Modeling

This little booklet is best to be read at the bookstore.

There is no need to buy. In fact, buying it is a waste
of money, given the $[money] price tag. That is about a $[money]
a page.

So, save your money and time...

I read this book because I am starting academic research on search engines. It was one of my first books on the subject. It actually deals with two aspects: (1) relevant issues in search engine design, and (2) a mathematically sound approach in building and querying large index strucutres. The explanation in the book on both aspects is short but to the point and explained in an understandable way. It also contains a short list + description of some key references. Great !

I found this book disappointing and wondered why I would ever need to use Rational Rose. For a start, the examples in the appendices of code generation are for C++ and Visual Basic. Whatever happened to Java? Second, probably the most important design technique in use today, Design Patterns, hardly gets a mention on p175, with a reference to read the GoF book.

So what are we left with? Old-fashioned programming languages and techniques. Buy a book on Java design patterns instead, of which Amazon sells several.

Rational Rose is a powerful tool, but like most such tools, it can be intimidating. The Unified Modeling Language or UML is also complex, so the combination can pose a problem for even the bravest of developers. Fortunately, this book is available to step you through the initial phases of beginning a project using the combination of UML with Rational Rose.
The form of the explanations is demonstrated by the example on page 136.

Creating Start States in Rational Rose
1. Click to select the Start icon from the toolbar.
2. Click on the statechart diagram to draw the Start icon.
3. Click to select the State Transition icon from the toolbar.
4. Click on the Start icon and drag the arrow to the desired state.

And there is a diagram following it that is an example of what the result should look like. Since all of the major areas of design are covered, with this book, some knowledge of the UML and a copy of Rational Rose, even the visual modeling beginner can begin creating their designs with almost no preparation.
There are those who will say that this book is too simplistic in tone. My response is to commend them for their abilities and to recommend another book. However, for all who are just beginning their relationship with Rational Rose, I strongly recommend this one.

Very overpriced, this book is just a set of repetitive 'advice'.
A lot of errors make it unreliable. I can't understand why the author keeps affirming that the 'DNS TCP port' is port 43 !!, unbelievable from a [pricey]book (from any book indeed !).
Not a single worthy 'real example' but only two trivial 'case studies' full of 'advice' with no details.
Lost my money.

This book is way vague. No specific examples, mainly lengthy hot air explinations of the theory of NAT. For (price) bucks, I would rather have bought a Cisco specific handbook. If you do NAT at work and need a few pointers and pratical solutions, this book is not for you.

If it was on Survivor, it would have been voted off the first day.

I picked up the book hoping to learn stuff about NAT that I didn't already know. Unfortunately, I found that I was reading a lot about basic concepts that anyone who is going to use NAT should already know. Sections about the IP protocol and TCP headers! At one point, the author says ARP is part of the invisible data link operations. Who is going to use NAT and not know about ARP??? Most of the book is about 5 main points about NAT rehashed over and over again. NAT is pretty simple; if Kernighan & Ritchie could get away with a book a quarter of the size of the NAT book, Dutcher (the auther of NAT Handbook) must have gotten paid by the page.

In my opinion, this book is below average. According to the chapters it covers, this should be a book for beginners at programming. But by reading the book, only non-beginners would be able to follow all the examples. Rather than rely on the feedback of one person, I will give you the feedback of the students that I taught with this book. Most students beginning a programming class will have a hard time understanding this book that assumes that you already know a lot about math and logic. When I tried assigning homework from this book, most of my students had problems just understanding what the math and logic of the problem would require, and couldn't concentrate on the programming concepts. There are quite a number of inaccuracies in it as well, such as it's miscalling preprocessor directives a compiler directive. It also calls an array a data type which it is not, it is a data structure. It also calls the exponent of a scientific notation a characteristic. That term is only used in the natural science community. Even the IEEE standard for floating-point numbers calls it exponent and not characteristic. One of its first examples starts with a standard input statement without prompting the user with what input the program expects. These little annoying problems with this book have caused me to abandon it all together. I would much rather recommend Diane Zak's Fundamentals of Programming in C++ if you are a beginner to programming.

