Book Description
On average, a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds. In that short time, many doctors decide on the likely diagnosis and best treatment. Often, decisions made this way are correct, but at crucial moments they can also be wrong -- with catastrophic consequences. In this myth-shattering book, Jerome Groopman pinpoints the forces and thought processes behind the decisions doctors make. Groopman explores why doctors err and shows when and how they can -- with our help -- avoid snap judgments, embrace uncertainty, communicate effectively, and deploy other skills that can profoundly impact our health. This book is the first to describe in detail the warning signs of erroneous medical thinking and reveal how new technologies may actually hinder accurate diagnoses. How Doctors Think offers direct, intelligent questions patients can ask their doctors to help them get back on track.
Groopman draws on a wealth of research, extensive interviews with some of the country's best doctors, and his own experiences as a doctor and as a patient. He has learned many of the lessons in this book the hard way, from his own mistakes and from errors his doctors made in treating his own debilitating medical problems.
How Doctors Think reveals a profound new view of twenty-first-century medical practice, giving doctors and patients the vital information they need to make better judgments together.
Book Description
The most comprehensive survey of major theories and research on leadership and managerial effectiveness in organizations with practical suggestions for improving skills. Balancing theory and research with applications, the book addresses controversies and differing viewpoints about leadership effectiveness with a focus on the question of what makes a person an effective leader. Covering charismatic and transformational leadership as well as influence processes, it asks readers to identify effective and ineffective behavior by managers and to suggest ways to handle the situation. The fourth edition of Leadership in Organizations has been revised to reflect the progress that has been made in understanding leadership since the first edition. It provides more guidelines and recommendations for improving effectiveness without prescribing how a manager must behave. And, it covers "hot" topics, such as charismatic and transformational leadership, influence processes, leading teams, and leading change. An essential reference on management and leadership for every professional manager.
Customer Reviews:
Lots of great info..........2007-05-08
...but reads like a VCR manual. This was required reading for a management course at my college. Whenever there was a way around reading, I took it. I'm certain that my fellow students felt similarly. Sorry Mr. Yukl.
Good for everyone.......2006-03-04
I consider that this book was very helpful in the real life. It shows examples for all the theory that involves in each chapter. I am sure that professionals in organizations will learn very much from this reading.
Good Amazoner!.......2003-01-30
Didn't respond to email but did send the book and I'm very happy with the book! I would definitely recommend! Thank you!
weLEAD Book Review ..........2002-02-13
Yukl uses his expertise and credibility to write an outstanding book focusing on managerial leadership rather than social or parliamentary leadership. He attempts to include information on both the theory and practice of leadership in modern organizations. This valuable text also includes many recommendations and guidelines for improving the effectiveness of managers and leaders. The book includes a number of cases in an attempt to help the reader understand real world organizational problems and applications. This is a book that is primarily written and mostly reads like a college text book and is indeed used by a number of universities in their managerial or leadership programs. However, it is easy to read and does an excellent job of including the most informative and relative literature, studies and theories available today. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the study of organizational leadership, leading teams, leading change or studying follower-based approaches toward leadership.
Marc! Au Contrare!.......2001-07-18
Not worth curling up to a fire with? ...
For me, after a year or more I still read some portion or another of this book nearly every week for the rich survey of ideas and theories it provides, often finding something that fits what I'm concerned about, and then springboarding into buying another book or digging out original research articles and papers to dig deeper.
If you want to be widely informed about the full continuum of theory and research in leadership and organizations, this book will become a familiar resource, and a top choice for curling up to a fire one evening when alone and just paging through and finding something new or old you just have to read and think about some more.
Okay, perhaps Marc is more of a fun guy than me, but everything about leadership, and this book is full and pressed down overflowing with the material, interests me deeply.
Book Description
Whether challenged with taking on a startup, turning a business around, or inheriting a high-performing unit, a new leader's success or failure is determined within the first 90 days on the job.
In this hands-on guide, Michael Watkins, a noted expert on leadership transitions, offers proven strategies for moving successfully into a new role at any point in one's career. The First 90 Days provides a framework for transition acceleration that will help leaders diagnose their situations, craft winning transition strategies, and take charge quickly.
