Variance Books

I don't know why I haven't heard more about this book. I stumbled across it purely by accident but have been surprised to find it is one of the best reads I've had in this genre this year. Glad I found it.

For a very long time, this book was "Unavailable" or "Out of Print". Naturally, I found that intriguing. When this book became available to order, I wasted no time. I feel my wait was certainly rewarded.

Michael's prose is magnetic. It's as if I'm drawn to read faster and faster. These types of reads are rare, to me. Character development was effective, and the storyline is wonderful, even if controversial.

To anyone who likes Cold War books, this is a must-read. For those who want a good story to read, pick this up. I know your money will be well spent!

If you like Historic Fiction, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Spy novels, Cold War Political Intrique, or even action works (to a lesser extent) then this book is for you! It welds the aforementioned genre's together and is a perfect rainy sunday afternoon read. Hard to put down, and a fascinating scenario! I had to read it two times to be sure I didn't miss any details. Totally believable plot line and excellent characterizations, as well as interesting details on the space programs of the era from both the US and Soviet perspectives. I heartily recommend Red Moon.

So far I am about half way through the novel and it is a good read.

This book is painstakingly researched, well written, entertaining, and an all around great read. This has to be one of the best novels I've read this year. I hope there's more to come.

For all you kids out there who picked up a guitar because you wanted to be a Beatle, this book shows you how to do it.

First, be exceedingly talented and charming, then WORK YOUR TAIL OFF! Within these pages is detailed documentation of exactly what the Beatles did to attain, then retain, their unparalleled success.

No other band, save possibly The Ramones, put in more stage time wherever they could, and we all know the results.

Read this book, young musicians, then go out there and do it, for the sake of us music fans.

Thanks to Mr. Lewisohn for this book. We look forward to his multivolume bio.

The Beatles weren't always big,and their was a time actually before Beatle mania.In these times we also didn't always have Ringo star to play drums.We had Pete Best.

The compiled information is outstanding.For a person to gain so much information and archives and list them all in this well priced book is a genious.Very affordable as amatter of fact i picked this up new for $5.99 just awhile ago.

With a well written list of all of The Beatles shows from Livirpool to the USA you can expect the same amoutn of quality info in each segment.The back of the book features a list/guide to all the Beatles albums and a well summed up list of al their songs.(OR so we believe)All the information found in this book is accurate never having to worry of fasle news paper clippings or romours that spread amongst those days.Cool little tid bits of info float all over the book and some well done photos.

This is truley for the Beatle fan in all of us craving that little bit of nerdiness wondering about everything they ever did.Or to some one who wants a well written chronological ordered book of the Beatles in general.Big fan or newcomer this is just right for you.

This is the best book to twin the Anthology Book.
You can get your PhD in Beatle Arts, studying this bible.
However, I rated it just 4 stars because the cover portrait says "The Complete Beatles Chronicle" and the picture below makes you think they were a duet (John & Paul). This is a huge and annoying mistake.

Mark Lewisohn has collected some great Beatles info that every fan should know. Every live performance, recording session, and even mixing dates are included here, in this fine publication. Belongs on everyone's Beatles bookshelf.

I borrowed The Complete Beatles Chronicle from the library hoping to get more info on the making of the White Album (my favorite). But, because of how well the book is written, I wound up starting from the beginning.

This book is interesting because it doesn't miss the big picture. At the beginning of each year is a concise chronicle of what happen that year and its significance. One needn't get bogged down in the details. Just read the first few pages of each chapter for a good overview.

But, if you read the whole account, you'll discover the true genius of the four lads from Liverpool and how they somehow managed to create high-quality songs in between appearances on TV shows, sitting in on radio broadcasts, making movies, going on far-flung concert tours and dealing with mobs of desperate Beatlemaniacs.

Some of this data must be conjecture (even though it's not presented as such). For example, unless it was revealed in an interview, how would the author know that Billy Preston was brought into the Get Back sessions in order to break the tension within the group.

Still, it's an easy read filled with facts. I must now buy this book. So should you.