This book was required for the first semester programming class. Now I was able to understand 'cause I was in CS and had been programming for 10 years. But the history majors in my class were crying cause this book couldn't really explain the basic concepts. many of the intro to programming classes are core classes in Univs in US. So, a guy who's in CS, I assume wouldn't have any problem cause it's way too low level for him. Whereas those who really need this book..Art majors, or those who want to learn what programming in C++ is..will have a tough time..

I wouldn't recommend this book..cause it's too poor for a guy who knows C++ and too tough for those who don't.. They haven't been able to get that balance.

Another interesting point I was able to observe was that this text gives all source code example with Visual C++ in mind. Most of the Univs in US prefer to teach this course on Unix platforms, and so a book more relevent to Unix would be appropriate.

I give it 2 stars, cause it isn't all that bad a book that doesn't make sense. I still go back to it sometimes to look up the syntax and some basic stuff..But nothing more than that.

This book was required for a C++ course I attended at the local community college. I had been doing some minor programming in other languages but felt I needed at solid foundation in C++. This book would have been a difficult place to start. However, thanks to a talented and very patient instructor, the entire class did well. I would have given at least a four star rating but this Addison/Wesley paperback was very poorly published. Pages fell out daily throughout the semester. Have some tape and glue handy.

I would have to say that i'm very much angered by the poor quality of this "textbook", if it can be called a textbook. A textbook, by definition, should try to explain everything in detail as much as possible and convey the concepts in a clear and well-illustrated manner. On the contrary, this book is full of partial details in long-winded sentences, which makes a already hard topic even more difficult to follow. As a textbook, it is counter-productive. Maybe the author dont want to bother, but the lack of detail and jumping of thought is striking in this book, not to mention the incomplete, half-baked C-like Java code that does not even compile. It is a shame that it is used as a textbook anywhere, it is even a bigger shame that some school selects it as textbook for the reason other than academic.

I was required to get this book for my CS344 class and so far I don't like this book at all. The exercises at the end of each chapter aren't good problems. Don't get it unless, like me, you have to.

Dr. Shaffer presents the topic of data structures along with the tools to perform critical analysis of algorithms. This combination of design and analysis makes this book a useful tool for teaching a second year Data Structures course. He was writing this book while teaching my class at Virginia Tech, and I found that he incorporated student feedback effectively. At the time, any errors a student found and was the first to bring to his attention got you a brand new quarter. ;)

The book gets fours stars due to the use of advanced C++ programming techniques that can be confusing to a casual or beginning C++ programmer. However, the interested student will learn a few tricks of the trade if the code examples are given a careful read. Overall, the book is a useful reference for accomplished C++ programmers or others attempting to learn the basics of algorithms analysis. Dr. Shaffer has also implemented data structure visualization software that was useful for understanding the behavior of different algorithms...

I just got complained about not following this textbook in the course of "Data structure". In the first six weeks of this semester, I have to stuff the students with supplementary materials about how to define a class, how to use a class in a program, what is the relatioship between class and object, what is the hell "abstract data type" thing to do with class, why use private access control while we want to know something. All these things are not supposed to cover in a semester for this course, I guess. However, most of my students have only "heard of" class and "public, private, protected", etc, which they had in their CS1/CS2 courses. After the first homework to learn how to define a class and use it a program, we are hoping we can go straightly with the five sructures. But surprisely from chapter 3, I found that I am preparing a "System Analysis and Design" class or maybe a "Software Engineering" class.

Sometime, I got stuck on the black-board, because I suddenly realized that the codes I just wrote down on the black-board contains infinite loop. For instance, this one on page150 in the third edition, quote:
"Examine this algorithm carefully and convince yourself that it is correct. Try cases where you are deleting the first item and the last item.
void SortedType::DeleteItem(ItemType item) {
int location = 0;
while(item.ComparedTo(info[location]) != EQUAL)
location++;
for(int index = location+1; index info[index-1] = info[index];
length--;
}
"
I am just wondering whether the authors have tried themselves to see what if this code is used to delete an item NOT in the list at all, and what if the list is thought to be empty but the item at the first slot of the array is coincide with "item"? Erros like these exist many places.

