error Books

While I do not want to sound offensive to the authors, I was almost offended at the simplistic level of Six Sigma description that was used in this book. You can skip the first two chapters completely and browse the rest of the text. The case studies are applicable and actually fairly good. The authors almost make it seem as though anything being done is already at a Six Sigma level, you simply need to make the numbers match. There is no real tie to making Six Sigma work in healthcare in this book. Having done a great deal of reading and research on Six Sigma, I would recommend that anyone wanting to utilize this great technique in a healthcare setting stick with Six Sigma books geared for traditional business and use them to apply principles to healthcare. In my opinion, this book was approximately $65 over-priced. Thanks to the authors, however, on a valiant effort.

I expected the book to address the organizational and strategic issues related to implementing Six Sigma in a healthcare organization. Instead, the book has some nice case studies on applying statistical analysis to process problems and a general discussion of quality systems. This isn't the book for someone looking to implement a process improvement program but may be a useful reference for non-statisticians looking to strengthen their statistical toolkit.

I am a graduate student learning how to become a healthcare administrator. I think this book is a great tool to explain Six Sigma concepts to people who have no experience with Six Sigma. I look forward to reading Barry's new book in mid-2005. The only complaint that I have about the book is that it is a bit disorganized.

As a stand-alone reference this book offers very little to anyone looking to implement a six sigma program in healthcare. The book fails to address the organizational and strategic issues related to implementing a comprehensive process improvement strategy in any type of organization, let alone a healthcare organization. The book would have us believe that six sigma is the application of statistical problem solving techniques to traditional quality improvement programs. If it were that simple, many healthcare organizations have been practicing six sigma for over 15 years. Someone in healthcare looking to find out what six sigma is all about would likely be left with the impression that six sigma is just the latest buzzword. On the other hand, the book does provide some nice case studies that may be useful for a non-statistician looking to strengthen their process improvement tool belt. Either the authors don't really understand what six sigma is all about or they are just attempting to exploit the market by combining the words six sigma and healthcare in the title. Most healthcare professional would do better to look at the GE related references on the subject.

This is by far one of the worst books I have had the misfortune of stumbling across. The author is clearly misguided in his approach. In addition, the endless series of mistakes makes this, ironically, a most unlikely guide to "Errors in English". The author's glaringly superficial understanding of grammar and etymology undermines what attempt this book makes of being an authoritative voice on the subject.

Another reviewer refers to this book's "facts". Facts??? Whose "facts" would those be? The facts according to WHOM? (Phew, narrowly escaped a grammatical error, there). There may indeed be some fascinating and interesting bits of information peppered throughout the book, but the overall thrust leaves me with no doubt that Blamires's (I put the extra "s" in there to appease those of the "proper English" ilk) understanding of language is seriously deficient.

The assumption underlying Blamires' nitpicking guide to supposed "errors" is that language ought to follow a pre-existing set of rules and conventions in order to be "correct". The result is that Blamires can claim that all kinds of sentence constructions and word-usages are "wrong", even if only a handful of speakers of everyday English follow the "rules". An example of this pretentious and nonsensical approach to language is found on the very first page, on which Blamires castigates those who use "able" and "ability" in reference to non-humans. What??? Does the fact that just about any native speaker of English uses "able" and "ability" in this way have no bearing on it? If the answer is "no", what then does have a bearing on it? Some magical platonic principle of language use?

Most of Blamires' (hee-hee, snuck that misuse of the apostrophe in there) examples seem to rely on an appeal to some unwritten rule of which most English-speakers are evidently ignorant. This being the case, what ancient unwritten (and unprovable) rule could possibly be more important than the facts of everyday, common usage? Blamires is clearly living in cloud-cuckoo land. Whatever language he is trying to defend, it is clearly not the English language with which any of us are familiar.

This is the enthusiasts book that exposes common errors in current English usage, and shows how to avoid them. Containing a host of grammatical blunders (some obvious, some less so) and examples that highlight the problems.