[DW]

I can't really add anything the other reviews haven't already covered. I just wanted to add my praise of this classic. This book is very relevant in a lab setting. I would recommend it to everyone to start with, but especially those with experimental problems to solve in an objective way.

I used the Montgomery DOE book as an undergrad...but chatting with a Stat prof freind of mine..she recommened Box Hunter & Hunter over this. I had never covered the entire book..& was reading up on Factorial designs...I went ahead and bought Box Hunter & Hunter...(do wait & buy the 2nd edition due out in May-I think Amazon trys to sell you the old inventory if you are not careful)...nonetheless, the old edition I bought actually is much more intuitive and easy to follow that the "Design and Analysis of Experiments" book by Montgomery....I think its b/c the latter is written by an engineer..no offense to you out there...just that engineers cover so much material that there texts seem more "cookbook" like..here's how...w/ no too much intuition as to why ...probably catering to the engineer who has not the time to care about the why...I am thoutoughly enjoying the read...some of the quotes in hte book are pretty funny yet all the while relevant...

All of the reviews on this book are generally consistent in their praise for the book and the authors. I do not have any points to add to the discussion other than this:

It is a credit to this version of Statistics for Experimenters that it has remained relevant throughout the years as a classic introductory text that has kept selling consistently since it was released in the 1970's. Nevertheless, unless you have a particular reason for purchasing this version, you should purchase the updated version(also available through Amazon).

The full title of the newer edition is:

Statistics for Experimenters: Design, Innovation, and Discovery, 2nd Edition

The 2nd edition, written in the same engaging and readable style as the 1st, contains virtually all of the content of the 1st edition plus advances in design of experiments that have happened since the 1st edition was published.

George E.P. Box, the senior author of this magnificent example of great teaching for adults, is one of the great statisticians of modern times. He is a master at teaching those with experience, especially industrial experience, but not necessarily the most advanced mathematical training. My own background in econometrics and decades of work experience left me in a position of having too little knowledge to apply sophisitcated statistical methods to experiments and too much knowledge to settle for the exposition of statistics in many experimental design texts, especially those for behavioral scientists. I had read some of Mr. Box's "Evolutionary Operation" [with Norman Draper] ("EvOp") (also outstanding, practical, and unusual) and looked at "Bayesian Inference in Statistical Analysis" [with George Tiao] ("BISA") and hoped the book was as practical as EvOp rather than as mathematical as BISA. It has turned out to be so without being unsophisticated.

Once you have mastered this, I am sure you will be prepared for many of the challenges of applying statistics to practical industrial and experimental situations and for more advanced and modern methods that have emerged since 1978 with the ubiquity of very cheap computing power.

What it may lack in the most contemporary methods it more than makes up for by helping the reader develop a good intuition for applying statistical methods and judgment.

This book was published in 1978 but as other reviewers have noted its practical methods and advice are timeless. George Box and Stu Hunter are both very famous statisticians who are also great teachers and lecturers. Bill Hunter is now deceased. All three authors have made major contributions to the design of experiments. The book is written for practitioners and in the simplest language possible. Emphasis is placed on practical designs and not optimal designs because optimal designs are very sensitive to model specification.
It does not include the robust designs of Taguchi which came later and could easily be included if the authors choose to revise it.

This book is a valuable resource for anyone trying to get the most out of Product Cost Controlling in SAP. John Jordan has a rare combination of deep SAP knowledge and lucid writing style. In terms of scope, the book shows the integration of variance analysis from start to finish, from sales planning to management reporting. To reflect this integration, John consistently makes excellent transitions from one section to the next... the logical thread is never dropped. Clear, unambiguous language is used, with explicit instructions on how to proceed. John goes beneath the surface to explain the "why" and not just the "what" and "when". Of particular interest is the discussion of scrap planning and reporting, a highly under-documented topic in the standard SAP documentation. John speaks with the voice of someone who has extensively used these analytical tools, not just someone who has simply configured them for others to use. I highly recommend this book to consultants and end-users in Product Cost Controlling.

John Jordan has written an excellent book on SAP Product Costing. I have read this book cover to cover more than once and use it as a reference often. To me it is more than a book on variance analysis as it also provides great perspective on the product costing process. There is also a good bit of detail regarding scrap analysis as well. I look forward to reading another book authored by Mr. Jordan on product costing in the future.

