error Books

This treatment of error analysis is brillianty tied into everyday measurement examples. The mathematics is not beyond the A-level (UK) or high school graduate. If experimental results are your day to day fare then this is the book for you.

"Fatal Error" is a thriller built up in a rather special way.

Part 1 (chapters 1 and 2) takes place in London in Sept. 1999. An unknown assailant kills the chairman of the dot-com startup company featured in the story.

Part 2 (chapters 3 - 23) takes place in France (July 1987), Scotland (June 1992) and London (April - Aug. 1999). In other words, this part of the book consists of flashbacks that provide background information for what happened in Part 1. But the 1987 and 1992 flashbacks are interwoven with the 1999 flashbacks, so you are kept on your toes all the time. As expected (this is a thriller), a dead body turned up in both 1987 and 1992, and in neither case was the killer identified, let alone apprehended.

Part 3 and Part 4 (chapters 24 - 40) take up the story where Part 1 ended, i.e., London, Sept. 1999. Is the new killing related to the killings in 1987 and 1992? Who is sending the anonymous threatening e-mails? Will there be more killings?

The fact that almost half of the book consists of flashbacks and that the flashbacks are not presented chronologically actually heightens the excitement. However, I did find myself compelled to go back and reread Part 1 after finishing Part 2 in order to reestablish the flow of recent events in my mind.

The story is based in the heady dot-com entrepreneurial days in the late 1990's. New companies are going from zero to a stock market valuation of billions of pounds in the space of a year or so. The youthful employees are becoming millionaires and the bosses are willing to do whatever it takes to crush the competition and get a successful IPO (Initial Public Offering, i.e., getting on the stock market).

Note, however, that although "Fatal Error" is a story based on the building up of an Internet company, that the technology aspects are not the most important. Similarly, even though the financial implications of starting a company and getting venture capital financing and going to the stock market are important sides of the story, they are not the most important factors.

Instead, "Fatal Error" is basically a traditional thriller about a psychopath who has killed and is willing to kill again, and the danger this person represents to the people around him/her.

I found the book quite intriguing and enjoyable, especially due to my own background in the IT business. Surprisingly, I did not find any errors in the author's descriptions of how IT companies function and how web sites are built up. The discussions of the financial aspects also sounded correct to me, and they should be since the author has a background at an international bank in the City of London. This added to the overall credibility of the whole story.

In addition, the characters in the book seemed quite believable, with perhaps one exception. Incidentally, the story is told in the first person, but it is very well done so you hardly notice this normally problematic style.

My only major complaint is that the ending seemed too contrived. Were it not for that I'd be giving five stars to "Fatal Error".

A highly recommended thriller, especially if you're interested in the IT business and/or the financial markets.

Rennie Petersen

This book is an interesting collection of 'Blunders, stuff-ups and misjudgements' made over the course of white settlement in Australia, by some prominant academics. Covering areas as diverse as farming, black/white relations, town planning, defence and politics amoung others, it offers an interesting and thought provoking journey through many of the major decision in Australian history.

This book succeeds in providing an insight into those events that made Australia the country it is today, without taking a revisionist view, based on 21st centuary morals and ideals. They explain many of the actions taken, without necessarily judging them.

An interesting and worthwhile read.

The book is a useful and handy guide to applying human factor methods to reduce accidents in safety critical systems. Human error is the major cause of accidents in safety critical safety industries like aviation, nuclear power and chemical. Accidents are often the end result of a myriad of latent and active failures, only the last of which are the unsafe acts of the operator. It is necessary to identify these active and latent failures in order to understand why the mishap occurred and how it might be prevented from happening again in the future.

Active failures are the actions or inactions of operators that are believed to cause the accident. These can arise from operator error, among others, and they are the last "unsafe acts" committed by an operator, often with immediate and tragic consequences. For example, forgetting to lower the landing gear before touch down will yield relatively immediate, and potentially grave, consequences for an aircraft.
In contrast, latent failures are errors committed by individuals within the working areas or elsewhere in the supervisory chain of command that affect the tragic sequence of events characteristic of an accident. For example, letting someone work for say 24 hours without rest, can lead to fatigue and ultimately errors (active failures) in a department. Viewed from this perspective then, the unsafe acts of personnel are the end result of a long chain of causes whose roots originate in other parts (often the upper echelons) of the organization. The problem is that these latent failures may lie dormant or undetected for hours, days, weeks, or longer until one day they bite the unsuspecting operator.

This is a useful book that is recommended for all personnel and regulators who deal with safety critical systems. This book will be a crucial and handy guide and reference for anyone who applies human factors in their day by day work, giving them ready-to-use tools and methods that can be applied to prevent incidents and accidents.

The name of the story is Harry Potter and the goblet of fire. The story is written by J.K Rowlings. Well Harry gets his name entered into the goblet of fire. Therefore he was entered into the deadliest competition in Hogwarts. The thing is he is too young and in a lot of trouble. The mystery is to find out who put his name in the goblet of fire. I wanted to read it because the back looked interesting. I also saw the movie. I would recommend this book to any age.