Practical examples illustrate how to learn about new organizations, build teams, create coalitions, secure early wins, and lay the foundation for longer-term success. In addition, Watkins provides strategies for avoiding the most common pitfalls new leaders encounter, and shows how individuals can protect themselves-emotionally as well as professionally-during what is often an intense and vulnerable period.
Concise and actionable, this is the survival guide no new leader should be without.
"Few companies develop a systematic 'on-boarding' process for their new leaders, even though this is a critical function with major organizational implications. Michael Watkins's The First 90 Days provides a powerful framework and strategies that will enable new leaders to take charge quickly. It is an invaluable tool for that most vulnerable time-the transition."
-Goli Darabi, Senior Vice President, Corporate Leadership & Succession Management, Fidelity Investments
"Every job-private- or public-sector, civilian or military-has its breakeven point, and everyone can accelerate their learning. Read this book at least twice: once before your next transition-before getting caught up in the whirl and blur of new faces, names, acronyms, and issues; then read it again after you've settled in, and consider how to accelerate transitions for your next new boss and for those who come to work for you."
-Colonel Eli Alford, U.S. Army
"Watkins provides an excellent road map, telling us what all new leaders need to know and do to accelerate their learning and success in a new role. The First 90 Days should be incorporated into every company's leadership development strategy, so that anyone making a transition in an organization can get up to speed quicker and smarter."
-Suzanne M. Danielle, Director of Global Leadership Development, Aventis
"Michael Watkins has nailed a huge corporate problem and provided the solution in one fell swoop. The pressure on new leaders to hit the ground running has never been greater, and the likelihood and cost of failure is escalating. Watkins's timing with The First 90 Days is impeccable."
-Gordon Curtis, Principal, Curtis Consulting
"The First 90 Days is a must-read for entrepreneurs. Anyone who's been the CEO of a start-up or early-stage company knows that you go through many 90-day leadership transitions in the course of a company's formative years. In this groundbreaking book, Michael Watkins provides crucial insights, as well as a toolkit of techniques, to enable you to accelerate through these transitions successfully."
-Mike Kinkead, President and CEO, timeBLASTER Corporation, serial entrepreneur, and Cofounder and Trustee, Massachusetts Software Council
Customer Reviews:
Good way to get prepared.......2007-07-04
It just makes sense, and is very thorough. Many things I would not have thought about, or gotten around to thinking about - we live in such a fast paced world that it would have been a challenge to do. Luckily, I had a cross country trip, so this gave me the time to read this book and compile my "list" of notes and apply them to my upcoming job change. Bottom line - many good new perspectives that I simply would not have thought of. Highly recommended.
Practical and Actionable. It is an excellent book on the subject of management transitions........2007-06-22
As a human resources professional, I have seen a great deal of management transition. Many succeed but some do not. Unfortunately for our people and our organizations those that do not leave a stream of damage in their wake.
Recently I wrote a review about Scott Eblin's, "The Next Level" and I called it a real disappointment. This book is not and it is a far more actionable and practical approach to managing transitions.
One of the reasons this book is so practical is that each section not only provides you with clear direction but each section also ends with an action checklist. This make creating a 90-day transition plan doable and improves your prospects for success.
Lastly, the steps from this book create a framework that a company can use to create a "transition strategy" for all its new and upwardly moving managers. This alone will enable a firm to increase their odds that a new hire or promotion will be in the "win" column.
*****First 90 Days.......2007-06-10
I only ordered this for a superior and he is VERY VERY happy with the book...he asked for it by name so we ordered three copies! Thank you for the great service you provide.
A Must Read.......2007-05-30
Great book for all business leaders who are advancing to a new role or coming from the outside into an organization. Simple, easy to read with pertinent lessons for a successful transition.
Some great tips, but often not well developed or organized.......2007-05-28
We bought this book along with the "New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan" and read them side by side.
Pro:
-"STaRS" concept is excellent. Start-ups, Turnarounds, Realignments and Sustaining success are all different scenarios that you might be thrown into, and the environment you join directly affects what you need to do.
-Checklists are helpful, when available, to boil thoughts down to the most essential elements
-There are many good tips interspersed throughout the book that are good reminders of the basics you need to adhere to in order to be successful
-Breaks the "sink or swim mindset" often associated with starting a new position
Con:
-Does not really address the time opportunity BEFORE you start a job and in my experience is a major lost opportunity that I've been able to surprise and delight. Set up pre-meetings, arranging for email/phone and a place to sit, etc. as a chance to listen and learn without the pressure to perform. Any items that can/should be done ahead of time appear to me as afterthoughts, underdeveloped, and often out of sequence in this text.
