Engineering-risk Books

1581 was a book used in the political science Class of Carleton University in Ottawa. It just happened that I was mentoring one of their ex-alumni when I stumbled on this book and I could not let it go- I had to have my own copy. Why ? This is a book who looks in toto/whole picture on the state of the Chinese Emprire in 1581 very few decades before its conquest by the Mandchous. The role of the Secretariats, how much were paid civil servants, how the army worked how they managed to repulse the Japanese pirates and so on so forth did I mention that we dab also in the literature and philosophy of the age ? Wonderful historical characters, civil servants, generals, philosophers, poets, are leading us throught each of theses universes -the political, the army the cultural world. It is a wonderful book, and it shows how China has changed a bit and not so much. Just remembering the winderful Olympic games inauguration and you understand that discipline and communauty of goals have made that country great. 1581 just confirmed my intuitions you cannot understand China if you do not take into account its past.

A reviewer below has already done an excellent job of summarizing the book, so I can only hope that my review can serve as a complement. "1587" is essentially an examination of why the Ming dynasty--an institution that commanded great wealth and governed a vast nation--was already showing signs of decay and its impending collapse under the reign of the Wanli emperor. Ray Huang does an excellent job to show how cultural inertia and an institution that governed miserably effectively neutralized the voice and power of individual participants. The Ming dynastic system did not tolerate loyal opposition and was not designed for ministers or individuals to discuss opposing views in an orderly manner, which meant that power struggles were bound to be ugly as rival ministers and bureaucrat employed moral arguments to tarnish each others' reputation. Avenues for advancement within government amounted to a zero-sum game in which an official's effectiveness in governance was a barometer of his morality (bound with tradition and Confucian precepts open to interpretation). Imagine if your local mayor was judged not on his or her effectiveness or merit, but on whether he or she was a morally upright individual who was adhering to both the spirit and traditions of the past.

The Ming imperial system also placed a greater value on the institution and sought to dehumanize the emperor. The emperor was the emperor--he was not Wanli, not Jiajing, etc. The bureaucrats and officials--whose power was constrained individually--exercised great power as a group, effectively dictating how the emperor should act, behave, and present himself to the public. Little wonder then, that the Wanli emperor, whose power was in the negative and not the positive, hardly sought to rule in an effective manner after being weighed down by such an institution. Others in the drama--the powerful minister, the innovative general, the eccentric bureaucrat, and the dissenting scholar--would find the same forces inhibiting their ability to affect real changes.

Huang ends his book by concluding that the Ming dynasty was a "highly stylized society wherein the roles of individuals were thoroughly restricted by a body of simple yet ill-defined moral precepts, [and that] the empire was seriously hampered in its development, regardless of the noble intentions behind those precepts. The year 1587 may seem to be insignificant; nevertheless, it is evident that by that time the limit for the Ming dynasty had already been reached. It no longer mattered whether the ruler was conscientious or irresponsible, whether his chief counselor was enterprising or conformist, whether the generals were resourceful or incompetent, whether the civil officials were honest or corrupt, or whether the leading thinkers were radical or conservative-in the end they all failed to reach fulfillment. Thus our story has a sad conclusion. The annals of the Year of the Pig (1587) must go down in history as a chronicle of failure."

I recommend this book for all those not only interested in the history of the Ming dynasty, but to those who are interested in the nature of Chinese imperial statecraft and the question of how government should be structured.

The history of China is long and it is very difficult to get a clear idea about the logic behind the countless events happened during the last several thousand years in China. I've read many books on China's history, both Chinese ones and English ones. This book has been the most inspiring one among those I've read.

In this book, Dr. Ray Huang showed the readers the picture of the Chinese people's life around the year 1587: from the emperor's depression caused by lacking of freedom due to the structure of China's politics, to officers' rise and fall, to the common people's mundane life. As the big picture rolling out little by little, the logic behind China's history was clearer and clearer. There was a fatal problem in Chinese politics: the politic structure was premature but the administrative methods to support the structure never grew up and never based on sensible mathematics. Technologies were never paid enough attention to. When the population and economic developed and developed, the naive administrative methods could not sustain the whole economic system any more. However, any technical innovation for supporting the economic grow was hardly allowed due to moral or philosophical tradition. Some officers had been very smart, the emperor had been very ambitious, the Chinese people had been very diligent. However due to many problems, these individual efforts never really worked out to save the dynasty from declining. Dr. Huang saw these problems based on his decades of research on Ming Dynasty's taxing system. In this book he showed the readers how these problem impacted all aspects of life of the people from different classes.

Dr. Huang's research method is scientific and the conclusion is convincing. Although 1587 happened to be a year in the Ming Dynasty, this book in fact provides a great point of view to the macro history of China. This is a book to be read again and again. Every read will help readers to understand China's history better. The author's way of thinking and his research method is also very inspiring. The text is so well written that it is anything but dry and boring. Highly recommended to anyone who is interested in China's history.