My favorite (being my own pet hate, and the one that even top writers fail to understand) is the use of which, or that... The grasscutter which is in the garage is the better one... OR The grasscutter that is in the garage is the better one.

In fact the two sentences have two different menings... The grasscutter, which is in the garage, is the better one:: simply tells you where the grasscutter is.

The grasscutter that is in the garage is the better one:: differentiates between this particular grasscutter and another one (which may, for example, be in the back yard).

Okay, so that was just one of many, but Cassell Guide to Common Errors in English is a great guide to all manner of pitfalls, and Harry Blamires (who also wrote "The Queen's English") makes an excellent guide.

I purchased this book several years ago for the introduction to Galois field mathematics while researching CRC hardware. I've returned to it recently to help me understand GF again for implementation of a Reed Solomon codec. Other, reviewers have complained about this book but I think they sell it short. After reading dozens of articles about BCH/Reed Solomon codes I'm always left missing the point of the mathematics because they gloss over the important details. Like, why GF(2^8) requires polynomial math and what alpha is for. Since it is a cookbook there are lots of recipes for calculation which provide a **practical** basis for the development of the mathematical concepts. Let's face it -- polynomial arithmetic is strange and this book really helped me to get a grip on it. I'm now better equiped to handle all the journal articles and books on the subject of error control coding.

As for the C++/C routines...I haven't tried any of them so I don't know about bugs/issues with them. However, if you take the time to follow and understand the mathematics I'll bet you could easily fix the code. I would agree that this book isn't going to be the quick fix to get you a Reed-Solomon Codec or Viterbi decoder for free.

I paid $55 for my brand new copy. $155 is a mighty high price to pay for ANY book regardless of a 5-star review or not!

There are a lot of typing errors and crucial information missed in this book. And the C/C++ routines come with this book do not work properly.

This book is marketed several places as a good cookbook for Reed Solomon coding and just plug in some subroutines and you have an encoder or decoder. It cover binary BCH codes pretty well, but when it gets to REEd-Solomon it glosses over it and gives one useless example. It would have only taken a few more pages to make this a whole lot more useful for me, I am some what new to coding, but not an idiot and had to read it several times to get the point on binary BCH code arithmetic, but as far as non-binary I am still looking. I haven't looked at the Viterbi algorithm or convolutional codes maybe I will report more later

Fr. Most covers (1) how the scriptures were authored, (2) how they became scripture (by the determination of the pillar and foundation of truth, the church, (3) the senses of scripture literal and primary spiritual sense, the allegorical (he omits the anagogical and the tropological senses); (4) the inerrancy of the scriptures by showing that the error is in the reading not in the scripture; (5) the various genres in scripture; (6) he covers the various critical methods and their limits; and (7) the study of the ancient Hebrew society through ancient literature and archaeology. He refutes biblical critics with numerous examples. He cuts through circular logic used by others to show correct logical determination of what is scripture. He show by frequent example how many read errors into the scriptures.

Fr. Most had a better sense where the current direction of scripture criticism that his peers. He almost seems to expect that the critical synoptic works of the last decade (on respectively (a) Luke's use of Matthew and (b) Mark's use of Matthew and Luke) would appear. Definitely worth reading to handle seeming conflicts in scripture.

Would have given it a full 5 star if he had covered all the spiritual senses completely.

In this short book on biblical inerrancy, the late great biblical scholar Fr. William Most discusses the Catholic approach to scripture, and verifying whether the bible truly is, free from all error.

He starts by establishing the rules and boundaries necessary to properly analyze scripture. Such things as, what it means to say God author's scripture through human instruments. How the Catholic comes to the conclusion of a fully inspired inerrant book, and other questions like,

1. Can a book have different inspired authors?
2. To what limit can that be taken?
3. Can the bible have more than one literal sense?
4. Could the Holy Spirit have conveyed deeper meanings that the authors may have not understood?
5. Can there be multiple fulfillments of Scripture?