I personally dislike the textbook mostly because of its style. The authors use the same methodology in wrting the textbook for "Computer Science Illuminated", in which a lot of things are menioned but not detailed, and a (coding, logical, and presenting) style is not kept and changed without smooth transition for the treating similar things. This is especially the case in the chapters of Chapter 5, Chapter 7 and Chapter 8" when dealing with recurssively implementions of those structures.

Like another reviewer, I used this required text in a data structures course at the University of Maryland. I attend the University of Maryland through UMUC, the online unit of the school, so having a good text is very important. Unlike the other reviewer for the University of Maryland, I very much disliked this book.

A prerequisite to this course is an introductory C++ course that uses "Programming and Problem Solving with C++" which Nell Dale co-authored. I found "Programming and Problem Solving" to be pretty good and I earned a strong 'A' in the course.

This book however was awful. Put simply, the material was too difficult to understand. My average at the end of the course would have earned me an F if the final grades hadn't been curved, which gave me a B.

Perhaps this material is too complex for a one-semester course. I am unable to make this call since I still don't understand any of it. Regardless, the book was written to teach various concepts in a one-semester course and it fails to do much else than to frustrate the student.

I've just finished a data structures course at the University of Maryland. This was the required text. This book "turned the light on" for me. Every other programming course/text I've had focused on the syntax of C++. This book focuses on the art of programming. The authors go to great pains to demonstrate program design independent of implementation. To do this, they place great emphasis on software engineering principles. Some students new to programming may not have a full appreciation for this methodology, but as a software tester, I completely understand and agree with the author's approach. First, design the program from the logical point of view. Then, build to the application level. With the understanding gained from the two previous steps, THEN make the implementation decisions. There is much more pseudocode than source code in each chapter. But the pseudocode is so complete that it is easily transformed into source. This book has helped me make the leap from being a mere "coder" to a fledging programmer. From conversations with senior programs at my job, this text covers all the most important data structures that every programmer should understand and be able to implement. I suspect that those reviewers who found this book unintelligible were too new to programming.

Frankly, I'm embarassed for the authors. I have the second edition, and it is rife with errors. It just illustrates what a PhD is worth these days. I held out hope that the enclosed CD would have a spreadsheet of value (as it implies in the text) but all that is included is the book in PDF format. Thanks guys, that's helpful! Your next book should be titled "How to lie on the cover about the contents".
I just don't know at whom they are targeting this book. Too basic for anyone in finance with a semester of accounting under his/her belt, maybe it's for kids in high school in Junior Achievement? People running Kool Aide stands?

I think we all know the market -- their students who are hosed into buying it. Click another link to get away from this book as fast as you can, so my suffering is for a purpose.

This book is practically useless for anybody who actually needs to do financial analysis and forecasting at work. 90% of us use spreadsheets for financial analysis and forecasting, and we end up working with complex spreadsheets which tie everything from complex sales forecasts to income statements to balance sheets to cash flow projections. I am still looking for an appropriate book and/or spreadsheet add-ons that will allow me to do this. I have been searching in vain for such a program and/or book. Does anybody know?

The section on spreadsheet is terribly outdated - obsolete even. It's pretty much like a basic reference for financial modelling but does not really provide the step by step approach to the topic. Sorry but I don't think you will find useful tips on financial forecasting here.

This author is not much of a writer or a teacher, this is not just my opinion, it is a fairly universal fact. Mr. Mortier has a strong reputation for his great quantity and consistency low quality/high price computer books. Please understand, this isn't your ordinary computer book - this one has been written by Shamms Mortier.

Shamms idea of teaching is to point out the onscreen buttons, and make the reader crank the parameters to their maximum settings to see what they do. Rarely does he explain the underlying concepts of the program or show the reader how to combine concepts to make something useful. Not to mention that his 'art' is of extremely poor taste and quality. This book is BAD. I have a couple working theories as how a book of this low quality was written. First of, Shamms Moritier must have left it to the last minute, the weekend before it was due. I also believe that his monitor must have broken down this weekend, or maybe he doesn't have a monitor, either way he sat down to write this book without the convience of a visual representation of the text. After typing up as much stuff that he could think of off the top of his head, he emailed this text off to the publisher.

