Models Books

This is real-world macroeconomics. The kind you need to work with planning and policy instead of playing games to pass exams. The aim is to answer practical questions and the approach is flexible enough to let one incorporate idiosyncrasies of real economies.

This book introduces a methodology for considering the totality of macro-economic variables that can adjust when an exchange rate devaluates, capital flight occurs, a government holds a persistent budget deficit--or the IMF enforces its elimination. The power of this approach is the ability to lay out the variables without predetermining how they will interact. That is the kind of tool that helps policy-makers think about problems as they break, before books have been written on how to correct them. Furthermore, while this approach is mathematically formal, the mathematics are designed to assist, rather than mystify. This means that social scientists (with a little concentration) can use this book as well as the more mathematically inclined.

I also am a model railroader, and it just so happens that I am modeling the Southern Pacific's route over the Oregon cascades. In my scenicing efforts, I have just about worn this book out. It's just beautiful!

I was looking for a book about SP-Oregan. I got more than I ever expected. The book has some of the finest pictures, not to mention the history of the Area-Oregan, and Northern California. I thought I new a lot about SP, but with this wonderfull book, with it's pictures, and it's history have taught me more than I ever expected. If you need a book about the of the SP, Oregan-Nothern California, this is the best book, buy it, and find the wonders that I found, about the SP.

Space Planes: Paper Airplanes That Really Fly!, with it's punch-out plane samples, isn't appropriate for library lending; but that shouldn't keep it from the hands of consumers interested in planes and flights. Fifteen exciting space plane examples, from the Space Shuttle to the Mercury, are provided along with scale, original model kits which have been die-cut for minimal assembly time. Instructions for flying them are also included. A fun combination of lesson plan on space planes and game book for building them: all you need is glue and scissors.

I happened across the first two books in this series at a bookstore and could not resist buying them. They got me hooked and I bought this one as well.

To date, I have not made any airplanes in this book yet (though I have made planes from his other books). I have looked through this book extensively as I wait (impatiently) to have some spare time! Most of the aircraft in this book are fictitious, but roughly based on real ideas from decades back. However, there are some very nice realistic models of the X-15, Space Shuttle, and now world-famous SpaceShip One. I've been VERY tempted to put aside my studies (and the other three books, which you may have seen by reading my other reviews) to build the SpaceShip One.

Along with the planes, the author has included a brief history section in the book to educate the model builder.

I should mention that this is not a typical 'paper airplane' book. You do not simply take a sheet of paper and fold it in various ways then fly it. You have to cut out numerous pieces, form them to get the proper curves, glue them (carefully, so that the paper doesn't warp when it's drying), and THEN fly them. Even though that may sound challenging, the first few airplanes are enough to learn the skills necessary for the later (and more challenging) airplanes. And...THE PLANES FLY GREAT when built with patience and care. Mine have survived some great crashes into walls and radiators since I have a habit of launching them indoors (all the planes have a hook for launching via rubber bands).

The other review here also rates the book 5 stars, but the reviewer says "Without knowing it, the author validates chiropractic theory on biomechanics... and calls into question the rationale behind spinal fusion surgery".
I personally have grave doubts about "chiro theory", and anyway, Gracovetsky is a VERY smart dude. If he were validating chiro theory, I think he would know it. You don't have to be a chiropractor, or even believe in chiropractic, to get a great deal out of this book.

I work with spine surgeons (I'm a surgical neurophysiologist), and I can tell you, some spinal fusions will always be necessary. It is not that surgeons don't know the spine needs to function. In fact, over the years they've improved surgical techniques to allow better function. If you have degenerating vertebral bodies, for example, you may have to have a fusion. That doesn't mean the spine won't function at all. Undoubtedly some surgeries could be avoided with better nonsurgical treatment, and undoubtedly there is room for improvement in surgical techniques and in the understanding we have of human spinal function-- not just surgeons, but rehab docs, PT's, bodyworkers, all of us. Gracovetsky's book is a tremendous contribution to that understanding.

What G. demonstrates is that walking is primarily a function of the spine, with the legs serving as high gear, rather than primarily a function of the legs.
There is a striking example in the book of an unfortunate gentleman, born without arms or legs, who can walk (not that fast, I imagine, and with exaggerated torso movement). There are a great many other fascinating things in the book, as well as a lot of stuff that's way over my head.

If you can get hold of a copy of this book, and you're interested in how the body functions in walking and running, you'll find it very worthwhile.

This is a must read for chiropractors. Without knowing it, the author validates chiropractic theory on biomechanics, and the goal of treatment - restoring function to the facets, the "gears" of the spinal engine, and calls into question the rationale behind spinal fusion surgery.

Although the book is heavy in mathematics and laboratory data, several chapters are concise in the description of spinal biomechanics. Once you know this material cold, you own it.