-Would not serve as a handy reference... better chapter summaries and a stronger introduction with time lines and meaty chapter outline would have been helpful both now and in the future
-I think that many good concepts like "STaRS" were underdeveloped or under leveraged... I sense more detail that was perhaps omitted
-To me, many of the illustrations were filler and did not offer additional information
-Sometimes poor or awkward word choice or idea sequence (e.g. rather than "Promote Yourself" why not just call it "Prepare Yourself" as this is what you are really saying, so why not just say it that way?)
-Real life examples were unnecessarily detailed, consuming time and space that I think could be better used by the author as he's clearly brilliant and has some great observations
-I think that the scope is too narrow, picks up after you've started the job (day 1) and neglects the opportunity (and chaos) beforehand of the interview, moving, doing "pre-work" to get your basics at work set-up
Bottom line: While there were some interesting moments, I was disappointed. The book does offer several cautionary tales of CEOs who crashed and burned, and if nothing else serves as both warning and motivation to be smarter about your transition.
Book Description
ASW's Introduction to Management Science: A Quantitative Approach to Decision Making provides thorough, application-oriented coverage in a very readable writing style. This is the leading text on the market. Simply put, it's a classic! The problem-scenario approach introduces quantitative procedures through situations that include both problem formulation and technique application. The extensive linear programming coverage includes problem formulation, computer solution, and practical application. The text covers transportation, assignment, and the integer programming extension of linear programming, as well as advanced topics like waiting line models, simulation, and decision analysis. A large selection of problems includes self-test problems with complete solutions and case problems. Excel spreadsheet appendices are included as well.
Customer Reviews:
Good program with textbook.......2007-08-22
I had to use this text for a sophmore level management science course. While the book is extensively detailed, it is written for graduate school level course work. The program that comes with the text is much more useful for the undergrad student tackling business statistics.
Graduate Students Guide.......2006-03-10
This book is an essential guide for every graduate student. It makes mathematical and technical concepts of management science understandable and useful.
Good college textbook.......2006-02-25
This book provides thorough explanations, good tables, graphs, examples and self-test questions with most of the answers in the back of the book.
katz.......2005-04-19
Trust Me. This is the only book that you'll need to get started started in this area. The authors have done an excellent job in producing such a work, that takes care to explain all the details of management science.
I used this text for my professional exams (CIMA) and the it was great. All the chapters in this book are cleanly written to take that I doesn't leave anything unexplained. However, the following chapters are the ones that I like the most in this book:
1. Introduction to LP
2. LP: Sensitivity Analysis: Amazing work here.
3. LP Applications: formulation of problems in this chapter may be bit difficult at first, but keep reading and you'll learn and appreciate the work that the authors have put in.
4. LP - Simplex Method: My favorite chapter. Is highly readable. This one chapter alone is worth the book.
5. LP - Simplex Sensitivity.
6. Integer LP
7. Project Scheduling - Great, well written chapter, another favorite of mine.
8. Decision Analysis - Good but the problems are repetative.
9. Markov Process - An introduction only, but the application of markov process to accounts receivable anlaysis is very useful for anyone wondering about the applications of markov processes.
Overall a great book that is worth its price.
Amazon.com
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.
Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff
Book Description
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making.In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like.--Barbara Mackoff
Customer Reviews:
Powerful.......2007-10-11
Amazing and insightful information written in a very engaging style. This book can help you be more objective, evaluate opinions of others, avoid prejudice, even help relationships including marriage. Very astute insights to help decision making. I highly recommend it.
Great Reporting on a Fascinating Topic .......2007-10-10
Gladwell takes a fascinating topic -- how the mind works without us knowing it -- and does some of his best reporting work. He covers a broad spectrum of research and events that are fascinating, especially when connected under the broader topic. I've read it twice and referred to it several other times. I was hoping for something at the end to give me clarity on what to do with the information now that I have it, but it wasn't there. That may have been intentional on the author's part; he might want us to draw our own conclusions. But that was an expectation I developed as I was reading that wasn't fulfilled in the end. That does not in any way take away from the quality of the writing and the expansiveness of the information. "Blink" quickly made my list of favorite reads.