As a non-academical hostory book of Ming-dynasty, it is the most outstanding one. i do recommand people who are interested in my country and always criticised about my country go through it again and again. you may be able to get some clues of the massive differece of these two cultures.

then I decided I didn't want to go on any longer. Page after page about political shenanigans. That might have been okay, but the book doesn't even tell you much about what life in China was like at that time. The behavior of the government officials during that time at that place were pretty much like what goes on today in governments or any bureaucracy for that matter. If anything, the book shows that it's pretty much the same story no matter where or when. What a stifling position it was to be an emperor at that time - a life of obligatory ritual after ritual. At any rate, my main criticism is that I feel I learned precious little about China, much less the China of the Ming dynasty.

Dr. Hall has done a superb work by fitting all the pieces that are needed for a successful software risk management. The way this book is explained is fairly comprehensive, going from a high level view, and later "drilling down" into important particular concepts.
You can not go wrong following the "Managing Risk" methodology when developing your next project, especially under the current international regulations and standards for corporate governance...

If you are contemplating purchasing this book, it must be because it's required reading in a class (as it was for me). I cannot imagine anyone purchasing it for any other reason. It seems inconceivable that a book so poorly written could make it past the editors. The author seems to have no concept of appropriate verb tenses, switching between present, past, and conditional repeatedly within paragraphs, adding to the confusion of trying to understand what in the world she's talking about. The vocabulary is extremely technical, and the author seems to operate with the concept of never using simple terms when you can use complicated ones.

This book introduces three methods to promote understanding of software risk management: the 6-D Model, the P2I2 Success Formula, and the Risk Management Map. The 6-D Model extends the Deming Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle by adding the ability to reveal risk and opportunity. The P2I2 is a cause-effect diagram that relates the factors influencing risk management capability, by distributing the task of managing risk according to four major factors: people, process, infrastructure and implementation. Using this divide-and-conquer approach, parallel efforts can speed the adoption of risk management within an organization. The Risk Management Map synchronizes these efforts by proving direction through five evolutionary stages: problem, mitigation, prevention, anticipation, and opportunity.

This book assumes that you already have risk management experience. It shouldn't be your first reading on risk management.

An excellent resource. It presents very practical methods for project manager who wants to mange project risk proactively.

Shows how to establish and manage a comprehensive risk management program. The basis of Ms. Hall's approach is called "P2I2", which stands for Process, People, Infrastructure and Implementation. Within these processes are subprocesses and tasks that, as a whole, will result in a risk management posture that is seamlessly integrated into a development project. Although this book is about managing software development project risks, the approach can be applied to any type of project, and can also be tailored to work in an operational or production environment. For example, implementation plans and change control in the operational environment require a risk management strategy, and the methods provided in this book will fill the void with no modification of the basic P2I2 approach.

The process portion of P2I2 consists of 5-steps for managing risks: identify, analyze, plan, track and resolve. For those who manage projects in accordance with the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) processes, the P2I2 on the surface appears different from the 6 steps set forth in the PMBOK. The key difference between the two is the PMBOK's risk management approach groups 5 processes into project planning and 1 into project control, while the P2I2 approach takes a more holistic view and incorporates risk management across the entire project life cycle. If you are striving for or working within the Capability Maturity Model at level 3 or above, then this book is essential and perfectly aligns. The book devotes a chapter to each of the processes, which clearly identifies the what's and how's of each. Note that the book does not cover advanced risk management techniques, such as probability curves - you will need to obtain this information elsewhere. It does give qualitative techniques, and gives quantitative methods to assess ROI for the risk management initiative itself, as well as other metrics to prove its effectiveness or lack thereof.

Implementing the risk management infrastructure is covered in great detail and is a roadmap for making risk management an integral part of your project. It starts with developing a policy, defining standard processes to be employed, training your team and compliance verification and continuous improvement methods. This material spans five chapters, which sets the foundation for the next five chapters that address implementation of the program itself. These chapters cover establishing the initiative, developing the plan, tailoring the process to your environment, and assessing and controlling risks. The last two are excellent primers on their topics.

The remaining five chapters are devoted to the people part of P2I2, and are broken down into stages, each discussed in its own chapter. The stages are: problem, mitigation, prevention, anticipation and opportunity. Each is thoroughly discussed and taken together these last chapters clearly show roles, issues and factors, and how human resources are integrated into a coherent and holistic risk management initiative.

This book is clearly written and well illustrated. The approach is not only practical, it's essential to ensuring the success of any specific project or extended to encompass a development organization. Moreover, it is also essential for any organization that wants to attain CMM level 4 or 5.

It is hard to remember what the safety world was like before this book. Over 10 years on, while Ch 7 has dated, the rest remains essential reading. My personal best 'swiss cheese conference' was one in which 5 presenters referenced Reason's most famous model.

