parecer esta solución funciona, y funciona tan bien que, a fuerza de fingir este comportamiento y de re-leer el texto, el individuo termina apropiando la idea de hacer que la otra gente se sienta importante.

Tal vez el mayor mérito lo logra el autor en el aspecto de la influencia sobre las personas, para ello propone unas reglas básicas de comportamiento, que de ser practicadas, conducen a un éxito en las relaciones interpersonales y de paso a conseguir cualquier cosa que uno se proponga. De todo esto, lo que causa mayor admiración al lector es darse cuenta que todas las personas sin distinción de raza, color, sexo, religión o condición social, tienen las mismas necesidades básicas, las mismas expectativas y por sobre todo, el interés de colocar el YO, el mí mismo por sobre todas las cosas y de cómo al lograr manipular este interés se puede "dominar" a los demás. Es interesante la lectura de este libro por todas las oportunidades que ofrece para el mejoramiento del trato con los demás, pero por sobre todo, porque el señor Carnegie en ningún momento intenta imponer sus ideas, simplemente sugiere, jugando de alguna manera con el mismo lector, a quién le aplica el mismo tratamiento de hacerlo sentir importante.

I found this book very useful. I teach a muli-level ESL class to adults and I use this book for all levels. This book is better than most out there.

The book has 2 basic parts--the first is about safety, hygiene, etc., and I don't have a need for this in my ESL classroom. The second part covers just about every second-language cultural issue (money and measuring are the 2 I've referred to in the 2 weeks I've had the book, but there are TONS!) and I believe it will be extremely helpful. The book was recommended to me by a veteran ESL elementary school teacher who uses it often. It would be useful for ESL teachers at all levels, I think. Great info on verb tenses and, like I said, TONS more!

In reviewing the book ESL Smart: Ready-to-Use Life Skills and Academic Activities for Grades K-8, I believe it is an invaluable resource for anyone working with English Language Learners, particularly newcomers and beginners. This book provides a wealth of ideas about how to facilitate the acculturation of ELLs into our American public schools. The book is a source of ideas and topics that can be adapted for a broad range of social and academic skills required of ELLs to be successful in our public schools. This book is precisely the type of reference book every ESL teacher should have on the shelf.

1. Illustrations-two thumbs down
2. Lesson plan/student worksheet conflicts
3. Best for use in the American ESL classroom

I bought this book to help me teach ESL in China. I found that the illustrations are more like frustrations because they are so terrible and confusing. I think my ESL students could have produced a better looking book.
Moreover, this book supplies lesson plans for the teacher and worksheets for the students... However, they are often combined... So if you were to xerox a worksheet for a class, it would have part of your lesson plan "instructions" listed on the top of the worksheet right under the student's name and date.
The topics I think are only ok if you are teaching students who are living in the states. They describe safety issues and hygiene typical in America, but "Greek" to any foreigner.