An entertaining and thought provoking read.......2007-10-09
An engaging and easily read essay on the way we think, and how "shooting from the hip" isn't always such a bad thing...when it's backed up by experience. Gladwell's research into an area completely removed from his own arena of expertise is detailed and thorough. He approaches the subject with enough humility and honest curiosity that the reader feels he is more along for the ride than being lectured from the podium as are most tomes on psychology and sociology. Especially noteworthy are his many references to specific studies and the occasional invitation to participate in a few prove to be...illuminating to say the least (I swore I wasn't bigoted, until...).
a must read.......2007-10-09
I've been recommended to read this book by my mentor, and I have to say he was right (as very often he is). This is definetely the kind of book that make you say: hey, I didn't know, but know that I'm thinking about, that's true!
Interesting episodes that you have always lived, and know you can understand why
Not in a blink.......2007-10-02
I was about to buy the book, since the subject and the assumed hypothesis look appealing and interesting. Then my Amazon friend Conan wrote a rather lukewarm review and I delayed the purchase. Then I found the book on my daughter's shelf. Thanks to Conan for saving my money.
I borrowed the book and read it. In a blink I thought it was as interesting as it had promised. It took me more than a blink to find out, that it does not deliver: you learn some interesting anecdotes about marriage predictions and about malpractice suits (my other Amazon friend Joe Neuschatz will be interested) and such things, but you never really get nearer to understanding what the alleged special rapid intelligence process really is.
The book reminds me a bit of the style of articles in Der Spiegel: journalism well short of science. Sometimes entertaining, but mostly disappointing.
Amazon.com
Once again using an astutely written fictional tale to unambiguously but painlessly deliver some hard truths about critical business procedures, Patrick Lencioni targets group behavior in the final entry of his trilogy of corporate fables. And like those preceding it, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is an entertaining, quick read filled with useful information that will prove easy to digest and implement. This time, Lencioni weaves his lessons around the story of a troubled Silicon Valley firm and its unexpected choice for a new CEO: an old-school manager who had retired from a traditional manufacturing company two years earlier at age 55. Showing exactly how existing personnel failed to function as a unit, and precisely how the new boss worked to reestablish that essential conduct, the book's first part colorfully illustrates the ways that teamwork can elude even the most dedicated individuals--and be restored by an insightful leader. A second part offers details on Lencioni's "five dysfunctions" (absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results), along with a questionnaire for readers to use in evaluating their own teams and specifics to help them understand and overcome these common shortcomings. Like the author's previous books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, this is highly recommended. --Howard Rothman
Book Description
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.
Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.
Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.
Customer Reviews:
5 stars for 5 dysfunctions.......2007-10-10
My business partner and I made this required reading to all employees. We started with the management team and quickly found that establishing trust (the first step) across the team was the hardest. Once we accomplished this first step, the rest came much easier. Implementing and using the exercises in this book have helped align our company across all levels. It has helped catapult our growth in 2007.
Definition of Team ?.......2007-10-02
While the model would be beneficial in training a group on team fundamentals, the writing and the story actually hinder the message.
"Relieved, Kathryn was more than happy to give Mikey everything she asked for. But she knew better than to say so right there. "I'm not sure about all of that, but I will see if I can make it happen."
I am not so naive that I think lies and manipulation doesn't happen from management to employees. I am surprised when it is from the hero in the model who touts team trust and commitment, then lies and pretends that she will work hard and go to bat for the employee being asked to leave. People who are honest when it works for them and not honest when that works for them aren't trustworthy. I lost respect for Kathryn right there on page 159.
How about: "Yes, I'm sure we can." Or "Let me give that to HR and have them get in touch with you" or "I will get back to you on the severance agreement." Those are truthful and authentic, not pretending that you are going to pull strings or go the extra mile when it's not true and you're actually relieved with what little the employee asked for. Does the end justify the means?
Sports Teams are about performance and not personalities that get along with everyone else on the team. Does every man on a professional football team get along with every other male on the team? If the team member they all dislike for whatever reason they dislike him, continually catches the football and scores... the team keeps him.