While this book is thoughtful and well written, it fails to live up to its title: MANAGING the Risks of Organizational Accidents. It talks about accidents (I like failure better), it describes the various ways they occur, and it gives many examples. But nowhere does the author distill his insights and theories into a management strategy for preventing failures and/or managing or containing them once the genie is out of the bottle. I consider that a failure on his part, because he is an indisputable expert in this field of study. So, if you want to know ABOUT organizational failures and breakdowns (as opposed to individual failures), this book is worth reading. If you want to know what the organization's management team should do after knowing ABOUT all the ways their company can fail, don't expect to find it in this book. I read it twice and read some chapters three times. It isn't there.

This book is a must for anyone who is interested in understanding the organizational factors involved in accidents. It presents a clear picture of what the basic issue is with safety. It helps significantly in the understanding of what must be done in order to manage safety appropriatley. It presents principles that are applicable to all type of industries. I think the fact that an effective book on safety can be written by a psychologist emphasises the role people play in the safety process.

This is a landmark book by the renowned expert and guru on human error, Professor James Reason. The author methodically, step-by-step, explains how the various defenses erected to prevent accidents can be breached in the highly technologically advanced and hazardous industries. Using the famous "Swiss Cheese" model to illustrate his point, he outlines how latent defects can conspire with active failures to result in accidents. Professor Reason's arguments, proposals and conclusions are persuasive and logical and are presented in an easy to follow and understand format.

According to Reason, error management includes measure to reduce the error susceptibility of particular tasks or task elements; determine, assess and then remove error-producing factors within the workplace; identify organisational issues that generate error-producing factors within the individual, the team, the task or the workplace; improve error detection; increase the error tolerance of the workplace or system; make latent conditions more visible to those who operate and manage the system; improve the organisation's intrinsic resistance to human fallibility.

It is important that organisations balance profit and costs, and try to ensure that the defences which are put in place are the most cost-effective in terms of trapping errors and preventing catastrophic outcomes.

Professor James Reason of Manchester University, is a giant in dealing with the human error. His famous book "HUMAN ERROR", first published in 1990, was an instant hit with the safety professionals and until today, remains an authoritative reference for anyone who wants to know more about human errors and human failings.

In 1997, Reason published yet another hit - "MANAGING THE RISKS OF ORGANIZATIONAL ACCIDENTS". This book, as Reason puts it, ... aimed at the "real people" and especially those whose daily business is to think about, and manage or regulate, the risk of hazardous technologies - like commercial aviation - our business.

Yes, this book is meant for the bosses, the Chairman, the CEO, all the Presidents, Executive Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents and last but not least --- (if you are in the air transport business) --- the pilots in the flight deck - as the "Sharp End Operators" and the "Last Line Defenders" to fight against of all the possible latent errors and threats made long before we step into the flightdeck, but expect us to put a stop to any possible mishap from happening when the situation arises!

Professor Reason uses his now popular "Swiss Cheese" Model of Defence to explain the nature of those "latent threats" or "latent errors" lurking in our air transport organization (and others), waiting to spring on us when the time and opportunity present themselves.

Reason argues that highly hazardous technological industry like the air transport industry, (nuclear and chemical plants as well etc.) are usually protected with layers of strong defences..

Let me try to illustrate; let's say we have a lot of hazards to contain on the left hand side of this page, and the losses (if the hazards are not contained and causing accidents) are on the right hand side of this same page. Our defences are like layers of steel plates erected between the hazards and losses to protect them from meeting (liken to be like a light beam shining through).

In real life, these steel plates are both "hardware" and "software". Hardware are, for example better designed modern airplanes with many safety features incorporated from experiences gained over the last few decades of air transport operations, better human-engineering to prevent human factor related errors from being committed. Having better equipment to forecast weather better, better equipment to detect and forewarn the pilots of impending collision with other traffic or terrain etc.

Software, on the other hand, are people themselves, plus philosophy, policy and enforcing procedures to promote safety, implementing safety rules and regulations and practices to guard against accidents from happening.

Well and good, to be fair, all these work pretty well most of the time. That's why you don't get to see many air disasters, nuclear plant accidents, or offshore oil rig disasters very often. Reason, however, argues these "steel plates" are not hole-proof, there are in fact, full of "holes", caused by latent threats and errors, such as company pressure, tight schedules, awkward rules that are hard to follow, long working hours, inadequate rest, lack of on-going trainings, or lack of safety awareness practices, impractical fuel policy etc.

These "holes" in the steel plates expand or shrink depend on prevailing conditions. The holes are "latent threats and errors" built-in to the system, they alone will not cause accidents (not all the plates) but when coupled with some "active failures", (the remaining plates) such as human errors, lapses or slips in the system, in the right place and at the right time, the imaginary light from the left hand "hazards" side, will shine through these porous steel plates and light up the right hand "losses" side, an accident happens! But when it does happen, it is certainly a "Big Bang" headline news, which is usually coupled with heavy human death toll and colossal hardware losses.