This is a great book, and a long-awaited resource, for anyone involved in product cost controlling in SAP. It's got great information, from high level to detailed, for people at all levels of expertise. It covers so much more than just analyzing your production variances. It covers the whole process of how variances are determined, including planning, master data, actual postings, and variance calculations. I highly recommend it.

Good Book.Worth Buying and also it does take you through the whole process of the Product Costing and gives you in a Snap Shot what the whole product costing is .There is nowhere in the books the Complete View ,given in one book. After Reading the Book read the SAP help for Cost Center Planning and the SAP book on Production Planning then you have covered all the Bases in the Product Costing

This is an excellent book. I've been working in SAP for over twelve years as a logistics consultant and project manager. I've been able to cobble together a cursory knowledge of CO by reading the help files. This book has taken my understanding to the next level. It provides a comprehensive overview of product costing in SAP, going far beyond the standard SAP help screens.

The book follows the process of product costing from planning, through master data, to month-end processes, such as overhead allocation, WIP calculation via results analysis, variance calculation, and order settlement.

I highly recommend this book.

Jeff Knowlton

Good guide for the whole scientific community...citated in all the original articles of the last years...without it you can't pubblish anymore on the most popular and important scientific ecological journals.
Very good and written in an easy form.

The book is focus on the author's field, it is ecology and on benthic invertebrates. This book is great for people who wants to study community ecology as prof Underwood tries to explain the principles of statistics, how to design your study against pitfalls before conducting it in the field. The numerous examples set to analyze their variances, how to analyze samples and the assumptions made in analyzing samples. All of these are covered by a field practicing ecologist whose book is destined to be a classic in ecology and statistics.

Anyone has experience the fear of start reading any statistical book because most of the classic text always confuse us with very sophisticated formulas and terms. Underwood book for me is written in a extreme clear leanguage and examples. I teach this kind of courses and my students find easy to use even if is a foreign leanguage to us. I hope this would help you. Regards, Rafael.

This book was one of the best purchases I made upon starting my graduate career. It is extremely well written and de-mystifies the process of hypothesis testing and experimental design and analysis. I consider this book a must for anyone starting out in the field of ecology who has questions about experimental design or analysis.

This is really an excellent book. Concepts are presented in a straightforward and intuitive way. This is great for getting concepts the first time and also works really well as a review/reference text. Anyone who has felt frustrated while using Biometry (Sokal and Rohlf) to learn an unfamiliar statistical concept related to ANOVA should consider this book. It is a good complementary text to that one.

This book was extremely well written and very exciting. Great attention was given to historical detail, with vivid and vibrant settings. The main character struggles against oppression and his search for faith. All in an action packed format. A must read.

I love a good story, and this book was a great read. Even though it looked like a big book when I first picked it up, I got into it right away and finished it in a couple of plane rides. It's reminiscent of the movie Gladiator in setting and action, and is a really solid story, not your typical paperback action book you pick up in an airport newstand. I also definitely got into the characters, I love reading a book about someone who is just a minor person in another work, but is developed into a protagonist, with a fascinating history, purpose, romances, life (as in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead vs. Hamlet). This book goes into the life of Barabbas from the Bible, of whom all the bible tells us is that he was freed and Christ was crucified. The story explores why he was doomed for crucifixion, what his purpose in life was, and what happened when he was freed at the will of the people of Israel. I also love the historical accuracy, I learned a few new things about Roman and Jewish customs. I like pretty much any story about ancient Rome. On top of that, there was one scene that really moved me. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just say I definitely recommend this book for some fun reading!

Maybe its because I haven't read fiction for a while, but I found this book totally engrossing. Of course, historical fiction has always been one of my favorites. This book is basically the story of Barabbas whom we all know better as the zealot who was freed from prison and replaced by Jesus on the cross. The book revolves around Barabbas and his band of zealots as they oppose Roman dominance in Judea. Their animosity towards their Roman overlords and the virulent battles that ensue present us with a view of a violent time in history complete with religious extremism and government corruption. Perhaps that much hasn't changed after two thousand years?

