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Although some of the particular examples were not the type of examples I deal with, the reasons they were chosen make perfect sense. Data mining owes much of its popularity to people attempting to find churners, etc. But there are plenty of examples covered, and with each one some new insight is revealed. Especially useful to me were the explanations of what it is one sees in the decision trees, lift curves, etc. Also, seeing various problems solved with several of the popular tools (MineSet, Enterprise Miner, etc.) was very helpful. There are many examples from various industries, and you learn something new about those industries too! (If you like the Sesame Street videos of how cans, tires, etc. are made even more than your kids do, you'll love this book for the examples alone.)
It is clear from this book that the authors not only know what they are talking about, they can actually break it down for a newbie like me. I have also had the pleasure of being in one of Mr. Berry's MineSet classes, and he demonstrated the same depth of knowledge and ability to convey it to others in that class as well.
This book is not an algorithm book, but it touches on them. It is not necessarily a tour of data mining tools, but does do this to some degree. It is probably most useful for anyone who wants to know "What is this 'data mining', and how can it help me?" with real world examples to make things clear. If the reader starts out thinking that data mining is just tossing a bunch of data into a tool and getting concrete results back, the confusion will not remain after reading this book. Finally, this book is VERY easy reading. Do yourself (or your boss) a favor and buy this book!
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I eagerly picked up this book after attending a very impressive demo of Curl's capacities. Only skimming the two chapters on Object Oriented Programming, I concentrated on the other chapters most relevant to GUI developers of Web-based applications.
Being an ardent practitioner of the W3C's Cascading Style Sheets technology, I was a bit disappointed in Curl's implementation of styles, which seems clumsy and very limited, even considering the differences in syntax. The authors were very knowledgeable on HTML and CSS issues -- which made their reliance on tables for layout a bit disturbing. Does this indicate that Curl lacks equivalents for CSS positioning and layout properties -- or merely that the authors did not happen to see this as important enough to include in examples?
I was dissatisfied with the paucity of examples and the fact that these examples were not of the type of depth to glue the various parts of Curl together. There were some good examples involving 2-D and 3-D graphics which showed the technology to advantage. However, if your primary interest is in form-based Web applications, the examples were sketchy.
The book really needs to have context. Criticism of Java, HTML, JavaScript, etc. is not enough.
The authors must speak more directly to the questions:
{}Does the Web world need another proprietary, Java-like browser plug-in?
{}Does the Curl organization have what it takes to go against Microsoft's .NET, which has a similar architecture and revenue model?
Answer these questions and you not only have a good book, but a real cool winning tool.
This is currently the BEST Curl book on the market. Ok, it's currently the ONLY Curl book on the market, which makes it Good News/Bad News.
Good News: This book does a great job of providing Curl information and "how to" examples in more depth than the Curl manuals. All the major topics are covered, which makes this a good overall reference book. The graphics architecture section is particularly helpful, where the authors describe the overall graphics framework of Curl. This info would save any new user time when learning Curl.
Bad News: by targeting the early adopter, the book is timely, but shows some warts. Some sections still show and describe the last beta version of Curl. The last beta was mostly similar to the current version of Curl, but the small differences are occasionally distracting. The book also has a number of typos and the class descriptions in one table were copied directly from the (free) Curl manual. As most of the authors are from Curl Corporation, this is not plagiarism, but it is not new information either.
Overall, this book serves its purpose by being the first overall book on Curl. The book itself is a great way to learn Curl in conjunction with the Curl manuals. Despite its warts, it is well worth owning.
[Bruce Mount worked as one of the Technical Reviewers for this book. No, he didn't review the section with typos. :-)]
They call this book an early adopter book, but, since I think Curl is most likely going to go the way of Microsoft Agent, it is more a Bleeding Edge book. Unlike Microsoft Agent, however, I do think this technology is very useful.
So, what is Curl? Curl is a new OO technology for web UI development. In many ways, it is what Java promised, with applets, in its early days. The main difference here is Curl is designed to create dynamic, awe inspiring presentations (ala Flash) without a lot of work (once you learn the language, that is).
The book deals with Curl primarily as a UI development language. Through the chapters you will learn to work with 2d and 3d environments, multimedia and even dynamic client interaction. As with all Wrox books, there are plenty of code examples (all downloadable from the Wrox site).
I really love this book, although I wonder if the technology will ever really take off (Curl engine download is huge if you have a dialup).
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In particular, the authors adopt Yates' framework of administrative efficiency vs. pluralistic democracy early in the work and this framework serves to inform the discussion of policy, personnel, budgeting, decision making, et cetera. This provides the book with a strong thematic component that I have found lacking in other books of this type.
A couple of criticisms: The sections on ensuring democratic processes in public administration is a bit confusing and lacks a unifying theme. However, the elements of the discussion are there and can be easily clarified in a classroom discussion.
Secondly, and this is a quibble is that the treatment of alternative decision making models is a bit sketchy, but then again this is an introductory tome.
All in all a good, useful and CLEAR book for undergrad courses.
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