And explains one of the most important topics in the book, Genre (Ch9). Genre is a pattern of writing with its own rules of how to write and understand it. He explains why you must critique a book according to the rules its genre has set. For example, Fr. Most explains, suppose you are reading a history book about the Civil War, now you expect the history book to be a mixture of history and fiction. It is history in that the main line of the story is true to history and the background descriptions fit the period. But it is also fictional in that there are fictional fill-ins, especially word-for-word conversations between, for example, Lincoln and Grant. We expect, we even want, the author to create these fill ins, to make the story fuller and more realistic. But we do not suppose that the author really states, word for word, what these important men said. We can't even be sure that he has the substance. For someone to charge the author with a historical error regarding those conversations would not be correct, since he never asserted each conversation was historically true. This would be judging the book against its genre. So with regards to the biblical authors, we must first see what they are asserting by examining their genre. Otherwise it would be unfair to charge them with error, when they may not be asserting it as true.

He also analyses the different popular historical methods. Methods like, the "Historical Critical Method", to "Form and Redaction Criticism".

The book finishes with short discussions on Jewish Tradition, and archeology.

In addressing each topic and error claim, he shows how others have answered an apparent problem, and how some fail in their attempts. The solutions may go to far from what is allowed, or not address the problem correctly. As an example, some people argue that the entire bible is only inspired when it comes to issues involving salvation, and not historically. Fr. Most shows how this goes too far, and in effect, cuts your basis for faith. Fr. Most than analyzes each error himself, and gives exceptional answers. He deals with, Genesis, infancy gospels, apocalyptic writings, and the Wisdom literate.

The positives of the book include,

1. The book deals with the OT (often not the case with biblical inerrancy books)
2. Great answers to the "errors".
3. Answers the most prominent opponents charges.
4. Get a feel for the direction scriptural criticism may go.
5. Demonstrates the need to not be to haste in asserting biblical errors, we have seen what problems arose when science wasn't done properly in the past.

However, the book also has shortcomings. For one, the book is not well organized, so unless special attention is given, you will get confused. The author also seems to bog the book down, while explaining himself, with too many examples. This adds to the difficulty of following what the author is arguing. The book is also old (85), so it would not be an appropriate place to go for the current discussions on the topic.

With everything said, and given the books small size (and price), you cannot go wrong in getting this book. The author is clearly knowledgeable about the subject.

I plan on reading this book again, to give it (or myself in case I misread it) another chance. The first time through, however, I found it to be full of circular reasoning and specious argument. For example, W. Most seems to be saying that if error is found in what has traditionally been considered one of the "historical" books of the Bible, then it shouldn't be considered "historical" at all, but rather as belonging to the "epic" genre, or some other genre, thereby saving the doctrine of "inerrancy in historical matters" (since the Bible isn't "trying" to be historical when written in the "epic" genre). That seems a bit too convenient to me. In another place he recognizes a contradiction that cannot be resolved or harmonized, but he says it doesn't matter because what the infallible author was trying to say is simply that he was confronted with two contradictory versions of the same event and that he didn't know which one was the correct one, so he just included both--but that the text is still inerrant because it isn't "trying" to say which one is inerrant. Huh? Like I said, I'm going to read it again...! Maybe I got it all wrong.

The other review here dismisses the book based on the title. Sadly, I have bought a copy of this book and that writer's suspicions are completely justified. It is a combination of tedious 'cut-up' i.e. random nonsense and typical 'look at me I'm so sensitive and artistic' stuff about self-harm.
It is unreadable and frankly after a short while I stopped trying.

This book is freaking awesome! I could really identify with Sabrina -- the main character in the I Sin Every Number half of the novel -- and the problems she was having.

Yes, to apreciate this book you should probably have a little experience with experimental fiction (Burroughs, Barthelme, Acker) before going in. There are chapters here that were obviously generated by computer programs, but Christ you don't have to read each word of them before going on to the next "straight" portion of the novel; just let your eyes skim and wander through the text and get the feel of the semi-poetic nature of the machine-based prose that Sabrina was seeing on her computer screen. I believe the author was attempting to immerse the reader in Sabrina's world so they could see the scary messages she was getting. It's a cool idea! If you tried to read every word of the experimental stuff, of course it would be tedious, but when it gets too much just continue on to the next "story" chapter.