Professor Reason deals specifically with the latent threats rather than the active failures, because, as in the Swiss Cheese Model, all you need to do is to make one of the steel plate hole-proof and the error chain is broken, thus preventing a disaster from occurring. Simple as that. Active failures will be dealt with elsewhere..

To sum up, this book covers hazards, defences and losses in all the hazardous high technology industries, it also points out reasons why sometimes these defences are penetrated and defeated. In fact Reason says some of these defences are themselves dangerous! He also talks of the human contribution to the breakdown in the defences, even maintenance, the very reason for maintenance is to ensure safety and reliability of the systems we built, itself can cause accidents if negligence seeps in. He offers practical guides to error management, and finally, how to engineer a safety culture to prevent "Big Bangs" from happening.

A highly recommended reference for those who take flight safety business seriously.

Eddie

Alex Lipton's Mathematical Methods for Foreign Exchange: A Financial Engineer's Approach is a comprehensive study of models used in practice for the pricing and hedging of derivatives. Despite the focus on foreign exchange, the methods detailed in the work go far beyond FX to apply to a number of other asset classes (e.g. equity, commodity, and some fixed income and credit derivatives). The core of the book applies the theory of parabolic partial differential equations to solve a vast number of problems that arise in the pricing of European and path-dependent options. It is difficult to find all the methods covered in the book treated in one place, and many are not documented elsewhere.

The emphasis is on a mathematical treatment that highlights the structure of the problems at hand, not on numerical solutions to these problems. Important though numerical solutions are in their own right, they are far less illuminating in understanding the problem itself, and can easily be obtained with the appropriate mathematical tools, developed in this book, at one's disposal. The value of the work is further enhanced by the meticulous referencing and extensive bibliography that it provides.

Having worked in the industry as a quant in foreign exchange, and in academia, I can strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in a rigorous mathematical treatment of the problems arising in the pricing and hedging of derivatives.

A highly detailed mathematical book on exchange rates. I'm not qualified to review the quality of the work, but just be clear that this is high level stuff only appropriate to quants.

Dear Mr. Lipton,

I will try to write from my hearth.

It is beyond any doubt that you have a deep understanding and knowledge about fx option pricing models. However, I feel that you are not sharing that knowledge with us, as a good teacher would do.

What is missing in your book is some fine examples of the complete procedure, for an example for the Heston model. The best book I have read on this topic is "Inside Volatility Arbitrage". The only thing missing in that book, is the code for actual parameter optimization. It is mentioned that the optimization is done with Powels method from Numerical Recipes in C, however how the initial solution is guessed is not specified. Even still one can try brute force searching in parameter space as a initial guess. Other methods exist also. Either way, "Inside Volatility Arbitrage" is a fine book on this topic.

I'm sure sure that you are extremely well acquainted with the numerical procedure and difficulties in option valuation, therefore because that part is really missing in your book I must conclude that you are not really sharing your deep knowledge with us, trough your book. Therefore I must value your book with only 2 stars.

With Kind Regards,
Aleksandar Mojancevski

I have been using this book since I was a graduate student and, now working as a quant, I always keep it handy. The various techniques I have learned from this book helped me to solve a lot of problems related to financial engineering which I have encountered in my both academic and professional career. The book covers a lot of advanced material, most of which is original and unique, starting from pricing path-dependent options in the discrete binomial model up to pricing path-dependent volatility products under stochastic volatility models. I will briefly go through the content of the book and make appropriate comments.

Chapters 1- 4) The author introduces the sufficient background which is necessary to solve financial problems arising by pricing and risk-managing of derivative securities, in particular, the stochastic calculus and backward/forward partial differential equations (PDE). By itself these topics are nowadays extremely broad and cannot be fully developed even within a series of books. In this book, only important results are given (and references for more specific texts are provided); these results will further be applied throughout the book and they include: basic properties of Brownian motion, connection between the diffusion problems and solutions to backward and forward Kolmogoroff equations, Ito's lemma, solution of SDE-s by discretization, solving PDE-s with Laplace and Fourier transforms, eigenfunction expansion.

In chapter 4, the author does tangentially mention about numerical solutions of PDE-s. Here, it is important to note that PDE numerical solution methods are outside of the scope of this book, although the author almost always presents the problem as a solution to certain PDE so a relevant PDE solver can always be applied, the main scope of this book are analytical methods for solving PDEs. However, the author does illustrate the Crank-Nicolson and Crayg-Sneyd ADI scheme, which are the methods of choice (whether robust or not) at the majority of Wall Street firms.

Chapters 5-6) The author fully develops the binomial model and carefully explains no-arbitrage pricing principles. What is important and, perhaps, is unique in his treatment of the binomial model is that he describes extensions of the model to the so-called implied trees, and, which is very important for pricing exotic options in the binomial model, he describes the augmentation principle to price path-dependent options, including American, asian, barrier, and lookback options.

