This was the first book I read about Buckminster Fuller. It was a great introduction to the man because a lot of people go right to his written works which can be hard to digest at first because he's just a very intense human being.

Reading this book first enabled me to understand Bucky so when I did move on the Critical Path and Synergetics I knew what I was getting in to. And boy if your ready to go through the mirror to see the truth, you're in for the ride of your life!

Enjoy!

I love to read books that I don't completely understand the first time through. This is certainly one of those books.

Part biography, part scientific dissertation, the author enlightens us on the wonderful and extraordinary life of R. Buckminster Fuller, a true renaissance man.

Many people have never even heard of Buckminster Fuller... but his ideas, inventions and philosophy have touched the lives of everyone on here on 'Spaceship Earth' as he liked to call it.

Just take a trip down to Epcot in Orlando, FL and see a geodesic sphere in real life, one that engineers and construction types said would not stand... its been standing there for almost 20 years now. Or, look down the street to the Contemporary Resort at the Magic Kingdom. Built entirely with modular construction and finished in record time.. a la "Bucky" Fuller.

Certainly this man was a great innovator... but what I was most impressed with was his 'comprensivist' point of view. He always strove to see the big picture of what is happening on Earth as well as the entire Universe around us.

Get this book if you want to open you mind to new ideas and paradigms. It has changed the way I look at many different things now.

"Buckminster Fuller's Universe" is full of information that is very pertinent to current problems in our world today, e.g., providing all people on Space Ship Earth with affordable and environmentally sound food, housing, and transportation. Sieden's passionate but not sentimental description of the obstacles Bucky faced from Corporate America lends to the compelling nature of this book. "Galileo's Daughter" depicted Galileo's genius colliding with the monolithic Church of the sixteenth century, Sieden shows Bucky's genius colliding with plumbers, architects, auto manufacturers, bureaucrats as well as ideals of the capitalist economic system. I was filled with hope by Bucky's continued enthusiasm and creativity even in the face of such huge obstacles. Sieden states that Bucky believed that Earth's problems will be solved by individual thinking and efforts and not by bureaucratic leaders or endeavors. Although, Bucky states governments can thwart or support the education and thinking of its citizens. Sieden's writing is easy to digest even when the subject matter is very complex. Seattle's Intiman Theatre will stage a production of "R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe" June 8 to July 7, 2001. Which goes to show how relevant Bucky is to today's world. I strongly recommend this book for folks concerned about Earth's problems and to hear solutions from one of Earth's geniuses.

This is a very practical and powerful guide for improvement.

1. The first revelation this book brings is: improvement is a change. From this viewpoint, the fundamental questions faced by the improver (e.g. Green Belts and Black Belts) are:

(1) What are we trying to accomplish? (Define phase)
(2) How will we know if a change will result in an improvement? (What are the key Y's?)
(3) What changes can we make that will result in improvement?
(What are the key X's and their settings to affect Y's)
Appropriate tools from '6-sigma' tool sets can be used to seek answers to (2) and (3).

2. The Guide emphasizes testing a change in small scale before full implementation so we can learn and improve the proposed change using the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. This significantly improves our typical 'trial-and-error' approach.

3. The Guide classifies improvement into 3 categories:
(1) Eliminate Quality Problems (the aim of many '6-sigma' projects)
(2) Reduce Costs while maintaining or improving quality (the goal of many internally focused improvement efforts)
(3) Expanding Customer Expectations
Specific advises and examples are presented for each of these categories.

4. Best of all is a list of 70 Change Concepts categorized under 9 sessions, e.g. standardization under Manage Variation, Synchronize under Improve Work Flow.
Using these change concepts can significantly reduce the time to develop the specific changes.

This book is very easy to follow and contains a lot of examples. It is a must read for all improvement practitioners including Green Belts and Black Belts.

Whether involved with improving products/processes within a business or coaching little league baseball, The Improvement Guide provides a practical and fundamental approach for improving performance. The book serves as an excellent reference for those involved with change, specifically, change that will result in improvement.

A few of the items from the book which ring in my mind continuously include:

Improvement can be viewed as a science (in fact, some of us do!).

Three questions provide the framework for improvement: 1.What are we trying to accomplish? 2.How will we know if we if a change will result in an improvement? 3. What changes can we make that will result in improvement?

While there are many opportunities to change, there are only 70 change concepts (included in the Appendix) available to us today.

Any system for improvement will include five activities: 1.Establishing and communicating the purpose of the organization/team. 2.Viewing the organization/team as a system. 3. Designing and managing the a system for gathering information for improvement 4.Planning for improvement and integrating it with business planning. 5. Managing individual and team improvement activities.