The book is a good source of information on stable distributions (univariate and multivariate) and on their applications in different finance areas, including modeling of financial returns, portfolio analysis, option pricing, and risk management. The book might be helpful not only to finance researchers and practitioners but also to others who encounter heavy-tailed and/or skewed processes, for example, econometricians and actuaries.

The adoption of stable modeling in finance and econometrics is undoubtedly one of the most interesting and promising ideas which has arisen in these fields. It is now widely accepted that classical models for the description of the dynamics of financial and economic variables suffer from major structural weaknesses, as they fail to explain important features of the empirical data. Therefore, the search for new more powerful models is a fundamental and fascinating topic of research. In this book, Rachev and Mittnik, two of the most prominent experts in so-called Stable Finance, present a wealth of convincing arguments to support the claim that stable models offer the right approach to the subject. Their monograph, which collects a large part of the authors' work in stable financial modeling, brings together innovative insights as well as new elegant explanations of financial and economic phenomena. Eduardo S. Schwartz, California Chair in Real Estate and Professor of Finance Anderson School of Management University of California, Los Angeles September 1999

This remarkable book is addressed to scientists interested in the properties of solids from the point of view of materials science. Statistical mechanics is applied to a broad set of topics of interest in this field and the book has the virtue of filling an existing gap. An earlier book on this subject was published by L. A. Girifalco thirty years ago (Statistical Physics of Materials, 1973). The present book updates the material and adds also a substantial body of novel topics that have vigorously grown and matured meanwhile.
The book grew out of a course that the author has been teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. The broad experience of L. A. Girifalco, acquired after many years of research in materials science applying the techniques of statistical mechanics (metallic and graphitic materials, defects in solids and diffusion represent some of the subjects investigated by the author) has provided him with the best background to make a wise selection of topics of importance and broad interest. In addition the contact with the students has allowed the author to optimize the pedagogical aspects. So this book is highly recommended for graduate courses, and students will find it extremely useful to get a comprehensive and updated overview of the field.
The first three chapters (approximately one fifth of the book) introduce the basic concepts of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. This part is needed to make the volume self-contained. Even more, those three chapters, where the fundamental concepts are presented clearly at an accessible mathematical level, could form the core of a short course on basic statistical mechanics for physicists, chemists or engineers. The thermal properties of crystals arising from the vibration of the atoms are treated in Chapters 4 and 5, focusing on harmonic and anharmonic effects, respectively. The equilibrium and transport properties of electrons in metals and semiconductors are considered in Chapters 6 and 7, taking as a basis the free electron model. Classic examples of cooperative phenomena, as order-disorder transitions in alloys and magnetism, are treated in Chapters 8 and 9. The theory of phase equilibria and phase transformations is presented in Chapter 10. Sublimation, melting and the formation of solid solutions in alloys are some of the subjects considered. Critical exponents characterising how of physical properties vary with temperature near a phase transition are presented in Chapter 11, with its explanation by renormalization group theory. The surface of solid bodies is the region of contact with the outer medium and controls many technological properties of the solids. The statistical mechanics of surface and interface effects is treated in Chapter 12, focusing on adsorption, adhesion and segregation. The theory of the random motion of a particle through space, treated in Chapter 13, has a variety of uses: important applications to molecular and atomic diffusion and to the statistics of long chain molecules can be highlighted. In fact, linear polymer chains are treated in Chapter 14. The last two chapters of the book then develop the statistical mechanics of point defects (vacancies and interstitials in solids, substitutional impurities in dilute alloys) and diffusion of point defects. The book also contains several useful mathematical appendixes.
In conclusion this book presents a comprehensive and original treatment of the statistical mechanics of solids that will be useful not only to graduate students and teachers, but also to any beginner or experienced scientist interested in this subject.

This is an excellent, well-tested textbook on statistical mechanics for materials scientists and engineers, both graduate students and practitioners who need a refresher on how to apply useful theoretical methods,such as mean-field models of phase transitions,to the analysis of experimental data or, perhaps, want to learn something about new developments in statistical mechanics which are not often covered in materials science and engineering courses, such as critical exponents and the renormalization group. You might wonder why there is a need for yet another textbook on statistical mechanics. Well, this is a book primarily for those interested in understanding or estimating the properties of solids, rather than dwelling on the foundations of statistical mechanics, and there is not another book quite like it. It uses simple mathematics and makes much, fruitful use of simple methods like mean-field theory and simple ways of making improvements thereto. It begins with three brilliantly explained, succinctly written chapters intoducing, or reviewing, the basic principles of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and then proceeds to cover their applications to a wide range of topics in the materials science of metals, semiconductors, and polymers. Some applications include bulk thermodynamic properties, surfaces, transport properties of electrons, phonons, and atoms,as well as phase transitions. There are eight appendices where helpful mathematical and methodological details are covered so that the expository prose in the main chapters does not get bogged down in unnecessary details. There are some useful topics covered in this book which are not easily found in other texts: for example, there are three chapters with a careful exposition of the foundations, and some applications, of the thermodynamics and kinetics of lattice defects, a topic of much importance for materials scientists and engineers; the useful and versatile Girifalco-Good method for estimating energies of interfacial adhesion is described; and the Kirkwood second-moment method for going beyond the mean-field approximation in order-disorder is derived and utilized to introduce the Landau theory of phase transitions. These are a few examples of useful topics for materials scientists not readily found elsewhere. There are also illuminating exercises at the end of each chapter. Professor Girifalco is a gifted pedagogical writer, and he has polished much of this material in his courses in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. I myself has used several chapters of this book as reference material for an advanced graduate seminar in the modeling of phase transitions in materials, and they were very successful. I highly recommend this book.