Chapters 7-9) The author studies continuous time dynamics for FOREX evolution (although by no means is the treatment specific only to FOREX) and pricing principles for European options. He applies various techniques from applied mathematics to solve a variety of pricing problems, including multi-dimensional problems, in an efficient way. These highly useful techniques include non-dimensionalization, Laplace and Fourier transforms, approximations, Green's functions, or the state-price densities in the jargon of finance texts, which are extremely important for solving problems (and building analytics) in their generality .

Chapter 10) It is well known that often the pure log-normal model is not satisfactory in practice for pricing and risk-management of derivative deals. To go beyond the Black-Scholes model, the author introduces and discusses a number of possible alternative models for FOREX evolution and shows how to treat these alternative models efficiently using a variety of mathematical tools. In particular, he develops the analytics for the Heston model and derives perturbative expansions for general stochastic volatility models. He also uses this expansion to analyze the properties of the Heston model

Chapter 11) I think this is one of the most comprehensive treatments of options with American and Bermudian exercise. The author shows how to solve the problem using PDE, integral equation and approximation methods.

Chapters 12-13) These two chapters provide an extremely useful technique for solving a number of complicated problems arising by pricing path-dependent options. The author develops one of the most useful techniques for solving pricing problems of exotic options (and which is completely missing from other quant books) - the augmentation principle that involves introduction of the auxiliary variable describing some functional of the process (for example, its average, maximum, crossing times etc) and augmentation of the pricing PDE with an additional dimension representing the evolution of this auxiliary variable. This augmentation technique is applied to solve a number of problems including pricing of barrier, asian, lookback, Parisian, passport options etc. Let me also note that passport options were originated from the Bankers Trust and the author played a leading role in developing analytics, which is very thoroughly introduced in the book, for these products. He also describes some departures from the log-normal model and shows how to apply alternative models, for example, Heston and CEV models for pricing path-dependent options.

Chapter 13 provides one of the most comprehensive in the existing quant literature analytics for path-dependent options. I strongly disagree with one of the reviewers that the author does not explain the Heston model and I point out that the book the reviewer is referring to does not include application of Heston model to pricing forward-start options and options on the asset realized variance. The pricing of European options under the Heston model is by now well documented (needless to say that the author was one of the first to introduce now widely used pricing formula involving one integral as opposed to the original formula including two integrals), however in practice the Heston model is most often applied for pricing volatility products (forward-starts and options on the realized asset variance) and the author does develop the necessary analytics to solve these problems, the part which is missing from existing texts.

Finally, Chapter 14 discusses some advanced topics - hedging under model parameter misspecifications, liquidity risks, and counterparty defaults.

What makes working on this book enjoyable and rewarding (I must note that it is not a book for after-lunch reading but for hard studying) is that never does the author leave important steps in his derivations omitting rather lengthy but trivial results "for the sake of brevity". Also all author's derivations and conclusions are self-consistent and no external references are made to derive or substantiate a proposition so that you are never stuck with a problem for which you have to consult other texts (the practice which is often abused in most of the quant finance texts).

To conclude, the author, who is one of the top Wall Street quants and applied mathematicians, does not give you a ready solution, discuss a "model calibration" and provide with "code examples", instead he teaches you how to apply the best suited techniques to solve specific problems and makes you participate in his discussion by filling the gaps. For graduate students I can tell that the experience and analytical stamina you get after working on this book are much more valuable in your professional career perspective than all that "light" stuff, including model calibration and implied volatility parametrization, which you will read from some other "quant" books - you will quickly pick that up once you have started your professional quant career.

I own pretty much all of the books on quantitative finance
and this one holds a cherished place on my bookshelf.
Anybody either working as a quant or with aspirations to become one should dust off some space on their bookshelf as well.
Anybody who does serious research in finance in either academia or industry already knows that it is somewhat rare for top researchers to pen books of any length. Time is at a premium and the payoff to publishing journal articles or to finishing off code is typically much greater than it is for writing books.

This is what distinguishes this book from its competitors.
The author is well known in financial circles as one of a handful of quants who is capable of meaningfully contributing new results to this fascinating field. The book contains many results which cannot be found elsewhere in the public domain.
Although the book title suggests that the results apply only to
foreign exchange, it is straightforward to adapt the results to

equities, commodities, and many other underlyings.

Wall Street is a very secretive place and it is not easy to get a glimpse of the kind of things that consume a quant's time.
I suspect that the only reason that this book was able to come to light is due to the acquisition of Banker's Trust, the author's former employer. Banker's was well known to be a fertile training ground for the best derivative minds and this book should prove to be a lasting legacy to that view.

Very readable coverage of Capacity Planning and Performance Management. Doesn't presume any previous knowledge, but doesn't talk down either. Several good chapters talking about queueing theory.
A great practical handbook.

