Simulation Books

The book has so many nuggets of wisdom is hard to mention them all. I know I struggled with some concepts before and somehow they were explained in a remarkable way. So now I am just asking myself, was I so stupid before?

Perfect for practitioners, but not in the sense of generic cookbook like the Hull's book where the math is dangerously simplified.
The theory is explained with flawless clarity. Numerous tricks are given for free. For example, I always looked at interpolation as something trivial, however Fries explains arbitrage violations using different interpolation, i.e. negative probability density for smoothing interpolations, discrete for linear. This book is especially useful for somebody that is interested in Libor Market Model. There is also extension of it like the cross-currency version of it; I haven't seen it anywhere else (at least not in books).
From the negative side, I only wished more code posted, but that is just me being greedy. Given the amount spent on implementation issues, I would also like to see little bit more on calibration.

The subtitle of this book is Theory, Modeling and Implementation and this book has plenty of material on all these areas of Mathematical Finance. The author, who has a solid background in mathematics and is a succesful professional in the finance industry, is very generous with the tricks of the trade. To my knowledge, there is no other book who takes the reader (preferably someone with a good working knowledge in university mathematics) on a path from the mathematics of Itô calculus to models of volatility and interest rate derivatives and then to numerics and object oriented programming. For a commited reader this book will be very rewarding, since it has so much to offer. It should be excellent preparation for e.g. an internship in a quantitative team at a bank (especially for derivatives) or could serve as course literature for a university course in applied financial modeling (the examples from industry will motivate the students, believe me). All in all, this is an excellently versatile book with such a richness concerning the material.

I agree with the other reviewer: the book reads like incomplete lecture notes. Some definitions, some derivations, some examples, some occasionally nice interpretations and that's all. Lecture notes without the Prof's presentation. The mathematical notation of the book is quite clean, but the guy stumbles badly every time he tries to explain something.

I gave it 2 stars because I felt bad about the author who went through all the trouble typing this staff. I probably would not have been that sympathetic had I actually bought the book instead of borrowing it from the library.

There are a couple of good mathematical finance books and this is for sure one of them. The important thing is that this book doesn't just repeat what you can find in other books, but very often gives you a different view on problems. A lot intuition and explanation of concepts is provided in a clever, unique and new way (even if you've read and thought already a lot about it). That implementation issues are discussed in this book makes it clear that this book is perfect for practitioners and I could make a lot use of it even though I'm not new to the field (I work as a quant for 10y now).

The book starts with discussing basic mathematical finance such as Ito's lemma and Black-Scholes theory. This is a rather compact summary without proofs and I therefore believe a novice reader first should read an introductory book such as the one by Baxter & Rennie. The main part of the books is then devoted to various issues that one encounters in the implementation of financial models. I found this part very useful and I guess most quants have encountered the interesting problems that the author discusses such as: calculation of greeks in Monte-Carlo implementations, backward pricing of path-dependent products, implementation of Markov models, etc.

Generally I would agree with the reviewer who titled his review "Mindstorms meets NN; same strengths and weaknesses".

This is a decent book that provides some interesting insights into the subject matter. There are some very nice intuitive ideas that gives meaning to some of the math. Unfortunately, other parts of the text lack this intuition and seem like a presentation of network structure and algorithms more than a presentation of the ideas behind them.

I started my research in this area with a software engineering and management background with some intermediate signal processing experience on top. I also read Duda and Hart's Pattern Recognition book along with months of literature review on the subject before tackling this one. I must say that I am still confused on many points.

This is not an introductory text and will most certainly require the reader to seek out other references to fill in its gaps.

Muy buen libro y lo mejor es que trae buenos ejemplos los cuales ayudan bastante en el entendimiento de las redes neuronales. Por supuesto es una lectura complementaria a textos más avanzados si es que se quiere ahondar en el tema.

