I have found this book very frustrating to use. While it has many good and new ideas it is very misleading and at times just plain wrong.

The author at all times presents his methods as universally applicalble AND optimal, but in my experience they are very limited and unstable.

Please treat this book with great care - it is dangerous if read at face value.

For the most part, I'm very open to alternative perspectives in mathematics, statistics, and economics. I liked the premise of this book and the subjective critique, but reading was nothing other than disappointment. This is a philosophical rant which devotes a great deal of time to bashing the standard objective perspective of statistics, but provides very little substantive in its place.

Take, for instance, hypothesis testing. Suppose we run a regression and estimate some vector of coefficients beta. This estimated beta is a random variable, since it depends on the x variables that we drew. One of the first things we ask is, "what is the probability of coming up with [this estimated value of beta], given that the true value is [something]?" This is an objectivist's view -- that there exists some "true value." The idea that this is some "true value" or "true distribution" underlies most of modern statistics. The operational subjectivist's argument is that it's meaningless to talk about such things -- there is no way we could possibly recover this "true value", so what's the sense in comparing things to it?

The author has a good point here. But then the question is, so what? What can we do with this alternative perspective, other than throw rocks at objectivists? The only times the book provides practical techniques (a subjectivist interpretation of hypothesis testing, for example) it turns out to be little other than a relabelling of the usual model.

So. I returned the book to Amazon. I'm glad for looking at it, because I'd been intrigued by the idea -- but now I realize that there's just not a whole lot there, at least not in this author's presentation.

Some data seem out-of-dated. For instance, dollars amount of weekly wage range for exempt employees on p. 12, are absolutely below the standard average. Is it still a valid data, according to the Law?

The first half of the book is written by Seamus MacNeil, who passed away a few years ago, and was very much responsible for spreading knowledge of the Highland Bagpipe around the world. Unfortunately, much of that knowledge is less than accurate. The second half of the book is much more entertaining. It is written General Richardson, who studied with John MacDonald of Inverness. Richardson has also passed on, sadly. But he is a great story teller, and even though he is not as technically minded as MacNeil I found his half of the book most useful because he manages to get his love of the music across without puffing himself up in the process.

The angle of sometimes neglected history, i.e Latino or minority history vs Anglo or majority history could have made this book very interesting. Also, Ramon Novarro, a mega-star of the silent and early talkies has only had one other biography written about him by A. Ellenberger. However, this book is a great disappointment. First of all, you have to wonder how much a biographer knows of his subject when he gets the date of his subject's death wrong (Oct 31 1968, NOT Nov 1 as stated in this book)
Secondly, the biographer states he is not going to talk about rumors, i.e. Ramon Novarro by repute was gay, and then goes on to try to suggest Ramon Novarro as having had affairs with some of his female stars. Almost as bad as the old movie studio publicity when, MGM tried in 1934 to publicise a 'romance' between Myrna Loy one of his co-stars. Apparently, this author had never read her reaction at the time as recorded in her autobiography in the 1980's, which states 'it was ridiculous, Ramon didn't even like the girls'.
It's nice to see another book on Ramon Novarro, a really great movie star, but this one is just plain disappointing.

Simon seems to know his stuff about computers and geography, but his writing style is unimpressive. And that this book is in the Christian Fiction category befuddles me; there are few references to God and none that significantly affect the plot. More importantly, none of this draws me into a deeper relationship with Christ.

In chapter 3, Simon writes, "Hanna stopped her Explorer, got out, and opened the combination lock. She swung the gate wide while Russell drove the SUV through. After locking the gate, Hanna got back in and put the Ford in gear." Is this an advertisement for Ford? Throughout the book we're given extra details that neither add to the plot nor make us want to read further.

It takes nearly half the book before the plot begins to unfold, spending more ink on relationships than on the virus.

There are action areas that are exciting to read once the plot unfolds, but it takes a long time to get there. Finally, the story ends with an unimaginative conclusion that leaves you empty.

I just received this book, and although the content does meet my expectations, I must say that some figures are of disappointing poor quality (3D protein representation for instance). I haven't seen the original German version, but it looks as if the English (American) editor has saved a few bucks by simply copying the figures on a B&W copy machine. This is outrageous ! We are living in the 21st century, and any 10 years old computer geek is capable of producing high quality color figures with a decent scanner ! Given the price (70 dollars !), I can't give more that 2 stars !

I love soup cook books and have over 20 of them. This collection is inexpensive, but contains surprisingly few recipes. In fact, there are only 22 soup recipes and then a number of sald and bread recipes. The book is also rather skimpy, barely a notch above those "cook books" you can purchase in the check out line at a grocery store. My first major disappointment from Amazon.

I don't know if I agree with this book... my body fat percentage seemed to be right on, but according to this book, the ideal weight for my husband, who is 6'4" is 165 pounds! That is impossible! It said his body fat percentage was 34% while mine was 22%, yet said that height didn't matter at all, and only measurements worked. I can't imagine how gaunt and emaciated my husband would look if he was that weight!

And what about body builders who have biceps bigger than their weight, and probably are less than 7% body fat? This book would tell them, according to their measurements, that they were obese!

This book may have been useful when it was first released, but most of the information in it is now way out of date. Most of the book covers scanning in black and white or grey scales; something that was common back in the 80's and early 90's but, thanks to the cheapness of colour scanners these days, isn't performed very often any more.

None of the scanners mentioned are any longer in production, and all of the software that is talked about has been replaced by later versions of the same package or by entirely new programs (ie Photoshop isn't even mentioned!)

If you find it in the library then browse through this book, otherwise look at something more up-to-date.