With Wall Street analysts drives the planning horizon, Management prefers getting a sense of direction quickly and repeatedly, instead of belated precise readings of compass bearing. It is in this agile and opportunistic spirit and philosophy that Dr. Gunther introduces Excel, linear regression, and 2 parameter scalability models into the performance analysts' tool chest.

Excel is ubiquitous. It is also easy to use. Use it. If there is sufficient time, better tools such as R or Mathematica can be used to cross-check Excel results. Similarly, linear regression is another tool in the agile performance analysts' tool chest.

Two chapters I have not seen presented elsewhere are the virtualization spectrum and effective demand. In a prior job, having virtualization spectrum chapter available to me would have save me much grief with an workload manager. The effective demand makes another useful capacity project tool to keep handy.

The best part is Dr. Gunther's 2 parameter universal scalability model. It can be immediately used to frame your load testing results to project application scalability. This alone is worth the cost of the book and admission to his classes.

Conjecture 4.1 on page 65 on 2 parameters are necessary and sufficient for scalability model based on rational functions are an interesting open questions. Given that the denominator is a quadratic equation with c = 1, we should be able to argue that it behaves like a parabola, except with c = 1, we won't get into singularity/infinity. For more details, please see Dr. Gunther's blog at

[...]

I've read the other reviews and they seem to ignore the "Guerrilla" concept. The fact that scientific analysis is ignored and decisions made on perceived knowledge in most companies for me is the key to the book. Excel is a great way to get the performance point across even with precision errors. Getting management buy in is 99% of the process. GCP makes that argument simple. Read this book and get the word out. Performance is not linear!

First of all, this book was worth the money I spent on it. I came away from reading this book with a clear understanding of the differences between speed and scale, and with a system for modelling the scalability of systems in general.

However... really all of this value was in the first quarter of the book. I read on and read on looking for further conceptual gems but they weren't to be found.

I guess that books are "meant" to be at least a particular length, but this one could have been much shorter and more concise.

I've only given this three stars because it isn't really a self-contained capacity planning "textbook". In conjunction with "Analyzing Computer Systems Performance: With Perl: PDQ", one can "figure out" how to do capacity planning. But neither of these books is really a "textbook" -- they're more a collection of lectures, previous papers, case studies, and irrelevant diversions away from computer capacity planning into physics.

On the plus side, there are quite a few unique contributions that Dr. Gunther has made in this book, and his two previous books. For example, I have not found either his use of the gamma distribution for computing quantiles of response time distributions or his "universal scalability model" anywhere else. As far as I know, his course, also called "Guerrilla Capacity Planning", is the only place you can learn to do capacity planning outside of a university, and his "Perl::PDQ" package is the only open source analytical modeling tool set available. And his analysis of the capacity effects of hyperthreading in "Guerrilla Capacity Planning" is much better than anything I've seen elsewhere. It's too bad Intel didn't have his expertise available when they developed hyperthreading. :)

Finally, some very specific criticisms of the "Universal Scalability Model". First of all, as Dr. Gunther takes great pains to point out, Microsoft Excel does not do a very good job of calculating it. He even has an appendix with Mathematica code to redo one of the examples, showing how inaccurate the Excel version is. Why, then, does he *use* Microsoft Excel? Why did he not include Perl code that does a better job? Why did he not add a module for the Universal Scalability Model to Perl::PDQ? There are plenty of statistical libraries for Perl available on CPAN; I'm sure he could have found a non-linear least squares routine there.

Second, and much more serious, Dr. Gunther advocates fitting the Universal Scalability Model to test data, and then *extrapolating* the results to project the capacity of a system to values outside of the range of the test data! This is absolutely, positively the wrong thing to do!

If the model were *linear*, such extrapolation could be valid over some limited range. But the model isn't linear, it's highly non-linear. And the parameters of the model are in the *denominator* -- *small* changes in the parameter values cause *large* changes in the projected capacity of a system! That makes extrapolation even more risky.

In spite of this, I think the Universal Scalability Model is an important contribution to capacity planning practice when used properly -- for an initial diagnosis of the nature of the bottlenecks in a system, or to estimate the capacity of a system *within the range of available test data.* It's also a good way to characterize the potential scalability of a workload from easily obtained data.

This newest addition to the ISO 14000 collection is particularly valuable for its treatment of the many subjects that are touched by and which in turn shape the uses and benefits of ISO 14000. The various summaries and discussions including risk management strategies, brownfields, USEPA Voluntary Programs, audit disclosure policies and many others, enrich the reader's understanding of the many subtests and cross-currents that influence the acceptance and fortunes of ISO 14000. Messrs. Voorhees and Woellner have given us more than just another text describing ISO 14000, they have given us a view of the complex environmental seas, which ISO 14000 is now negotiating not without some effort. While many of us believe it will succeed and even triumph, knowing what's out there and charting a proper course will certainly improve the odds. This volume can be very useful in charting that course.