The action was good in the movie and the book. I also like Hermione, her courage to do magic was great. I also like their accent and strength. The main character Harry had to fight because he was in chaos. He was also Ronald's best friend. I loved how there was so much action in the book.


The only thing that I did not like about the story was the fighting. It was wrong to come between friends. But other than that I liked the book. It was an interesting story. I would recommend this book. It was an interesting thing to find out who put Harry's name in the goblet.


N.Bartley

"How to Write and Speak Effective English" does not carry the same cachet as "The Elements of Style" or weigh of say "Hodges' Harbrace College Handbook." In some ways, though, it's a useful precursor to some of the more recent books on English usage such as Joseph Williams' excellent "Style" or the rather staid "Elements of Grammar."

The layout and design of this book work against it: small type, tight margins, and unimaginative design. But you might want a copy for your reference shelf if you are starting to gain experience as a writer, if you instruct others about writing, or if you wish to challenge yourself to improve your prose.

The author, Edward F. Allen, referring to Abraham Lincoln, contends that "If an unschooled railsplitter could learn to write effective English, you can." Mr. Allen takes the reader through a number of exercises intended to sharpen one's skills and expand one's knowledge of English. In essence, this book is a six-part course in the art of writing, common errors, pitfalls in usage, spelling, pronunciation, and punctuation and capitalization.

It's all very "old school" and precise---as one would expect from a primer first copyrighted in 1938. Clearly, a number of causes for which Mr. Allen waves the battle have been lost for years, but many have not, and his historical perspective offers value for those who feel that writing and speaking proper English is a skill worth developing.

Hammond does a brilliant job of showing how the uncertainty (the information set upon which decisions will be evaluated and choices made is at all times partial in nature and can never be complete)of the available information available to government and public policy administrators very often offers a cogent explanation for the constant mistakes and failures of expert opinion throughout history.For example,his discussion of Irving Fisher(the leading American economic expert from 1910-1929)and,from retrospect,his incredible misjudgment of the state of both the world and American economy in late October,1929,is shown to be commonplace.The experts are experts,but they are also unduly overconfident and overoptimistic about the range of application of their limited knowledge base in a world that is inherently uncertain.Much of what Hammond's says has ,in a more general framework,been said and emphasized by John Maynard Keynes.Joseph Schumpeter also made the same points,but underestimated the dangers of such uncertainty to any kind of decision maker,private or public.Hammond offers some suggestions about ways in which policy makers can have a better chance of succeeding in their goals.Administrative coordination and the avoidance of making crucial decisions at a time of undue stress or pressure are mentioned and discussed.One writer who is missing from Hammond's references and has a valuable understanding of the turbulence of markets and the fact that the unexpected,unexpected that is by conventional economist models,occurs all too often,is Benoit Mandelbrot.Perhaps his work could be integrated in a future edition by Hammond within his framework of irreducible uncertainty.

This book gives critical information that everyone needs if they are planning to build a house and the best part about it is that it is understandable. The author has given the information that we need in a very readable and humorous manner. He uses examples that are from real people with real problems and you come away from the book with the confedience you can be successful. Building a house is not rocket science but it does require paying attention to details and the author give excellent guidance on what those details are.

Very good intro textbook. It gives short, detailed preps to various coding areas (linear, cyclic, convolutional). The biggest advantage this book has is that it does not throw at You tonnes of unnecessary info (like many other thick books do). That is, it assumes reader has some basic understanding of algebra and probability theory. Let's say, it gives good theoretical presentation such that the reader gets good theoretical understanding, it is not example-based.

No book I've read does a better job explaining in a calm and objective fashion, why so many policies of the US government make no sense. This is not a political book. Instead, Baron applies the findings of cognitive psychology to examine irrational attitudes where they do the most harm, in politics.

His main thesis is that a number of rules of thumb, or "moral intuitions" are used by everyone from kids to consultants to make even the most serious decisions. These intuitions include "do no harm," group loyalty, and respect for what is "natural."

Thus, vaccinations against will be dodged because they pose a risk, even when the risk of the disease is greater. A free trade agreement will be opposed if someone loses his job, even when it will lead to the creation of more jobs than before. Overpopulation will not be confronted because of an intuitive "right" to breed. More resources will be spent to get a kitten out of a tree in America than to save starving children in Africa because of the tribal instinct that instills loyalty selectively.

A few small faults are worth mentioning. Some of the biases discussed have slippery definitions: "my-side bias," "wishful thinking," or "naturalism." The style of writing is accesible, but somewhat dull. Order of the topics is somewhat arbitrary.

The author is a leading expert in psychology and decision-making, yet he shows great restraint in making dogmatic or unqualified statements, and allows for all kinds of objections. His critique of human folly follows from the work of Amos Tversky, Paul Slovic, and other researchers into cognitive biases, grounding the book in solid scientific facts.

The final chapter tries to provide a ray of hope. Baron gives the usual suggestions: education, honest reporting, cost-benefit analysis; and a few strange ones: the internet, business ethics, and trust. I did not find this very encouraging. In the Preface, Baron writes "I would like this to be read by everyone concerned with public affairs or the psychology of thinking and decision making. That is, of course, too much to expect." But what would it matter? Nobody is going to change his mind about anything--priority bias, you know?