I do not see the conversations that happened between the CEO and an executive in The Five Dysfunctions (TFD) occurring in professional basketball. Can you see the coach telling Michael Jordan, you are excellent in your chosen field, but the other team members complain about your attitude and you did call one of them an S.O.B, so we're going to dismiss you from the team. In TFD their personality and attitudes, not their performance was the issue for dismissal.
There are several instances where the writer sets the stage for some dramatic event. They never happen. The chapters involving the CEO Kathryn and the executive Mikey are anti-climatic.
The storyteller tries to build Mikey up with sentences like: "But Mikey was cleverer than the average executive." (Really, that's the sentence.) The story goes on to explain that the CEO thought Mikey was coming to terms with the dismissal.... and ends the chapter with "But she was wrong."
I was waiting for something "dramatic" to happen, here it is:
Mikey then says her husband is an attorney and it won't be easy to make a case for termination. The CEO explains then your behavior would have to change, because you don't like to be criticized, don't apologize, roll your eyes and called a team member an SOB. Mikey was "stunned" and "Confronted with stark evidence, she realized the weight of her dilemma." She resigns and leaves before any co-worker could see her.
Yea, that's cleverer. Stark evidence of what? Not having "artificial harmony?" (One of the five dysfunctions)
I think it would help if any book written on Team Building would begin by defining what the author means by the word "Team." Not just reference Sports Teams as an analogy.(This book references a basketball team) Even though you can pull examples of great coaching or instances from sports teams, the rules are different in sports teams and work teams. If the team concepts work so well, why don't all sports teams do well in their competitions? Maybe,it has more to do with the coaching (leaders, management) than the "team."
I understand this was to be a simple story to illustrate the Five Functions of a workgroup or team. I agree the five functions are valuable and foster a place of safety and creativity. Seeing them spelled out and discussed could benefit a team. Although is it really a revelation that any team would be a better team if they operated with the five functions than a team that didn't?
Education View.......2007-09-30
I bought this book because it is required for a graduate level education class that I am enrolled in. Although the story is set in the business world, the strategies suggested are also applicable to the educational setting as well.
This is a quick and easy read. I like that it is not preachy...it just tells a story and allows the reader to take what he/she needs to take from it.
Can't Say Enough!.......2007-09-29
This is an easy read -- but the concepts are powerful.
I took a highly disfunctional group of talented people -- and using the concepts presented, now have a high performance team.
Ok, it took several years -- and some effort -- but this book gave us a roadmap.
Go to their website -- and use the on-line Team assessment to measure you're progress.
Seriously, this book really helped us -- and we are really doing great! No lie...
Engaging Story, Powerfully Simple Ideas.......2007-09-11
Patrick Lencioni's book The Five Disfunctions of a Team is a simple read with powerful ideas for how we need to evaluate and reshape teams. I like his use of fables in business literature to give you a good story backed by common-sense organizational development advice that isn't so common-sense.
Read it!
Book Description
This worldwide best-selling business statistics text teaches students how to apply statistics to real business problems through the author's unique three-step approach to problem solving. Students learn to IDENTIFY the right technique by focusing on the problem objective and data type. They then learn to COMPUTE the statistics either by hand, using Excel, or using MINITAB. Finally, they INTERPRET the results in the context of the problem. Keller's approach enhances student comprehension as well as practical skills. The book offers maximum flexibility to instructors wishing to teach concepts by hand or with the computer, or by using both hand and computer methods.
Customer Reviews:
Not so good!.......2005-12-10
Now in my second statistics course, I have a great base in statistics. This book seems to confuse everything that i've already learned. I would recommend using The Basic Practice of Statistics over this book anyday.
Book Description
The first edition, published in 1973, has become a classic reference in the field. Now with the second edition, readers will find information on key new topics such as neural networks and statistical pattern recognition, the theory of machine learning, and the theory of invariances. Also included are worked examples, comparisons between different methods, extensive graphics, expanded exercises and computer project topics.
An Instructor's Manual presenting detailed solutions to all the problems in the book is available from the Wiley editorial department.
Customer Reviews:
Great product & service.......2007-09-21
This was my first purchase from amazon and I was totally impressed by the quality of the product and the service! I would buy again from the same seller and recommend others to do the same.