This a best book that i have ever gone through and can be useful to any common man with minimum knowledge. I hope this best book to guide your self into safe conditions if you are operating an industry.

As a professional risk manager, I found "International Environmental Risk Management," a recent book by John Voorhees and Robert Woellner, an incredibly insightful tool in helping me address environmental problems within multinational corporations.

The authors evaluate and address environmental risk in a symptomatic way, based on the management system developed by the International Standards Organization headquartered in Switzerland. John Voorhees and Robert Woellner are seasoned professionals who have extensive experience in resolving environmental problems and focus upon the ISO 14000 systems approach. With Voorhees' legal experience and Woellner's analytical and risk-assessment background, readers receive a compelling approach to prepare for, anticipate and resolve environmental issues.

Applying the ISO 14000 systems approach to a global business-strategy is clearly the wave of the future. Reading this book will prepare you for this future by managing your environmental risk today. The protection offered is well worth the price of this excellent book.

Notwithstanding the comments from other reviewers, the authors fall a bit short of expectations. Several chapters are too short (voluntary programs and gap analyses as examples), and references are less than complete. The authors could have devoted more time to this important and much read subject matter.

There are other more comprehensive books: The ISO 14000 Guide (Cascio) and Inside ISO 14000 (Sayer).

Notwithstanding the comments from other reviewers, the authors fall a bit short of expectations. Several chapters are too short (voluntary programs and gap analyses as examples), and references are less than complete. The authors could have devoted more time to this important and much read subject matter.

There are other more comprehensive books: The ISO 14000 Guide (Cascio) and Inside ISO 14000 (Sayer).

A great collection of both fundamental and advanced probability concepts as applied to civil engineering design situations. This textbook was extremely useful during my undergraduate and graduate courses in probability as well as in more specialized courses in wind and seismic engineering. More importantly, I still find myself using this text now that I am out of college.

Wounderfully written textbook on a classic topic in engineering that will withstand the changes in technology and still prevail as some of the most important fundamentals in design methodology.

An indispensable reference book, it provides a great balance of theory, worked examples, and exercises that thoroughly explain basic concepts of probability and risk as encountered in Civil and Environmental Engineering. The first edition has been within arm's reach on my book shelf for 30 years. I wish all my engineering texts were so well written.

This is a good textbook for teaching, and not as good of a source for research for real world application reference material, which is what I try to maintain a library to utilize. Very basic material coverage, good for students.

I have used this book and Vol 2 in my graduate and undergraduate courses. Having used a variety of texts for teaching and learning about probability and statistics in an engineering context, I would say the two volumes by Ang and Tang have no rivals. Lots and lots of good engineering type problems.

Alhough Ang and Tang's Volumes I and II are already over 20 years old, I consider these books as one of the best on probabilistic design methods in civil engineering. The books cover topics such as 'statistical decision analysis (including CBA, MCA, MCDM)', 'queueing models', 'extreme value theory', 'Monte Carlo simulation', 'failure probability calculation' and 'system reliability techniques'. A huge amount of examples are embedded in the theory. They are ideal to be used as examination questions (which the reviewer succesfully does for his courses on 'Probabilistic Design' and 'Probabilistic Design in Hydraulic Engineering' at TU Delft, The Netherlands).

Civil engineers with an interest in design of maritime -, hydraulic - and coastal structures will miss the probabilistic description of sea waves and current loads. The second edition (2000) of Goda may fill this gap (available at Amazon under 981023256X). Engineers interested in probabilistic description of structural dynamics are referred to the second edition (2004) of YK Lin and GQ Cai (available at Amazon under 0071438009). The connection of probability theory with finite element models (one of the reviewer's main fields of interest) is not covered by the above mentioned books. Something for Volume III...?

This is an excellent book. It contains incredibly much information in a modest volume: a lot of references, has practical observations (for example, Blazek mentioned carbuncle effect near axis of symmetry for blunted bodies stemmed from usage of Roe approximate Riemann solvers), gives a good piece of practicle advice for many areas such as grid generation, boundary conditions, etc. As this book is to be considered as a reference book, some themes left beyond it's scope, for example, Blazek only slightly mentioned ENO schemes without explaining it in details. The included CD contains codes only for explicit 1D and 2D structured and unstructured Euler and Navier-Stokes solvers, but this is a good starting point for those who want to write his/her own CFD code. The book itself contains some information on sparse system solvers and an attentive reader could rewrite codes to use implicit schemes.

The book falls short of explaining application in a numeric fashion. For this you have to consult the CD which does not owe itself to much use if you don't have a UNIX system or the hacks for windows to emulate. After four or so hours of searching hateful FTP site for what I needed I gave up and shelved the book, explains why there is an abundance of used ones. Oh, and there is no web site, support, or any place to send an email to get help, so forget that. The similar computation is explained in a short order in "Centrifugal Compressors: a basic guide" if you don't want to spend 175 bucks.

