Chang Books

I meet the second author, Mark Chang, at a conference on adaptive designs. I work as a professional statistician in the pharmaceutical industry. For the past several years, at least ten, these ideas have been the topic of research and it is being investigated as a possible way to speed up drug development and its development is being encouraged by the FDA. There has not been a formal statistical text covering the existing theory and its application to clinical trials. Consequently, when we knew this was coming out we preordered it and have been studying it since it came out last November.

The book has lived up to expectations. Adaptive designs are very similar to group sequential designs in that they have planned times to make preliminary assessment of the trial data and then decide whether or not to continue the trial or modify the design. Adaptive designs can be more flexible than their group sequential counterparts. They even can allow changes to the protocol as long as the criteria for making such changes are mapped out in advance of the trial.

These methods have been controversial in the past and simulation studies are often required to determine their properties. But there has been enough development now that some designs are being applied in real trials. In fact we are considering a two stage adaptive design similar to the ones described in this text (except applied to bioequivalence).

Later this year Mark Chang is coming out with an applied text that include SAS macros to aid in the implementation of the methods. A preview of the manuscript was displayed at an adaptive trials conference that I attended recently. I can enthusiastically recommend that one even more than this one! However, any biostatistician working on clinical trials should have this book on his or her bookshelf.

This book's best features are its bibliography (about 240 entries) and its broad survey and taxonomy of adaptive methods. Its publication represents an important step in popularizing adaptive trials and, thus, streamlining drug/device/biologic development pipelines.

The book is, however, filled with inaccuracies on several levels: incorrect grammar and equation references, undefined symbols, a reference to a non-existent appendix, unclear language (e.g., what is the "statistical strength for rejecting Ho" on Page 150?), mathematical typos [e.g., P(x|y,theta) rather than P(y|theta) in the integrand for the posterior predictive probability distribution P(y|x)], and misapplications of statistical philosophy (e.g., using Neyman-Pearson hypothesis testing for statistical inference, identifying the p-value as a post-hoc type I error rate). In the sample I took of about 1/3 of the pages, about 120 errors occur. The book should be considered only a pre-publication "beta" version. Any second edition should receive much more attention to detail.

A statistician or clinical scientist planning a potentially adaptive trial could use this book to learn about some of the aspects of a trial that can be made adaptive. The book could also help him/her to assess the assumptions and mathematical complexity of methods under consideration. However, when it comes to actually performing an analysis, one would want to use the bibliography to obtain the relevant articles and books, perhaps together with Chang's "Adaptive Design Theory and Implementation Using SAS and R" (Chapman & Hall/CRC Biostatistics).

Overall, this book disappointed me. The authors should have had several more collaborators and copyeditors check their work.

I shouldn't really compare between anthologies, but when lined up against Flight, the narratives in Afterworks 2 come up substatially wanting. Some of the artwork, while gorgeous for art's sake, doesn't come quite up to scratch in my eyes.

Above all else the artwork in Afterworks is to die for and completely original. Every style is different, while also maintaining a clean and professional work. The stories within are a mixed bunch, but most are great and worthwhile reads.

The only downfall of this is that a given story only lasts 5 to 15 pages, leaving you hanging and wanting more. Specifically the first story especially, which builds up a renegade hero who does a deal with a mafia type organization. If this were a scene in a movie it would have been 5 minutes...and as we all know just watching the first 5 pulse pounding minutes of a movie is a real tease.

Besides this though the book is well worth the money, and could complament a great coffee table.

Wendy Hitchmough's "The Arts & Crafts Lifestyle and Design" is a frustrating, yet beautiful-looking book that covers the Arts & Crafts movement by focusing on how it was influenced by changes in popular culture, the advent of scientific "modernity", and anti-Victorian backlash.

The book's layout focuses on each room in the home and why it evolved in the Arts & Crafts style. Taking references from the era's periodicals that covered the style, "The Craftsman" and "The House", Hitchmough provides historical background that seeks to makes sense of the style. Simplicity of design evolved from anti-Victorianism. Cues from nature came from the burgeoning naturalist and conservation movements, along with interest in all things Asian. Older building practices were combined with new advances.

The lifestyle portions of the book point out how radically different from Victorian ideals was the new movement. The roles of the master and mistress of the home showed them as more at tune with the outside world, more aware of personal health and fitness, and far more sexually aware (more about this further on.) How the Arts & Crafts home functioned from day to day is discussed in detail, as well.