Topics explored in this book include signal processing, feature extraction, linear and non-linear modelling, temporal models and an array of connectionist learning paradigms. These topics are demanding, particularly mathematically, however I have taken a lot from this book where I have had limited success with others. The authors know a great deal about their subject, which has enabled them to take a holistic approach, which explains fundamentals before building them into powerful solutions. Equations, while frequently cited are explained descriptively and often boxed separately from the main text. Learning is greatly enhanced by the 200 interactive tutorials. The NeuroSolutions software (limited version free) is the best I've seen in terms of the number of architectures and data processing algorithms provided and comes with an excel add in! I searched Amazon long and hard for this book and was not disappointed - it sets a new standard for technical education.

The book covers the topics fairly well. Unfortunately, you won't ever use this book outside of a classroom. It seems like every page either has an illustration, or a box saying "run simulation 5.17 fom the CD, and here are 3 graphs from that simulation", or "Use the Excel plugin on the data from the CD". I suppose that is useful to those who can't follow the math. I believe it is also what causes the excessive cost of the book.

DON'T buy the book if you are looking for ways to include neural networks or machine learning into your existing applications. The book gives you formulas, and a workbench program that (once you figure it out) lets you customize it's own built-in formulas with its own data sets. It is not significantly useful when wanting to write your own adaptive system, nor does it have any significant code samples to learn from. You get the formulas and illustrations, figuring out how to apply them is up to you.

I am quite conflicted in my thoughts on this book. The pluses are that it is comprehensive, thorough and comes with a useful pedagogical simulator. The minuses are that it is covers a vast range of subjects with a skimpy coat of mathematical and theoretical glue. When I found myself looking for more maths and theory, the text usually directed me towards the simulation. The simulations are good but the coding is invisible to the user due the range of NN widgets included (analogous to programming using the Lego Mindstorms visual programing tool). This is a downside for those hoping to learning coding techniques - there are not explored here - but will suit users that want a workbench to visualise concepts in the text. I confess that I became bored with the simulator about midway through the book.

The authors set themselves a formidable task in producing this book, and depending on the reader's needs thaey have either excelled themselves, or else have concocted a animaed dodo - interesting but near extinction.

This novel tried to imitate the famous "Sophie's World" in computation. As long the pedagogy is concerned this novel passed the test favorably, but as the fiction is concerned it failed miserably. The story doesn't flow at all. Too much vagueness everywhere. Its a story about too smart people, no place for average people - a weird juxtaposition. The idea of adding in appendix a blog that clarifies some of the ideas mentioned in the text is superb indeed. But overall it is a failed attempt to write a novel by a very accomplished textbook author.

This is a rather bland novel interspersed with a very rudimentary introduction to computer science, starting with the basic operation of semiconductors and working up to operating systems, applications, and AI, all at a very superficial and occasionally inaccurate level.

I loved this book, I first heard about it when Papadimitriou gave a guest-lecture at my school on the application of game theory to the study of the evolution of the internet. Much of the story involves tutoring sessions between Turing and Alaxendros while in the background a story evolves. There are some interesting aspects to this book that set it apart from most fiction I've read, for example, there are citations scattered about which point to transcripts from a fictional newsgroup discussion. I found this approach to be much more pleasing than footnotes explaining back story. (...)

A must read for computer science. I love the way how Chritos explain the theories of math and cs. The book is extremely fun to read. Great book.

An interesting novel in the vein of Sophi's World. As that story introduced the reader in a gentle fashion to the history of western philosophy, this book introduces the reader to the history of computation. It is wrapped in a love story (or perhaps a love triangle story would be better). As other reviewers have mentioned, the range of topics cover is expansive and somewhat eclectic. But it works nonetheless. The newsgroup postings at the end are apparently fictional as well, or at least fictionalized.

This is a good reference for cable-supported bridges. It should be in the library of anyone designing or evaluating cable-supported bridges.

There are a few points I wish the author had addressed, such as a discussion of safety factors in main cables, durability of main cables as related to corrosion and wire breakage (there is a brief discussion of corrosion), and the role of cable bands in mitigating the effect of wire breakage.

I found this book cery useful, it is well organized and if you read it very carefully it is easy to understand. The equations presented to obtain preliminary dimensions are very useful and wuite accurate. Also provides the concepts to design the cables and verify the design of them. It also has a few basic examples and graphics that help in the understandig of the theory.