This is the only explanation that covers all the facts, unless Shamms Mortier is a con-artist.

R. Shamms Mortier should reconsider his line of work. He has no business writing books that deal in computer graphics -a subject he obviously knows little to nothing about. His ideas are weak and his graphics are terrible. The average beginner can learn more from the Manuals included with RayDream Studio. I strongly reccomend the "Ray Dream Handbook" (available at amazon.com) it is far superior to any of the dribble that Mr. Mortier is spitting out.

This book is great! It heled me a bunch, I showeed some of my work to my boss and i got a promotion! But i really am a comp freak if you arent you should never even consider this book.

This is way too expensive for a solutions manual. Plus it only gives solutions to every other odd problem. Not worth it for the amount of money they want. Save your money for a tutor.

If you got an "A" in all of your Calc. classes, you won't need this book. If you got "B"s or "C"s, and are looking for guidance from this solutions manual, you will get very little. This book skips to every 3rd problem (i.e. 3, 6, 9, 12, etc.) and barely explains the steps. It gives the solution, and maybe 1 or 2 steps along the way. That's it. This book is very thin, only about 125 pages, and was the most expensive of all the solutions manuals I've bought before. This book needs to be redone to mirror other solutions manuals, which give nearly complete solutions to ALL ODD NUMBER PROBLEMS. In my opinion, don't waste your money on this book, instead, make sure you have an excellent professor, or find a really good tutor.

the book is very thin.( a big stack of blank pages at the end to give weight) it could habe been part of the textbook. they just want more money although the book is very needed indeed

The book provides good reference information with regard to the basic price/yield equations, but John Martin gives short shrift to any discussion of the finance theory behind them. It is not just an academic issue since many instruments will trade a premium or discount to the prices implied by the basic equations.

Go with the classic: Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (5th Edition) -- by John C. Hull.

I agree with the Mr. Phillips about this book merely presenting the basic valuation equations, but I think that is the beauty of this book. Notice the title made a reference to this book beeing intended for 'non-quants'. However this book still provide 'quants' a valuable reference guide when one needs to brush up on the mechanics of a given derivative valuation.

This book is written from a risk-management practitioner point of view and as such it goes in great length in not just showing the different valuation models, which include most of the models in practice, but also the working mechanism of the specific securities market, and the associated exchange and clearing house settlement procedure. The key strong point of this book is that the author wrote every section of the book with conciseness and to the point. Each instrument's characteristics are presented, the associated equations are explained, and the spreadsheet models are shown in detail (included with the accompanying disk). After reading the book one is left with the feeling that finance is really this simple, involving setting the appropiate model to go with the relevant parameters,

One point regarding the editing: it was simply a great pleasure to browse this book. The clean layout of the book, the consistent sequence of presentation of the materials for all the instruments, and the detailed explaination of each of every equation (all the equations all the cells are shown) allows the reader to follow and comprehend the material with ease.

The contents of the books: market mechanism, valuation and model of interest rate forward, foreign exchange forward, equity forward, interest rate swap (the author is really an expert in these types of intruments, showing models of single-rate bond valuation method, simple offset valuation method, zero-coupon yields bootstrapping, zero-coupon yields: forward rate reinvestment, futures strip swap pricing, forward rate offset valuation method, zero-coupon valuation method), cross-currency swaps, equity swaps, equity options, interest rate options, currency options. The disk includes major valuation models of all the derivatives.(most requires just Excel 4.0 version)

Update: Since this book was published over a year ago, many other fine derivatives books have been published. However its straightforward simplicity still makes it a valuable part of a risk manager's personal library. One minor objection even at [...]its list price it is still priced a tad [...] for an introductory/intermediate level textbook. Anyone more quantitative-oriented, might want to check Cuthbertson's Financial Engineering and Risk Management. Comes with software and real life application examples.