This novel is avant-garde, adventurous writing at its best. The characters are interesting and well-developed, and there are even quite a few humorous incidents in the book. Don't be a square. Be bold and pick up this novel and maybe a few mighty forces will come to your aid while you're reading it.

Also be sure to check out the 'Note From the Author' at the very end! I've never seen anything like it before.

Actually, perhaps not.

The title is enough to give a jobbing programmer a spontaneous fistula. Matters aren't helped much by Amazon's (apparent) mistranscription.

Maybe the authors are trying for "dumb people will think it's clever; clever people will think it's a parody of dumb", cf SugarApe magazine in "Nathan Barley". The fact that CORY DOCTOROW thinks it's clever gets us half-way there, but the clever people I've shown the title to think it's just broken. So, overall, a loss.

basically what you have is a political spinner descending into music criticism.

This book attempts to determine the areas in which Schoenberg 'erred' in the creation of his twelve-tone idea. This book deals less with solid theory but more with the ideals of aesthetics, perception, philosophy, and basically many unfounded claims. This book assaults Schoenberg's musical achievments, with very little assesment of his value at all. It seems that this book is has is seeking to dismantle the strong history of modern music, by claiming that one of it's father's was in error.

In this treatise, William Thomson has systematically and successfully deconstructed the atonal/serialist theories of Schoenberg, Webern and Babbitt. He reveals them for what they are: subversive, unnatural academic experiments dealing with the interrelationship between music, mathematics and nihilism. Through a complex theoretical analysis, Thomson affirms what many Twentieth Century composers (such as Sibelius, Bartok, Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams and Adams) argued either through their work, through words or both - namely, that the language of tonality is the natural language of music and is essentially an outgrowth of very deeply entrenched human impulses. In creating works which defy natural imperatives and uphold inhuman precepts, the serialist composers managed to stimulate academic interest and controversy, but their work will almost certainly not be recognized in future as the greatest or most meaningful contribution to Twentieth Century music.

Two programmers invent a cunning process to develop the world's first biological computer that is capable of independent learning & problem solving. It reads like a snail lost at sea and is about as suspenseful as waiting for the kettle to boil. It doesn't even have a plot until you're 3/4s of the way through. I actually loved the concept, but was gravely disappointed by the way it limped through each chapter. Sure, technical garb is fine - but after a while you begin to wonder if something is gonna HAPPEN...

This is quite a good book. Basically a young computer bloke gets working with a company called Compugen (I think) and works on their newest computer which uses bioelectronics and stuff, so the computer 'grows' to the task at hand (complete with sloppy disks). With a fair bit of science fiction, genetic engineering and computer stuff in there it may be hard going for some, but it is pretty rivetting with Adrian and Toby tailoring a virus to their needs with ... well, some unexpected results. A dash of humour and some neat twists make this a pretty good read.

I purchased this book hoping to find some useful information. The book is expensive and in reality, I did not find anything inside that is practical.

I suggest looking elsewhere for a useful reference.

Strengths:

1) This book presents a very critical subject which is going to play an important role in improving productivity, customer satisfaction via avoided costs (seen through reduction in installation and waranty costs, reduced costs of transfering product to volume manufacturing).

2) Presents consolidated information from various Japanese companies.

3) Gives a glimpse of how Japanese companies are actually practicing this important technique.

Weaknesses:

1) I would have liked the cases to be more detailed describing every step of design review in more details. This would have given readers a good head start if they were looking for a template.

Overall: Considering there is very little literature available on this important subject since most of it is company confidential, this book at least addresses this important subject and presents at least some details via case studies.

A must read for someone who wants to understand, write DR procedures.

thanks,

The book was a little rough to read, it's not for light hearted readers.