This book basically it is based in the design of the cables, how and why they work in the bridges. If you are looking to understand the concept of cable supported bridges and get the basic equations and recomendations for its design this is the book. However if you want a recipie for designing this kind of bridges and don't knowing why or how it works, good luck.

If you work with cable-stay bridges or suspension bridges, this is the reference!. All the issues you'll find in your work are in the book . Prof. Gimsing is very clear and concise. Worth every buck you paid!

This is an awesome book on cable supported bridges. Even the most recently built bridges can be found in this book.

This is an excellent book for bridge designers and engineers who want to know how and why cable supported structures work.

The book is less suitable for those engineers (typically North American) who merely expect recipes ("tell me how to do it, not why or how it works").

While the model formats discussed are the more popular ones, there are quite a few details that were omitted in the book about them. On the other side of the coin, there aren't many books specifically for model formats. All the information that is missing, is easy enough to find with a little research.

Explains some of the more common 3d models and includes an appendix with links about other formats not covered. This book only briefly explains some technologies, like skeletal modeling, and otherwise just tells you what you need to get them rendered.

Just enough to get you started.

An excellent starting point for somebody that knows nothing at all about 3D models, but can only be considered a stepping stone to other books that gloss over the basics.

He starts with a good intro to matrices and quaternions, followed by a good intro to modeling concepts, and then describes a few formats in detail. Unfortunately, he doesn't go into any more advanced discussion on how to put things together... i.e. how to *use* the models. A few pages are wasted explaining how to use some basic "C", but I've seen worse...

Overall, I give it four stars because, if you know nothing of the topic, it is an excellent jump start. If you do have knowledge of the topic, then you aren't the target audience.

This book is more of an overview on how to load 3D models from files more than anything else.

By overview, I do mean quite sketchy.

The file formats talked about are:
.obj (ASCII, poor coverage)
.3ds (3DS Max)
.md2 (Quake II)
.ms3d (Milkshape 3D)
.mdl (Half-Life)
.md3 (Quake III)

(Note that the .obj format was not discussed correctly. The code that comes on CD is actually a very poorly done .obj loader with minimal functionality. The library known as GLM is an .obj loader that is well written and outperforms the authors code by a large margin.)

The .md3 and .mdl coverage is somewhat skant of details.

Overall, this book is not a definitive model format book - you can get the same information on the web for free, with much better written loaders and the likes.

If you can pick this book up for under 5$ go for it, otherwise forget it.

This book covers the loading and handling of 3D models from the programmer's point of view (not the artist's, which may not be immediately obvious from the title). Like other Focus On books, it's short (checking in at just under 200 pages), but doesn't spend a lot of time on introductory material or subjects not related to the main topic.

The model formats covered by this book are Quake 2 (.md2), .obj, MilkShape, 3D Studio Max (.3ds), Half-life (.mdl), and Quake 3 (.md3). All of these formats are covered quite well, with sample code showing how to load, display and (when applicable) animate them. The exception is the Half-life format, for which he just uses the SDK, so there's no real information on the format itself. In addition to the specific formats, there are chapters on skeletal animation and useful tips on working with models.

My only real complaint is that about 1/4 of the book's pages are spent on covering vectors, matrices, quaternions, and STL vectors. Although knowledge of these topics is important for understanding the rest of the book, I'd suspect most readers will already be familiar with them. I would have preferred to have these chapters included on the CD instead, freeing up space for more useful information (detailed coverage of the Half-life format, perhaps?).

Overall, though, I was happy with the book. It's compact, inexpensive, an easy read, and it's nice to have the most common formats covered in one convenient volume. If you're looking for an introduction to using 3D models, or just want a physical reference for these formats to keep on your desk, I'd recommend it.

Very good book I would recommend to Labview programmers who have taken or are about to take the LV Intermediate courses. The early chapters give a concise, but thorough definition of all the key Labview programming structures. Chapter 3 on state machines gave ideas on how to greatly expand the capabilities of a state machine by using an event matrix. Later chapters get into some of the mechanics of activeX and .net. It also discusses using object oriented techniques in Labview. Only problems I had were some block diagram pictures were missing some of their lines, and the examples on the attached CD were based on a much older version of Labview. However, these issues were minor and I would highly recommend the book.

