Practitioners Books

Mastering Financial Modelling in Microsoft Excel: A practitioner's guide to applied corporate finance (2nd Edition) (Financial Times Series)

The book was in very good conditions!

I've been making Excel models on and off for almost 20 years. I've wished for someone to write this book badly. And now someone has!

It would be difficult to overstate the violence this book does to the English language. But I'll say this: I now have a handy rejoinder to anyone who ever claims that the Americans are killing the language. The author, Alastair Day, is from the U.K.

The net result: This book is impossible to read. It's ironic, since the entire book is geared toward helping us make our Excel presentations more, well, presentable; the author seems to have a decent understanding of how to lay out data in an attractive, informative way. Yet the book itself is rambling, vague, imprecise, confusing, and ultimately pointless.

With mangled sentences on every page, no single example can suffice, but here's one anyway:

"Another feature is the sign for the cash flows. You make fewer errors if you consider money out to be negative and money in to be positive. It means that you never have to add cash flows rather than inserting more complex positive and negative statements. In this example, the depreciation is negative in the workings; however, the expenditure saves tax so this is positive."

You might think that this makes more sense in context. I assure you: There is no context.

The book needs an editor.

I would not recommend this book because it was very difficult to follow the examples demonstrated in the book. The author jumps around frequently and does not lay out the examples in step by step format.

I have been using Excel VBA for 10+ years and still could not figure out how most of these examples were put together.

I concur with the previous reviewer that the publishers should have been more careful to verify that the Q&A's were accurate and matched with one another. The content of the book is overall very thorough...FAR more so than needed for taking the exam (the AANP version which I passed today!). If you have this book, DO NOT go through it cover to cover as your main source of review, but, use it as an adjunct for areas of weakness. The CDRom was disappointing as each subject area had less than 15 questions. I strongly recommend taking a review course to focus more on general principles. Good luck to all!

This was the most frustrating review book I've ever used. The information appears to be concise, organized and complete, but the review questions and answers leave a lot to be desired. In one section, 10 questions were left unanswered. In several others, answers were there, but didn't match the questions (in numerical order). Many times the answer was written correctly but aligned with the wrong letter. The CD ROM was good, but several answers did not jive with information given in the book. All in all, this could have been a great review book if ANYone had bothered to proof read it before going to print. Very dissapointed, and I'd like a refund.

The English translation of the book is awkward. The problems begin on page 1 (where the title "Organization of the Book" is misspelled "Organisation of the Book") and continue from there. The emphasis given to topics is bizarre and inconsistent. For example, the author spends considerable time on the basics of linearity then assumes significant background on noise and transfer functions. The illustrations and diagrams are poorly annotated, often not even having x and y axis labels. Not infrequently they are presented without introduction and without obvious relevance to the text body. This book claims to cover many important topics then systematically disappoints on all of them.

A very well presented, organized, and crafted subject into 6 chapters. Prof. K.V.Rangarao, with his Research expertise for more than 25 years in the fields of Digital signal processing and Estimation Theories, has presented the subject in each of the chapters with simple, crisp and well explained manner. Certainly this book will form one of the reference books with every Digital Signal processing student love to have.

Rangaswamy iyyengar.

So far, I have looked up about 6 drugs and a handful of diseases - none of them appeared in the book. I am very disappointed, and have put the book aside for reference at home. Again, when I pick it up at home it often doesn't have the drug I'm looking for. I would not bring it to work because I cannot afford to not be able to find the information I need at work. At work I use Tarascon, where drugs are divided neatly into classes, and Nursing 2000 drug handbook for Pt. teaching needs.

Great book that allows the ARNP to prescribe medications with confidence. More advanced than nursing drug books and very helpful for anyone in family practice. Includes information that I find helpful in dealing with a pediatric population. Also addresses new drugs not frequently covered in ordinary drug books currently available. I plan to upgrade with any new additions.

It is a good work that covers every aspect in software engineering. Even I have been 12 years in software engineering line, but this is still a good book for you to know what you did wrong in the past!

The book does little explaining and does a lot of quoting of other sources (this person says this way, that person thinks it should be done that way....) Every attempt at an explanation is really just another list. The book is list upon list, and doesn't connect the dots in any meaningful way! Hardly a way to get to know the subject. The overwhelming use of abbreviations (BAA, BPE, SCI, CAA, SCM, etc., etc.) makes understanding even worse because you have to try to remember what the initials stand for, sometimes chapters later. Probably Ok if you have already done software engineering for years.

If you can get past the terrible editing in chapter 1 it might be an OK reprint of articles on software engineering.

Chapter 1 was very frustrating because of the blatant bad editing. If they were errors in content then they might be due to my misunderstanding, but these are blatant errors and are definitely the fault of bad proofreading/editing. Example: When someone enumerates 4 points as (1),(2),(2) and (4) it is not my imagination.