Most of the story takes place after his release from crucifixion. While Jesus plays a relatively minor role in the story, his followers provide a backdrop against which the violence is contrasted. Barabbas' release is actually part of the story and his zealous ways are contrasted with the new-found, peaceful beliefs of the followers of Christ. A quest for a hidden "copper scroll" that reveals the location of an ancient Jewish treasure provides the impetus that drives the story to its conclusion. Yes, greed, depravity, brutality, blind obedience to power, and treachery all play a part in the story. I should say no more lest I reveal the ending.

In short, if you are a Christian, don't let the fact that Jesus is not a central character throw you off. In no way does this book minimize Christ's importance or effect on civilization. If you are not of a religious bent, enjoy it for its' historical context and to catch a glimpse of a turbulent period. But most of all, read it because it is a great story that will have you turning pages and telling your friends.

I usually read about 1 book a week and I was looking for something new and different. I certainly found that in Sean Young's new book. This book was thoroughly researched, well written and he keeps the pace up throughout the book. When I picked up the book I was interested in the Copper Scroll and the treasure that it was protecting, never suspecting the other plots that ran through the book. Action, suspense, romance, twists and turns and a lead character that you will grow to love. Sean now ranks at the top of my list of favorite authors and I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a good read and interesting tale. I am looking forward to his next endeavor.

The length of this book scared me at first. It's a long one. But I was very intrigued by the idea of a story of Barrabus, and so I was looking forward to this book's release. I can tell you I was not disappointed in the least.

The sheer amount of fight in Barrabus and the rest of the zealots is amazing. Strong charcters abound in this story, from Barrabus himself to Gaius the centurion to Deborah the prostitute to Leila the merchant's daughter. All of them important, and all of them well drawn and beleivable. This book really does take you back to another time and place, as author Jeremy Robinson has said. It's obvious a great deal of time was spent on research.

Start with Barrabus' quest to free Isreal from Rome, add a myserious copper scroll that hides a secret that could save or destroy nations, and mix in a prefect who will stop at nothing to get it. Stir those together and you have a fantastic story that more than once had me up past my bedtime because I simply could not sleep unless I knew what happened next.

Violent Sands is easily one of the best books I have ever read. I will be hoping for more work from Young in the future.

Great book. Very conversational. The only downside is that all the steps are shown by hand when most classes today also use a statistics computer package. However, by doing the problems by hand, the partitioning of variance is quite clear. Highly recommended!

This book is a good overview of the ANOVA methods. It is most useful for people who need to learn quickly how to apply and interpret the most basic analysis of variance. Althought, it needs an urgent editing. It has all kinds of spelling and gramatical errors to say the least. The content is very good but if a non-native english speaker with an "ok" grammar (and an engineer) can point out thoes mistakes, well...you may not only need to interpret ANOVA results.

The reason I purchased this book was because I had a real set of data and a set of research questions that were amenable to a two-way analysis of varience. Being a non-academic (and retired as well) the only packaged software I had to address the problem was an old student version of SPSS which was only able to do a one-way analysis of varience. I needed a resource that would enable me to set up a two-way analysis of varience within a spreadsheet format and after scanning the list of books available at Amazon I settled on this one and hoped it would do the trick.

On the day the book arrived, I read the first few chapters, found a completed example that was fundamentally the same as my problem, and using the example as a guide set up a spreadsheet program to do my analysis. Within three hours of receiving the book my analysis was complete; and, I understood the statistical rationale on which the analysis was based. The book was exactly what I needed!

During my years in graduate school, I've noticed a general lack of familiarity in graduate students, from engineering or from biological backgrounds, in statistical techniques. I also often read papers (usually in the medical science journals) that demonstrate variable levels of statistical understanding. After reading many book chapters, MATLAB materials and web pages, I found this book to be the clearest and easiest introduction to ANOVA techniques. I've been recommending it to many people that depend on self-learning to substantiate their competence in data analysis.

Whenever I need to re-learn the fundamentals and assumptions of a particular technique, I find it useful to spend a half-hour or so with my favorite textbook on that subject. This handbook has become that textbook: there's nothing wrong with being easy to read.