The book covers the style as best portrayed in Britain and the United States. Designers from both sides of the pond are detailed. The lush photography of Martin Charles wraps up the pretty package.

But there are distinct problems with the book. It doesn't have a real niche. It's too wordy and historical to be a good coffee table book. The layout of chapters by room, while possibly good for highlighting the lifestyle choices, makes this a hard book to use as a reference manual for the style. There are glaring limitations, too. Far too much focus is given to a few designers and homes that drove the movement - it is not as broad an overview of all designers and practices as one would like. And while the lifestyle portions are interesting, there seems to be an overt focus on sexuality that I found peculiar for a book of this type.

In short, I believe the book tries to accomplish too much and therefore fails to excel in any one aspect. By trying to shoehorn several books into one, the author has given us the average of other works. And that is less than fully satisfying for those of us looking for more in-depth analysis.

Still, for anyone seeking an overview of Arts & Crafts design and concepts as espoused in the lifestyle of the era, this is as good a place to start as any. The quality and design of the book raise it an extra star, saving it from being merely fair.

The Arts and Crafts Lifestyle and Design is a historical perspective on the design principles and the lifestyle (i.e. how the houses were used) by people involved in this design movement. It is very well written with wonderful photographs. It is, however, organized in a manner as to make using this book for research on the artists or the designs difficult. Rather than highlighting individual artists of the movement and their work, it is arranged by the basic rooms of the houses. For example, dining rooms are discussed using various designers and houses. I would have found it more useful had the individual houses or each artist been discussed more and in the same location in the book. The book does bring to light the changes in the structure of Victorian society and houses with that of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

My problem with this book is that the review questions at the end of each chapter use terminology and concepts that are not introduced in the chapter's text. Often the concepts in the text are referred to with different terminology in the questions, making them unnecessarily confusing. For example, in 2.3 "particle density" is used to refer (I assume) to the concept of "solids density" presented in the chapter. Also in the same problem, the concept of "air-filled porosity" is used but is not presented anywhere else in the text. There are many such examples to be found. I found myself wondering if this were a ploy to force people to buy the solutions manual.

These University of California, Davis, professors have provided a most useful addition to remediation study resources with this text. They designed it for use in an introductory course on remediation of soil and groundwater contaminated by organic compounds. Petroleum compounds are a prime example of those organics. The text has been "vetted" by environmental engineering students at Davis over a five-year period. The NST/Engineers, Inc. reviewers consider knowledge of bioremediation principles to be a requirement of students in environmental science or engineering. This book is an excellent choice as a study text or as a reference for practicing engineers. Problems, discussion questions, and references follow each chapter. Sample problems are worked-out within the chapters.

Following an introductory overview, the authors cover background material in five chapters. The soil environment is explained. A triangular soil classification graph displays the classes of soil texture, rated according to the proportions present of sand, clay, and silt. Additionally, the authors treat the effects of soil gases, moisture, porosity and other factors on the fate (destruction or preservation) and transport of contaminants through soil bodies. Methods are presented for calculating the distribution of organics between soils and liquids, and between liquids and vapors. The use of Henry's Law is featured for the latter. (Incidentally, a recent reference that will be helpful in providing measured data and best estimates for transport and physical properties of representative organics is "Chemical Properties Handbook" by Carl L. Yaws (McGraw-Hill, 1999).)

Two chapters, "Microbial Ecology" and "Metabolism and Energy Production", provide basic information on types of microorganisms, stimulating cell growth, and maintaining cell health. This emphasis on biological basics highlights the greater contemporary importance of biological than chemical and other methods of destruction of organic contaminants in soils. Attention is focused on bacteria, the most abundant group of microorganisms in soil and groundwater; also the group that plays the major role in biodegrading toxic and otherwise offensive organic contaminants.

A chapter is devoted to the chemical reactions occurring during biodegradation, such as oxidation, hydrolysis, bond rupture, and dehalogenation.

In the final four chapters, the authors explain the engineering tasks involved in applying the fundamental principles covered in the earlier chapters. They describe the characteristics of in-situ treatment, and then solid-phase, slurry-phase, and vapor-phase bioremediation. In-situ treatment can be highly favored over removal of soil or water to an off-site location for treatment because of economic, schedule, logistic, and other constraints. Providing balance, the inherent difficulties of in-situ work are also covered. There are always some uncertainties about: subsurface soil structure, water bodies, and contaminant distribution. Factors involved in the major remediation methods of: "pump, treat, and injection", "air sparging", and "bioventing" are covered.