Chapter 1 is intended for a software engineering manager. Chapter 2 is the obvious part of engineering ethics, concluding with a reprint of the IEEE code of ethics. Chapter 3 defines the system engineering level, at length. Chapter 4 is the importance of requirements engineering. Chapter 5 is Software design, 6 is overviews of development strategies, 7 is coding and unit testing, Chapter 8 is testing and integration, 9 is on maintenance.

Most of the articles are reprints of previously published articles (I even recognize the badly reprinted werewolf pictures from "No Silver Bullet" in Chapter 2 that were previously printed in an IEEE magazine I used to have).

Production values are unacceptable! The digital, on demand printing method used results in inferior print quality. Some pages look like they were running a little low on ink, some seem to have a little too much ink, some graphics with thin lines have breaks in them due to rasterization. Some gray scale to hatching results in a cheap appearance. Did I make it clear enough that Chapter 1 has blatant editing errors that make me distrust the content?

Given the above problems it is also overpriced in my opinion.

This refers to 2nd edition.

OK, this was published by the IEEE. We're Engineers, I don't expect us to be best-selling writers; I do expect us to be able to hire a proofreader and a printer.

I agree with other reviewers on editing problems. However these books (vol I and II) offer a strong support to Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) and are a required reading for those pursuing IEEE Certificate Software Development Professional (CSDP). I used it along with other materials in my preparation for CSDP exam and PASSED.

Bottom line: A good compilation of software engineering readings supporting SWEBOK worthy of some room in software development professional bookshelf.

There are so many errors throughout this book that I fear for the less informed reader. I disagreed with most of her answers but the good thing was that it forced me to look up the information to verify that indeed I was correct and this author was WRONG! I cannot believe that this book was published and am tempted to write to the publisher. I hope the author reads all of these comments because she needs to go through her own "book" and look up each topic and LEARN the correct responses. Unbelievable and I too wish there were negative stars because I did not want to even give her one star.

I wish you allowed for negative stars, because this book really deserves one. I purchased four review books and saved this one until last. Thank goodness the other three were really good, because this one is so bad!! I might overlook the numbering sequence errors and the mixed up order of the rationales, but the errors in the questions are unconscionable. Take question number 6-83 and I quote:

Your clinet Casey, a 69-year-old chronic smoker, has called you to find out the results of his recent chest x-ray, which you ordered because of his increasingly troublesome chronic cough. You have seen a large shadow on the chest x ray and you suspect it is a carcinoma. You should say the following to Casey:

A. "I need you to come in to the office to discuss your chest x-ray results."
B. "I have seen an area on your chest x ray that concerns me."
C. "Please let me speak to your wife."
D. "I saw something on your chest x-ray that we need to follow up on, but I am sure it will be all right."

According to the authors of the book the correct answer is "C" which indicates that they have never even heard of HIPPA!!!!!

Or how about question 2-26? And I quote:

When performing a history and physical examination on Jason, age 16, he tells you that although he does not smoke, he uses snuff (smokeless tobacco). He says that he wants the nicotine "high" but does not want it to become a habit like cigarette smoking. What should you tell him about smokeless tobacco?

A. It may lead to mouth or throat cancer.
B. It can cause gum recession, which may lead to the loss of teeth.
C. If continued, it becomes a habit that is difficult to break, just like cigarette smoking.
D. It is less dangerous than cigarette smoking.

According to the author the correct answer is "D" so we can only assume that getting mouth or throat cancer is better than getting lung cancer.

I am glad that I purchased this as a used book, because it is a total waste of time and money. I plan to throw it away. I wouldn't wish this book on another person. I am one of the top students in my NP program, and I know a bad book when I see it.

I just passed my ANCC today and here are some books I wish I had in school. The following helped me to pass the ANCC because they are most like the test. First, Margaret Fitzgerald's book Nurse Practitioner Certification Examination and Practice Preparation is a great must have book for school and test prep. If you can, take her live seminar or get the CDs. Next Leik's book Family Nurse Practitioner Certification Intensive Review:Fast Facts and Practice Questions, great book, good to synthesize all of the Fitzgerald info. The Hollier/Wirfs book: Certification Prep Exams Practice Test s and Questions with Rationales 4th ed is a great prep for questions, don't bother buying the review book by Hollier, it is too basic. Next, make SURE you buy the Family Nurse Practitioner Certification Review by Zerwekh and Claborn. This is the only review book I could find that has a CD rom . The CD is almost like the actual test and some of the questions are very similar. Don't buy the Winland/Brown book, not like the test. If you start off by buying these four books you will be in good shape. Good luck on the exam!