My only complaint is that for $27, you don't get an in-depth introduction to ANCOVA, which is a very common related technique. Too bad, but it does not prevent me from giving this small book my highest recommendation. Of course, there are many $90+ books out there that lack either clarity about ANOVA or discussion of ANCOVA or both.

Lady Gregory has written a very precise and easily read translation of some of the best of Irish mythology. Originally written at the turn of the ninetteenth century it still holds today.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Celtic mythology and lore.

The works of Lady Gregory are the best way to get a pure taste of the original Irish Myths - unless you are fluent in Gaelic and can get a hold of older copies. Lady Gregory's elequent speech and style breathes life into Ireland's forgotten Heroes and Gods!

Gods and Fighting Men is an excellent resource because it preserves the lore from the Book of Invasions as well as other sources -- the legends of the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, the coming of the Tuatha De Danaan (The People of Dana) and the stories of Finn MacCumhail.

What is portrayed as "Early Irish Mythology" 99% of the time actually isn't -- the dozens of translations of The Tain, albeit worthy reading, are actually the lore of Ulster, a single Irish province. This makes it Ulster Mythology (regional) more than Irish Mythology (national).

The legends of the Tuatha De Danaan are essential for a comprehensive understanding of Irish mythology, actually comprising the majority of the Mythological Cycle, and deal with the initial settling of all of Ireland.

Unfortunately, it seems to be modern New Age reconstructions of the Mythological Cycle rather than the native stories that seem to be infusing themselves into the mainstream, and that is sad.

In my mind, the Mythological Cycle is the most important cycle in Irish mythology, because it sets up the scenario for all that is to follow. The Fenian Cycle (legends of Finn MacCumhail and his warband) are fascinating not only for their strong associations with Nature, but also for the fact that the stories are well-known both in Ireland and in the Scottish Highlands. The Gods still walked and resided on (or in) the Earth and interacted often with mortals. Magic was all around.

The Tain, on the other hand, is more a time of towns and forts and war-chariots; a time when magic was less present and people were less intertwined with Nature than in the Golden Age. The Gods had already departed our realm and only made brief cameos in the stories.

In summary, Gods and Fighting Men is the actual collection of Irish Mythology from the earliest legends. It affects all of Ireland and the stories are fairly widespread throughout the Gaelic world. Lady Gregory wrote these translations with a view to retain the native Irish sense of story-telling; this she achieved remarkably well.

My one concern is that it would have been nice for Lady Gregory to have cited her sources for each story. I know that in many cases she blended versions from several sources to produce what she saw as the purest form of the story, but a simple listing of these would have been fantastic from an academic standpoint.

Overall this is probably the greatest collection of Irish Mythology I have found so far, albeit Lady Gregory's focus was primarily as storyteller rather than academic (this is not a bad thing -- dry, stale translations of Irish lore would have been extremely anti-Irish in themselves).

This should probably be the FIRST book one reads of Irish Mythology. I highly recommend this book and the fact that it is value-priced definitely doesn't hurt, either. This book is definitely worth several times its cost.

Happy Reading!

Lady Gregory faithfully renders old Irish stories into a form that we clods that only speak English can understand. She does not, however, make them more prosaic, or fix them into what we normally find as our story format! They are true to the original structures of the genre, and are much more lively and fun for that. My wife places them firmly in the nature of Irish legend, which she calls "We went over there and stole their cow!" (Tain Bo Cuailnge is basically a story of a cow theft, and is one of the most famous stories of Irish legend). I love the split style, and it does give the reader a good understanding of the way stories were related in the old days. A must for those who want to know where some of the ancient Irish names derive!

This book should be considered as a must read for those who want to understand statistics beyond "magical formulas and the rituel of significance tests". Authors manage to provide very concise, clear (and of course visual) depiction of some fundamental statistical methods. I think this book is an easy bridge to be crossed in order to reach the realm of advanced statistical theory.

This book is a good geometric explaination for regression, concentrated in the manipulation of normal distribution.

I read this after a course using Degroot's "Probability and statistics". It does give me deeper understanding about the text book.