I'm a big fan of the natural disaster genre. In fact, I may be writing my thesis on it. It isn't as though I was expecting a scholarly, exact, detailed retelling of the events in "Tragedies of American History"; I think it's clear from the beginning that the book is intended for popular audiences, and there's nothing wrong with that.

However, there is something wrong with the disrespectful writing style in this book. Bad writing either fails to convey the author's intent, or it can strip all meaning from serious events. In this case, I am speaking of the latter. Collins may well be a good writer - anyone who hammers out that many decapitations of children in such detail that I, viewer of a thousand Triangle Shirtwaist photos, actually get nauseous reading it must be skilled at description. But part of writing, particularly in nonfiction, is also maintaining a level of decency in your prose. Not only does Collins fail to do this in such a degree as to potentially be emotionally scarring to anyone who reads the book, but the lurid narration destroys any possible meaning one can take from this book or the tragedies the narratives are based on. (I say "based on" because there is many a conjecture made that any responsible nonfiction writer would avoid making.) What is so frustrating about all of this is that if Collins can convey horror this well, he should drop the pretense and just write prose. He'd outsell Stephen King in a minute, and manage to not be disrespectful to the memories of those who died in these tragedies.

If you really enjoy detail on what it must feel like for a terrified 7-year-old to be roasted alive, by all means, pick up the book. If decapitations turn you on, this is perfect. But this book has no value; it is merely an exercise in the pornography of human frailty.

Aughh, I can't believe I bought this book without reading reviews first! I had found the Precalc Demystified book to be very helpful, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with another one in the same series. Wrong!!! I am on Chapter TWO, and so far there have been so many ridiculous errors that I just can't continue with the book. Because of all the errors (and then the creeping, nagging feeling: is *that* an error, or is my understanding wrong??) the book has pretty much been an impediment to understanding. I have spent more time on the internet clarifying concepts, and with pen and paper re-working the bizarrely wrong example calculations, than I have spent learning from the book. I only wish I had not begun to make margin notes in it, because now I can't return it. :(

I've had the book for a couple days now and will be returning it. There are far too many errors to be a reliable self-teaching guide.

This was a poorly written book and like many of the previous reviewers, I found this book filled with errors and relatively useless information. While it does indeed cover a lot of basic concepts, if you're looking to try and understand the concepts, the book will fail miserably.

While reviewing the quizzes I find myself constantly going back to the chapter to see if I had missed anything only to see that the chapter simply didn't cover the material.

I'm quite a fan of the other demystified books like differential equations, but this book I'm afraid would lead to false sense of self confidence.

I'm glad to have gotten this book as an e-version from the library -- it's not worth paying money for, and hardly worth wasting paper on. Lots of misguided analogies -- molecular configuration is likened to football plays -- and many contradictory typos, ie C6H12O6 described first as sucrose, then as fructose (it's really fructose), formulaic error mentioned by other reviewers... I haven't even got halfway through (I'll read the rest as a guideline because I need to test into at least basic college chem next week), but I'm already going to web sources for explanations on things like atomic orbitals, which are totally confusing in this writing.

Finally, examples such as the following are just plain insulting.
"Example 7.4
"What would you do if an experimental procedure called for 1 M of hydrochloric acid (HCl) and all you had in the lab was 12 M HCl? Could you use what you had on hand? Sure! Just prepare the 1 M HCl by measuring a volume 1/12 or 82 milliliters of the concentrated solution into 1 liter of distilled water. The final concentration is equal to 1 M HCl."

I mean, honestly!

The only plus is that I feel smarter, being able to notice how many mistakes are in this.

Nice cover; great illustrations, charts, tables, and diagrams; neat outlines; however, the book is of poor quality. It introduces concepts without explaination as if it assumes you know them. This begins to happen around chapter 4. You begin to feel lost as you progress through the book. There are virtually no guides to help indicate what is an important point to remember. There are questions given at the end of the chapters that have answers that are difficult to locate or deduce. I would highly recommend "Chemistry: A Self-Teaching Guide" by Wiley & Sons which is of far greater quality.