Blazek has done a really great job of providing a well rounded reference text of the current state of finite volume related CFD algorithms and techniques. He treats almost all solution related aspects, ranging from discretization to solution acceleration. The mathematics underlying each is given in a clear and consistent manner, and is accompanied by useful commentary (for those new to an area) as well as quite an extensive reference list for those required additional information. This is truly a superb buy for students, lecturers and those researching CFD!

The book gives a very good and detailed overview of current finite-volume CFD methods. I like very much the chapters about the different discretization schemes. Principles of cell-vertex, centred schemes and various control volumes, structured, unstructured are explained very clearly. From my point of view the book brings me to write a CFD code to understand numerical principles much better.

Brodersen, Braunschweig, Germany

I find this book to be excellent. I would not use it as an introductory book because I think Versteeg and Malalasekera is better suited for that. However, having said that, I think this book brings the entire topic into perspective quite nicely. As far as organization and topics, there is no other book on FCVM that includes so much in such a nice way. The reference section in the back of each chapter is incredible. Here is my suggestion, buy Versteeg and Malalasekera to start out, then get this book to get an overall perspective of the subject. It's possible that you may still find this book difficult to read. In that case, try reading some chapters out of Tannehill et al before you make the complete jump.

This book is one of the better overall references I have seen for persons dealing with physical protective security systems. The Threat Definition and Target Identification sections are of particular interest, as is the general overview of physical protection systems which are broken into the Detection-Delay-Response areas for ease of reading. Mary Garcia presents a systematic process for identifying objectives of the physical protective system through design and evaluation.

Whilst the practicality of the EASI Computer Model for analysis is questionable for many organisations, it is worth being aware of the methodology as an extra tool for the evaluation of physical systems.

Despite this, the book is an excellent reference that will be continually pulled off the shelf and used.

I requested the book to be expedite and it arrived as expected. The book was in great condition. I am very satisfied with this purchase.

The recent tragedy of New York and Washington has emphasised the considerable need for this excellent book on physical security. Mary Lynn Garcia is to be congratulated on producing a book on physical protection systems that is design-based and is driven by principle rather than application. As a senior member of the technical staff at Sandia National laboratories, Mary Lynn Garcia is well placed to have knowledge of best practice in design of systems, and the development of principles of asset protection. This book is markedly unique from other security publications on the market as it provides a well-structured and rigorous discussion of the major components of the principles of the protection of assets. The book entitled The Design and Evaluation of Physical Protection Systems by Mary Lynn Garcia has raised the standard of security references and texts to new quantum levels of quality and detail.

The design and evaluation process for physical protection systems is presented early in the book and provides astructured approach to the protection of assets. I am personally pleased to see that the defence in depth strategy of detection, delay and response has been applied as the foundation for the structured approaches to asset protection. The chosen approach features the major components of System Objectives, Design of Physical Protection Systems, and Analysis and Evaluation. This structure has the capacity to direct the readerr in a systematic and logical manner to the desired outcomes of the defence in depth strategy. A detailed account of the systematics of asset protection allows a well=balanced account of theory and application to be presented. An attractive feature of the book is the discussion on the computer analytical models for analysis, and the relationship of risk assessment to asst protection outcomes. The book contains review questions at the conclusion of each chapter, a glossary of terms for the unfamiliar reader, and several appendices of useful information relating to threat and analysis of risk.

...This book will prove to be most valuable for a range of academic, managerial, and practitionar personnel who have responsibility for asset protection, and should be in all major libraries and acquired by everyone with an interest in physical security.

Dr Clifton Smith
Associate Professor
Edith Cowan University
Perth, Western Australia

This book not only gives you a broad idea of what security is, but is very practical using it in your work, e.g. risk analysis. It is helping me a lot.
Best Buy!

Dr.Abernethy covers all of the bases on Weibull functions as well as some very down to earth commentary on Weibull's history. The usefulness of Weibull functions are explained clearly with good examples of real-world applications. If you are involved in any way with Weibull analysis or life stress analysis, this book is a must have for your bookshelf/desk/lab.

Very happy with this book. It arrived in very good time and in excellent condition.

If you are a reliability practioner in any field (mechanical, electonic, etc.) in most indutries(automobile, aerospace, powerplants, chipmakers, off-highway, medical) you will find the tools given in this text to be helpful in solving REAL problems you encounter. This text is not for the casual reader, it takes in depth reading and simulatneous use of the tools provided to master the subject. The text and tools have been developed after over 30 years of Weibull use IN THE FIELD. This use has been brought together by the author from the industries and areas mentioned. Terrific job!

The book has some interesting and powerful information. However, without the software to crunch the numbers, this book is worthless from a practical standpoint.