I would like to see more geometric explaination about other theoretical aspect of statistics, such as fisher's information inequity and why we can use sufficient statistic to optimize estimator.

I am an educator of beginning college students. I have taught statistics for some 8 years and this book supplies the insight that allows the student to visually 'see' the connections between ANOVA, Regression, and ANCOVA. It does take some work to appreciate the approach, but is certainly worth it. As the authors state, it is an intermediate between the 'cookbook' routines and the advanced format using matrix algebra. I found I needed to review vector manipulation and some algebra of random variables before getting very far, but that is an acceptable preliminary to the consequent benefits.

This book reviews some of the core concepts of statistical science, through the angle of geometrical properties. This book will be very interesting for graduate or undergraduate students who want to broaden their understanding. Also for non specialists, this book presents the subject in a very easy to understand manner. It really helped me tremendously with statistical concepts.

Many years ago the famous statistician Ronald Aylmer Fisher criticized analyses that linked lung cancer to smoking. He argued that these studies had hidden biases because they were not controlled experiments. He proposed that smokers could be different from non-smokers because of a genetic propensity to desire cigarettes and that this genetic trait could be correlated with a higher incidence of lung cancer. Thus it would be possible to see a higher frequency of lung cancer among smokers because of this genetic trait rather than because the smoking itself causes the cancer. As far-fetched as this argument may seem to us today, it is based on sound statistical principles and points out some of the potential problems that occur with observational studies.

Although randomized control trials are the best way to determine differences in treatment effects, they are not always practical or ethical. It would be wrong to randomly choose subjects and force some of them to smoke.

Getting around issues of bias in observational studies was first addressed by Cochran who published a book on the subject in 1983. Rosenbaum came out with his own book in 1995 and this second edition expands and updates that popular text.

In Chapter 1 he present examples of observational studies and raises many important issues. Chapter 2 explains the principles of randomized controlled experiments. In Chapter 3 he covers overt bias and some of the basic methods to adjust for it. The sensitivity of observational studies to hidden biases is covered in Chapter 4.

This book is well written, authoritative and contains numerous references and examples. It also includes a chapter on how to plan an observational study.

Such studies are very important to epidemiologists who want to discover the cause of an epidemic or a disease. With large data base it is possible to remove or adjust biases by matching subjects using propensity scores. Rosenbaum effectively describes how propensity scorng and stratification can be used to make observational studies behave more like randomized control trials.

Many years ago the famous statistician Ronald Aylmer Fisher criticized analyses that linked lung cancer to smoking. He argued that these studies had hidden biases because they were not controlled experiments. He proposed that smokers could be different from non-smokers because of a genetic propensity to desire cigarettes and that this genetic trait could be correlated with a higher incidence of lung cancer. Thus it would be possible to see a higher frequency of lung cancer among smokers because of this genetic trait rather than because the smoking itself causes the cancer. As far-fetched as this argument may seem to us today, it is based on sound statistical principles and points out some of the potential problems that occur with observational studies.
Although randomized control trials are the best way to determine differences in treatment effects, they are not always practical or ethical. It would be wrong to randomly choose subjects and force some of them to smoke.

Getting around issues of bias in observational studies was first addressed by Cochran who published a book on the subject in 1983. Rosenbaum came out with his own book in 1995 and this second edition expands and updates that popular text.

In Chapter 1 he present examples of observational studies and raises many important issues. Chapter 2 explains the principles of randomized controlled experiments. In Chapter 3 he covers overt bias and some of the basic methods to adjust for it. The sensitivity of observational studies to hidden biases is covered in Chapter 4.

This book is well written, authoritative and contains numerous references and examples. It also includes a chapter on how to plan an observational study.

Such studies are very important to epidemiologists who want to discover the cause of an epidemic or a disease. With large data base it is possible to remove or adjust biases by matching subjects using propensity scores. Rosenbaum effectively describes how propensity scorng and stratification can be used to make observational studies behave more like randomized control trials.

The book is very well written. It gives a great overview of the fundamental problems of causal inference in observastional studies. It has a lot of examples, homeworks and extensive references in every chapter.