A chapter on "Solid Phase Bioremediation" covers the landfarming ( spreading soil to be treated no more than a few feet deep over large land areas) and composting options. In composting systems, various types of covered piles of contaminated soils are maintained with control of nutrients, moisture, oxygen content, and temperature. "Slurry Phase Bioremediation" is something like stirred-tank reactor processing in the chemical industry with microbes replacing catalysts. Microbes and their nutrients, and catalysts and their supports, must be carefully chosen. With proper operation to prevent microbe death and catalyst poisoning or deactivation, both materials may be used in the next batch or in continuous operation. The reactors are large, enclosed, storage tanks provided with feed and discharge ports, agitation, and temperature control. Slurry phase work is also shown to be amenable to existing uncovered, lagoons when contaminant volatilization is not a problem. Floating agitators have been used in those cases.

The last chapter describes, and provides designs and parameters for, "Vapor Phase Biological Treatment". VOCs are almost always present in the off-gases of soil or groundwater treatment. The authors summarize the pros and cons of currently used vapor-phase pollution control technology, such as adsorption and thermal and catalytic oxidation. They then present the case for "biofilters" or "biotrickling" filters. The former has microbes kept alive with nutrients and supported on various kinds of media. Off-gas vapors are blown in at the tower bottom, pass through the media, and exit at the top. The latter differs in that water spray is added at the top and nutrient solution is collected at the bottom and is recycled to the top. In either case, operation must control plugging of the media and thereby prevent a high vapor delta P through the column.

A useful Appendix table provides properties, including Henry's Law constant at 20 deg.C, for about 80 organics currently found in hazardous wastes.

The best part of this book is the way is was edited. The flyers are cool and the text is ok. The photos are so-so--more valued because they are a record of--not a collection of great images. If you're a fan of hip-hop--this is it.

This book is very similar in content as " Yes Yes Y'all" especially the pictures within the book. The next best thing to time travel to the Boogie Down Bronx to see hip hop's genesis.

This was a cute book. I bought 2 one for myself & 1 as a gift

Light reading; will take just a few minutes. Fun - but you must have cats to appreciate the humor.

Chang has written a lot of books on various subjects. I don't know how they sell, but the two that I have read, this one and Continuous Process Improvement Tools ('93) are just too basic for effective use. A beginner book, no more. At the end of each chapter, the author includes a page or two of checklists and questions, which, combined with the generous use of whitespace, take the place of more substantive content, which could have been included. But then many of the people reading this for introduction to CPI would probably have put it down. A much better book on the subject is Principles of Total Quality, by Omachonu & Ross. It is a near-textbook quality treatment of TQM which is readable by the novice as well as more expert individuals.

After reviewing several other process improvement books, this guidebook is a shy of relief. It is easy to read, systematic with example forms to use. Many other books were overwhelming with volumes of information you were not even sure if you needed. This guidebook is just over a 100 pages explaining and applying the SAMIE model to an example case. I did not think CPI could be this simple. Kodos to Richard Chang for keeping the process simple.

In dsp course we are using this book. The problem with this book is that it does not provide formulas for many dsp calculations. Thus, I need to find formula tables else where. Besides, there are not enough examples to further understandsings of the materials.

"Digital Signal Processing" by Oppenheim and Schafer was, until the publication of their revised book "Discrete-time Signal Processing", the best DSP reference book.

While I would not recommend this book for self-study, I would recommend it as a reference text for someone who has done or is doing a DSP course.

Be advised --- the new version, "Discrete-time Signal Processing", is more up-to-date.

I recently did some birding in Taiwan and found this book the be most useful. As the previous reviewer stated, there are some problems with this book, the main one being that it is written primarily in Chinese. I also found some of the bird paintings to be somewhat below the standard that most birders have come to expect. Moreover, the paintings do not point out key field marks that are helpful in distingusihing similar species. That being said, the field guide has a strong upside. For one, there are range maps for endemic birds, as well as a brief description, in English, of their range. Moreover, the habitat and status for many of the birds is also indicated, again in English. For these reasons alone, the guide is well worth it. Another added feature that I also found helpful was that the latin names for the birds include the subspecies. I would recommend this book to anyone planning on birding in Taiwan. In addition, I would also highly recommend Wu Sen-Hsiong's "A field guide to the birds of Taiwan" (ISBN 957-9578-00-1), which is jointly published by the Taiwan Wild Bird Information Centre & Wild Bird Society of Japan. The paintings in Wu's guide and the range maps are far superior; however, except for the names of the birds, it is written entirely in Chinese.