Fienberg, Hoaglin, Kruskal and Tanur have done an excellent job of putting together a collection of essays describing the life and work of Fred Mosteller. It is not a biography and it is not a collection of technical papers. Instead the authors review technical work they did with or related to Mosteller's work and convey information on their interaction with Fred. It is a pleasant way to learn about the life and varied statistical contributions of Fred Mosteller. There is technical information for the researcher and biographical information for the statistical historians but not too much of one at the expense of the other. At the end of Chapter 7, "Fred at Harvard" there are many nice pictures showing Mosteller over the course of his long and distinguished career.
Fred's long time collaborator John Tukey wrote a brief biography of Mosteller as the first chapter.
It is sad that both Tukey and Mosteller are no longer living.

Fienberg, Hoaglin, Kruskal and Tanur have done an excellent job of putting together a collection of essays describing the life and work of Fred Mosteller. It is not a biography and it is not a collection of technical papers. Instead the authors review technical work they did with or related to Mosteller's work and convey information on their interaction with Fred. It is a pleasant way to learn about the life and varied statistical contributions of Fred Mosteller. There is technical information for the researcher and biographical information for the statistical historians but not too much of one at the expense of the other. At the end of Chapter 7, "Fred at Harvard" there are many nice pictures showing Mosteller over the course of his long and distinguished career.

Fred's long time collaborator John Tukey wrote a brief biography of Mosteller as the first chapter.

This book has been an incredible resource when I realized that I needed to use statistical models for my analysis, but didn't know where to begin. My background in statistics was basic and this book proved to be written so well that I could follow along. I needed details about how to estimate the parameters for the Gamma distribution and this book had what I needed. I wanted to run a Monte Carlo simulation and this book explained the fundamentals. The book also proved incredibly useful when learning about Chi-Squared goodness of fit tests and many other statistical methods. I highly recommend this book as a resource for statistical methods.

This book has proven incredibly helpful on so many occasions that I highly recommend it. Here are some examples:

Years ago, when I had a problem to deal with to improve probe yields on some major products, I presumed that a certain technique existed. I searched through several libraries, and finally found this book - and it had exactly the technique I needed.

Months later, an associate expressed frustration with his efforts to model a complex reliability problem - I showed him this book, and his eyes lit up as he saw the technique he needed.

Years later, when I needed to develop a statistical model for on time delivery, I again referred to this book to derive relationships between the standard deviation and average yields - but it also provided the information I needed on using Poisson statistics for process and assembly yield, and gave a helpful model for obtaining the cycle time distributions for a series of processes, such as from order through manufacturing and shipping to delivery of final product.

S programmers refer to this as "the white book", and it is a key reference for understanding the methods implemented in several of S-PLUS' high-end statistical functions, including 'lm()', predict()', 'design()', 'aov()', 'glm()', 'gam()', 'loess()', 'tree()', 'burl.tree()', 'nls()' and 'ms()'.

It's apparently out of print, but it shouldn't be.

Even with the recent arrival of S-PLUS releases that incorporate S version 4 and many of the ideas discussed in "the green book" (<>, also by John Chambers), this classic S reference is an indispensable tool for the serious statistician. It needs to be reissued--with a white cover, of course.

Here are the titles of the chapters, for reference:

1. An Appetizer

2. Statistical Models

3. Data for Models

4. Linear Models

5. Analysis of Variance: Designed Experiments

6. Generalized Linear Models

7. Generalized Additive Models

8. Local Regression Models

9. Tree-Based Models

10. Nonlinear Models

A. Classes and Methods: Object-oriented Programming in S

B. S Functions and Classes

References

Index

If you really want to know what you're doing when you use S, buy this book. Don't waste your money on a book like Venables and Ripley -- you will be sorely dissappointed, unless you just want a large collections of example calls to canned S routines. The authors of the present book, on the other hand, are Chambers and Hastie of AT&T (where S was invented), and they clearly understand the importance of detailed explanations of the theory underlying the S functions they describe. Just as important, in my opinion, they also describe the algorithms used by these functions. These two components are missing from other books (like the popular Venables and Ripley) but they are critical in order to know -- and be able to explain and justify to others -- how and why your statistical analyses were performed and what the results really mean. Any other was of doing statistics (e.g. throwing canned procedures at your data and seeing what pretty graphs and figures you can produce) is meaningless.

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