A Very Bad Sequel.......2007-03-09
I have now used this book 3 times for a class. While the 1st edition did a nice job of covering the material in its time, the additions to in the 2nd addition are a disaster. What the book has going for it is that it at least lists the necessary material for such a course in the table of contents. However, all the additional material is poorly explained at best. The problem sets are too few and the ones that are included are generally weak.
I have tried to use this book, but after constant student complaints and my own difficulty with the text, I have finally concluded that the problem lies with the text and not with the users.
I think an indicator of problems was the large number of errors in the first printing; large here is an understatement. Even in later additions, the 4th, the size of the errata is huge. I think this is indicative of the authors' attention to detail and seriousness in preparation. I have found similar errors and ambiguities in the associate Computer Manual.
The bottom line is that this book has seen its final appearance in our curriculum. I would use any other text, even an older one.
There is simply not enough room or time to point out all the problems with this text. Do yourself a favor if considering this text for a class. Don't bother.
The best book for the discussed field.......2007-02-05
The discussed book is very explanatory and could be students' material for academic lessons.
great book.......2007-01-16
easy to read for computer scientists who are not necessarily experts in statistics. the code in matlab is very good, and helps a lot.
this book is a good introduction to machine learning.
Very well written.......2006-02-26
I liked this book because it does a great job explaining the concepts and the reasoning behind the mathematical formulae. Other books such as "The Elements of Statistical Learning" toss the Math formulas at you and expect you to figure out the significance or the importance of 'em. The book does not shy away from Math - but does a great job presenting it.
Book Description
In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant–better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
With boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.
Download Description
The Wisdom of Crowds
I
If, years hence, people remember anything about the TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, they will probably remember the contestants' panicked phone calls to friends and relatives. Or they may have a faint memory of that short-lived moment when Regis Philbin became a fashion icon for his willingness to wear a dark blue tie with a dark blue shirt. What people probably won't remember is that every week Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? pitted group intelligence against individual intelligence, and that every week, group intelligence won.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was a simple show in terms of structure: a contestant was asked multiple-choice questions, which got successively more difficult, and if she answered fifteen questions in a row correctly, she walked away with $1 million. The show's gimmick was that if a contestant got stumped by a question, she could pursue three avenues of assistance. First, she could have two of the four multiple-choice answers removed (so she'd have at least a fifty-fifty shot at the right response). Second, she could place a call to a friend or relative, a person whom, before the show, she had singled out as one of the smartest people she knew, and ask him or her for the answer. And third, she could poll the studio audience, which would immediately cast its votes by computer. Everything we think we know about intelligence suggests that the smart individual would offer the most help. And, in fact, the "experts" did okay, offering the right answer--under pressure--almost 65 percent of the time. But they paled in comparison to the audiences. Those random crowds of people with nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon than sit in a TV studio picked the right answer 91 percent of the time.
Now, the results of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? would never stand up to scientific scrutiny. We don't know how smart the experts were, so we don't know how impressive outperforming them was. And since the experts and the audiences didn't always answer the same questions, it's possible, though not likely, that the audiences were asked easier questions. Even so, it's hard to resist the thought that the success of the Millionaire audience was a modern example of the same phenomenon that Francis Galton caught a glimpse of a century ago.
As it happens, the possibilities of group intelligence, at least when it came to judging questions of fact, were demonstrated by a host of experiments conducted by American sociologists and psychologists between 1920 and the mid-1950s, the heyday of research into group dynamics. Although in general, as we'll see, the bigger the crowd the better, the groups in most of these early
experiments--which for some reason remained relatively unknown outside of academia--were relatively small. Yet they nonetheless performed very well. The Columbia sociologist Hazel Knight kicked things off with a series of studies in the early 1920s, the first of which had the virtue of simplicity. In that study Knight asked the students in her class to estimate the room's temperature, and then took a simple average of the estimates. The group guessed 72.4 degrees, while the actual temperature was 72 degrees. This was not, to be sure, the most auspicious beginning, since classroom temperatures are so stable that it's hard to imagine a class's estimate being too far off base. But in the years that followed, far more convincing evidence emerged, as students and soldiers across America were subjected to a barrage of puzzles, intelligence tests, and word games. The sociologist Kate H. Gordon asked two hundred students to rank items by weight, and found that the group's "estimate" was 94 percent accurate, which was better than all but five of the individual guesses. In another experiment students were asked to look at ten piles of buckshot--each a slightly different size than the
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