An excellent book for LabVIEW program designers and programmers! Especially for LabVIEW users with several years experience and try to learn more new software techniques. The authors introduced many concepts and techniques in C/C++ such as ActiveX, COM, DCOM etc. The OOA, OOD and design pattern are also combined with LabVIEW programming. There are many useful examples in the book. I recommend this book to all LabVIEW users.

I've been programming for about two years. Most of my training in Labview is by trial-and-error and reading the examples that came with Labview. I've written over 3 dozen programs for my present employer.

As for books, I have many of them. This book in particular, is aimed to the advanced user. Don't expect to learn how to write programs with this book. For a graphical programming language, this book has very little graphics or pictures.

What you can expect is to hone your applications so that they are easier for the end user, easier to maintain and separates `working' VIs from `expert' VI. Many little tricks in this book (such as setting preferences, using state machines, and yes, Active X) will make your applications run faster with less overhead.

If you're looking for a book to show you more programming techniques, with actual examples, I'd opt for Essick's "Advanced LabVIEW Labs" (an intermediate book) or Johnson's "LabVIEW Graphical Programming" (more advanced). If you're looking for ways to separate yourself from programmers that make `working' VIs, then this book by Bitter et al. is for you.

First off, about first 60 pages are wasted with a very introductory description of the various Labview palettes. So you'd think it's a newbie friendly book... Forget it ..Later on, it presents interesting tricks but you got to be really advanced yourself to "get it". Not quite the "step by step" other referals praise so much. But I admit, the tricks are neat, and if you're beyond the basics and good enough to think about architecting large projects, I would highly recommend the book.

This is an excellent intro into some of the advanced features of LV. It covers basic features, state machines (one of the best chapters), application structure, drivers, exception handling, multithreading, OOP, and unfortunately Active X (chpaters to skip). The info is excellent, and I think it is well worth the cost and time to read. It also comes with a great CD.

The only bad part is more than 20% of the book is devited to Active X. This is a huge kick in the pants to platform independence. While I am working on NT (by force, not by choice) I try to avoid any technonogy that supports ... you know, the M word.

This is a very readable text that essentially parallels and expands upon the LabView Users Manuals. If you have read through all or most of those manuals you may find yourself rapidly skimming through Bishop's book as nothing more than a refresher. Newbies will appreciate the simplistic step-by-step approach but anyone beyond the basics will likely be disappointed. BTW, you can download the related files from the LabView site to get an idea of the content.

After reading all pages of this book and practicing all programs and exercises inside it within a few weeks, I become a proficient in Labview and I can develop any project easily. The only thing missing of this book is its CD which has all of its examples, but one can download it from its official website without any problem. Overall this book is great for any one who is new in labview and also for any one who doesnot have any programming skills and going to use it within his/her job.

Gives you the basics to get started if you are a new timer.

Good book except that you really need to purchase or have the Labview student version. The book does not ship with a CD containing the demo files it refers to so often in the text. Makes it difficult to follow without the files.

This is a really great book! However, there is also a package of CD and book which I do not see offered here. The CD includes LabVIEW Student Edition. The referenced .vi's (virtual instruments) are available for download but, not the complete CD. I have been unable to locate the CD individually, only in bundled packages.

The interface of the Version 5 is really so similar to the Ver 4.1. So user of version 4.0 or above should find no trouble using the latest version 5.

This is definitely a very good tool to learn about circuitry and such. I have to admit i only bought it because i was forced to for a class. And i did find it very pricey, seeing as we only used it for like 4 weeks! Nevertheless, it is still a good product. Definitely recommend it.

Fairly useful program for building logic circuits and getting a visual of timing aspects, but program seems too buggy to totally recommend. I only bought it because it was required for a class.

If you have access to a Windows machine (Windows 2000/XP/NT 4.0) this is excellent software to learn digital concepts and simulate digital circuits. It's also a pretty decent schematic editor for simple circuits although I'd recommend DesignWorks Lite/Pro from Capilano Computing (capilano.com) as a better editor. LogicWorks software was originally developed on and for the Macintosh OS but version 5.0 doesn't support the Macintosh. For that there is LogicWorks 4.5 available directly from Capilano Computing ([...]) which supports MacOS 9 and X but doesn't include VHDL support.