It's old, and a little out of date, but this is definitely the most complete guide to birds of Taiwan currently available. Much of the text is in Chinese characters, but it's still a good field guide, and does say something about range (in English). If you have a friend who read's Chinese you can phonetically pen-in the Chinese names as I did. There are some neat photographic guides available in Taiwan, but they have some errors, and are missing many birds. There is a CD of Taiwanese bird song also available in Taiwan, again mostly in Mandarin.

This type of collection has appeared for numberous sports and hobbies.
It provides a tick off list of places to go that many like-minded people will suddenly want to visit. One text, "Fifty Classic ______" has since been dubbed "Fifty Crowded ______".

Inevitably, the experience of visiting those places will be changed by the increased number of people who want to visit them due to this book. Whether this is a drawback for you or not will depend on whether you enjoy socializing more or less than actually birding and whether you can afford the increased pricing that usually follows increased demand. The crowds will help the birds in some ways (proving the economic value of environmental protection via ecotourism) and hinder them in others (inevitable habitat degradation and some disruption of natural behavior due to increased numbers of people).

I must admit that I was initially skeptical of this book. The author admits that he is not a birder, and there are inherent issues with these sort of lists.
Even though the author is not an avid birder himself, he is not a complete stranger to the hobby. He was aware that he was not qualified to select the sites himself, so he solicited input from birders and ornithologists. Many of these are professional birders, tour leaders, authors, etc, such as David Sibley and Kenn Kaufman. Each of the 50 places in this book was nominated by someone different.
The second issue is harder to avoid. No list is going to please everyone, and your favorite birding spot may not have made this list. So I'm willing to cut it a lot of slack in this regard. Still, 24 out of the 50 sites are found in the United States. A more concerted effort should have been made to better balance the site selection geographically.
But once you get past these two issues, the book was a pleasure to read. The author does a very good job on the site accounts, and also quotes liberally from the site's selector. The direct quotes are often personal experiences and stories that the recommender has from this place. Most of these are fantastic reading and highly entertaining.
Hard core world travelers won't get much out of this book. But all other birders will be exposed to many different wonderful places, some of which you may have never even heard of before.

Since Amazon doesn't have a Look Inside feature on this book, here is the complete list of 50 places:

United States
Alaska: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Alaska: Gambell
Arizona: Southeast Arizona
Arkansas: Big Woods
California: Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
California: Point Reyes National Seashore
California: Sacramento Valley
Florida: St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge
Hawaii: Kauai
Maine: Scarborough Marsh
Massachusetts: Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge
New Jersey: Cape May
New Mexico: Bosque del Apache
New York: Central Park
New York: Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge
North Carolina/Tennessee: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
North Dakota: Prairie Potholes
Ohio: Lake Erie
Oregon: Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
Pennsylvania: Hawk Mountain Refuge
Texas: High Island to Galveston
Texas: Lower Rio Grande Valley
Wisconsin: Necedah National Wildlife Refuge
Wyoming: Yellowstone National Park

North America
Greenland: Thule

Mexico, Central America, and Caribbean
Belize: The Ruins
Costa Rica: San Gerardo de Dota
Guatemala: The Highlands
Jamaica: Blue Mountains and Beyond
Mexico: El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve
Trinidad and Tobago: Caroni Lagoon

South America
Brazil/Peru: Amazonia
Ecuador: Podocarpus National Park
Ecuador: Tandayapa-Mindo
United Kingdom: South Georgia Island
Venezuela: The Llanos

Europe
England: Cley Next the Sea
Hungary: Hortobagy National Park
Iceland: Jokulsargljufur National Park
Spain: Tarifa

Asia
Kingdom of Bhutan
Borneo: Danum Valley
India: the Andamans
Papua New Guinea: Tari Valley
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan: The Silk Road

Africa
Madagascar: Masoala Peninsula
Tanzania: Serengeti National Park

Australia/New Zealand
Australia: Bruny Island
Australia: Capertee Valley
New Zealand: Sub-Antarctic Islands