This review book had too many wrong items. The questions are way too detailed and caused undue stress with its practice tests. The CD accompanyings this book only has 400+ questions on it and it does not supply rationale for the questions on the CD. There are several errors in the questions and a few questions in the book have different answers than the CD. Do yourself a favor do not buy this book.

This book contains a lot of review questions. Unfortunately, a great number of them are far more detailed than necessary for entry level practitioners, and frequently provide answers that are just plain wrong. Several of my classmates and I, who went through our FNP program with excellent averages, were terrified we would flunk the certification exam after doing dismally on the practice tests in this book. After putting this book aside and studying from the Fitzgerald review course material and her review book, we each passed the AANP exam with flying colors. I would not recommed this book to anyone.

This is an unusual book. Rather than filling the text with solid pages of formulas, which is what one usually finds in books on this subject, the author has instead chosen to editorialize on the successes and failures of the mathematical methods used in the solution of some of the classical problems which celestial mechanics attempts to solve (astrometry, determination of orbits, perturbation theory). The discursive writing style is refreshing to someone already familiar with the subject matter, but it seriously detracts from the use of the book as a reference.

It also contains misleading arguments and some serious omissions. The criticism of the preliminary orbit determination method of C. F. Gauss is mostly unfounded, as many astronomers engaged in this work will attest. The author's proof of the radius of convergence in time of the f and g series for elliptical orbits is much longer and complex than the classical proof by F. R. Moulton. The massive volume of literature on the Hamiltonian approach to perturbation theory is essentially ignored. And there is hardly any reference to numerical methods, particularly integration methods, indispenable tools to anyone working in orbital mechanics.

In my opinion, the book belies its title and cannot realistically be called a "guide" at all. Spend your money instead on an old copy of the classic book by Brouwer and Clemence on solar system celestial mechanics, or on Herrick's "Astrodynamics" for space flight applications. If you can find them, that is.

The application of numerical methods to problems in celestial mechanics does not really seem to be the main focus of this text, as might be taken from the title. Instead, the reader is guided through many related topics that could be aimed at different audiences: some would be of more interest to observational astronomers, while others are perhaps relevant to astronautical applications involving Earth-orbiting satellites. One entire chapter is dedicated to "Odds and Ends," for example.

There are many anecdotal but ultimately useless admonishments, such as "I also remind the reader that any child can keep the CPU of the largest machines continuously going - it takes a bit more thought to have it compute something interesting or useful." (p. 394). Unlike the author's better book, Computational Spherical Astronomy, the presentation here is somewhat overbearing (the "Taff-Hall technique" [p. 282], "Taff's proof" [p. 266], etc.). While entertaining at times, the editorializing is overdone and results in a substantial loss of technical readability, if not credibility. This is regrettable, since some of the work in this book is seemingly original in presentation or idea. The author himself implies that some of his strong viewpoints are alienating (i.e. "It may be so much of a minority opinion that it is unique." (p. 288)). The subtitle "A Computational Guide for the Practitioner" seems ironic then, as one often finds unique philosophies at the very opposite of "practical".

To his credit, Dr. Taff intriguingly suggests that history's high regard for Gauss' re-discovery of Ceres using least-squares is based on historical myth (although I wasn't sure how this helped the practitioner in his own computations), and that Gauss himself was prone to exaggeration (p. 220) when claiming that it was possible to determine an initial plantetary orbit from a few days observations. But, the author counters that Gauss' classical method of initial orbit determination is generally unacceptable based on the partial justification "I have computed more initial orbits on high-eccentricity objects using angles-only data than has anyone else" (p. 274)! Since this books publication (and because of it), Gauss' method has seen sound defense in the open literature (i.e. Marsden (1991), Astron. J. 102 (4) p.1539).

In summary, this text is probably valuable as an example of how *not* to present technically-oriented material. However, the publisher's asking price for this paperback is nothing short of shocking: the curious reader would be best served by making his purchase from the plentiful supply of used copies or reviewing it at his local library.

As an IT professional who needed to master many facets of foreign exchange rather quickly, I found this book to be helpful in gaining an ear for the terminology and basic concepts, as well as basic jargon of traders. This book might be best used as a companion to a course on the same subject, as it might give you an alternate explanation of the same subjects.

The book will certainly not help you to Master the FX & Currency Options : It is just a collection of articles by various people - it offers not many insights and does not help you to understand the nitty gritties : in fact I felt that a novice like me could also collect information from a number of sources and cook it up into a book of my own. In short a waste of money and time... sorry to have to say this !

As an acupuncturist, I was incredibly interested in acquiring this book, because I want to "percieve the energy pathways of the body". Unfortunately, after reading more than half of the book, I did not glean one bit of useful information.