I have used LogicWorks4 in a computer design class with fair results - (very good for small jobs - starts to get shaky with a thousand gates or so).

So far in my testing, LogicWorks5 has improved on most of the features I've tried. I think it also offers an excellent way to get started in VHDL (jury still out until I try it in a class). A bit flaky still with SP1 in a few areas.

Anyway - highly recommended.

This book was easy to understand and contained clear practice problems. During my first semester of nursing school('07), the book helped to understand the different conversions, and I able to pass the drug calculation test. It also offers a laminated conversion sheet that was helpful during class and study sessions. It has three different units. The first unit contains basic math review, which can help any student to review important math problems that is basis for understanding drug calculations. The second unit goes into the different measurement systems, which is important for understanding drug administration. The third unit is the most important part of the book, which goes into drug calculations for oral, parenteral, IV, critical-care, solutions, and pediatic care. It is thorough book, and gives detailed instructions on how to solve a specific problem. It offers end of chapter reviews, and answer section to evaluate your work.

Every page of this book was in perfect condition.

Very, very pleased with the book! It was practically new!

As a new nursing student I have found this book very useful. There is a very comprehensive introduction which allows the student to relearn some of the math skills that may have been lost over the year. I also really like the fact that the book comes with a removable laminated card with conversions on it. I'm sure that this will come in quite handy when I begin my clinicals.
My only real complaint is that I have found a couple of mistakes in the fifth edition. I found at least two mistake in the answers provided for the chapter review on apothecaries' measurements. I would recommend that the publisher check their material a little better so as to prevent confusion for students.

A great little book which is user friendly and concise.I would recommend it for any nurse wanting to learn more about drug calculations ! It gets the thumbs up rating !!

1.32 - 16.84 (1.32 minus 16.84) is a negative number (-15.52)! Not +15.52! (See page 47). When you subtract a larger number from a smaller number, the result is ALWAYS negative number. This book makes this same mistake over and over! See pages 29,30,31,32, 34, and I'll bet there is more! Nurses watch out! Do not use bad math! How did the publisher release this book with out reviewing the math?

as an architect, i find this book fascinating. but it is not in any way limited to the practice of architecture. its relevance extends to all fields of design, and probably into fields of which i am not familiar. its a 'must have' in my opinion.

The book updates the latest trend and concept of architectural actions. I find it very useful tool to have.

This book provides a general idea about scripting and algorithmic design to those interested in this new medium of design in architecture. I personally have known the authors and they're experts in this field.

Aranda/Lasch provide a glimpse of what algorithmic techniques in architecture are capable of producing. Spiraling, packing, weaving, blending, cracking, flocking, and tiling are briefly defined, and their conceptual application in architecture is explored.

Although interesting, the discussion is left at a highly conceptual level, and the book could benefit from more detailed exploration and explanation. A website promising programming code to accompany the techniques has yet to be developed (and 2 years from date of publication probably never will) and does not appear to require the purchase of the book in order to access if it ever does go online.

A better discussion of algorithmic architecture can be found in Kostas Terzidis' Algorithmic Architecture, which not only shows better developed architectural projects but provides an analysis of code scripting.

This book looks at scripting from a conceptual point of view. I enjoyed its form and content. The examples of work were inspiring.

Why do I give this 3 out of 5 stars? I feel slightly miss led. On page 94 the authors write "Scripts from tooling experiments are available at www.arandalasch.com/tooling". Yet the site doesn't exist! The authors have yet to create this accompanying site that could give more tangible insight into the nitty-gritty of scripting. I assume it won't happen as its been more than a year now since the book was published. Too bad, because there are really few books that get into the details of scripting without becoming "programming books". Aranda and Lasch could have been pioneers in this area as they seem to enjoy the hands-on aspects of making stuff. Instead, they have dropped the ball.

The book is full of pseudocode which is fine if you already know how to program. But for DIY beginners like myself, its just not enough...