Leaders are required to implement change that will result in improvement and they draw their power from three sources (the informal leader gets his/her power from sources 2 and 3 below). 1.Authority or position 2.Knowledge 3.Personality and persuasiveness (caring about people)

These items and many more, are introduced in the book via an easy-to-understand model that uses proven methodology for developing, testing, and implementing change that produces specific, identifiable improvements.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming, whose management ideas and Profound Knowledge provide the theoretical underpinnings of this book, continually asked the question to anxious audiences: "By what method? How do you go about it?" As a professional in the quality sciences field, I believe this book has the answer to those questions as it relates to improvement. The Improvement Guide defines improvement and describes in complete detail workable, easy to use techniques that are effective and time-tested. The book is based around the Improvement Model, an expanded and improved version of the Deming-Shewhart cycle, whose historical roots trace are grounded in applications of the scientific method and applied scientists since Roger Bacon. The principle of testing on a small scale, learning using the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle, and building knowledge sequentially using the Improvement Model are some of the most practical and useful aspects of the book. Part I is written on an introductory level and provides lots of simple examples that guide the beginner through theory and practice. The heart of the book, and some of its most useful content, describes ways to develop, test, and implement a change. The insights provided, based on decades of experience and knowledge of the authors, are invaluable. They are followed up by thoroughly documented and easy to understand case studies that ring true using real life examples related to manufacturing, services, health care, and a variety of standard business and educational processes. Finally, the third section describes an integrated approach to various standard improvement goals and useful strategies for achieving them. This section also includes extremely insightful guidance for leaders trying to promote and enable improvement, and an innovative and thought-provoking section suggesting techniques for expanding customer expectations to increase demand for products and/or services. This section, too, is replete with examples and case studies to support and illustrate methods and concepts.

This book should be studied by anyone, beginner or experienced professional, interested in a systematic method for improving processes, products, or services. I strongly recommend it.

Tunes from the gay 90s (that's 1890s, and no, that's not what Gay meant), spirituals, folk songs, Civil War songs, lovely old American hymns (stolen from other sources, yes, but here printed in their American versions).

The editors weren't trying to create authentic arrangements, so some of the chords are a hipper than would have been played 100 years ago -- but nothing that works against the spirit of the music, nothing jarringly modernistic.

The exceptions to the 'non-modernistic' rule are the arrangements by the estimable George Pullen Jackson from his Spiritual Folk Songs of Early America. These are full of major sevens and ninths, and Pullen's use of dissonance is too advanced to sound old-fashioned. His are fine arrangements nonetheless, and could easily be simplified to achieve a more "period" sound.

The book is prejudiced towards piano players. Guitar chords are not always printed, and when they are they tend to be much simpler and less imaginative than the piano accompaniments. Piano parts are not condescending, but not difficult either: interesting enough that a professional can play them without rewriting and fixing, easy enough that an amateur can master them with a little practice.

There is a companion volume, Fireside Book of American Folk Songs.

I have had this book forever! I know almost every song in the book. I love the old pictures! The songs vary from old ballads like Barbra Allen to the American national anthem. I strongly recomend this book. It will always be part of my childhood memories.

This sweeping epic traces the fictitious history of Makor, a city in Israel, from prehistory to modern times. Starting in the 1960s, an archeological dig turns up artifacts in an ancient mound composed of the remains of successive settlements in Makor. Then, starting with the deepest, oldest artifact and moving forward in time, in successive chapters Michener chronologically describes the inhabitants (who are often descendants of characters in earlier chapters) and events in and around the city over thousands of years. In this way, he tells the fascinating story of the Jews and other local inhabitants, of Judaism and its role in the creation of Christianity and Islam, and of the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

This is the first book I have read by Michener, my interest having been piqued when a friend responded to my praise of Edward Rutherfurd's "London" by describing Rutherfurd as "a poor man's Michener". My friend's point was that Rutherfurd borrowed Michener's often-used story structure for historical fiction, a structure perhaps best exemplified by "The Source". As much as I enjoyed "London", it pales in comparison to "The Source", one of the classics of the genre. I recommend it without reservation.

Having only read 3 books by Michener, I know I'm not exactly an expert- But this book was phenominal in every way. I decided to read The Source in order to learn more about Israel before a trip I took there. It's the best decision I ever made- not only does this book give you a profound understanding of history and time in relation to the holy land, it draws you in with complex characters and facinating stories along the way. This book made me a Michener nut. I've since read "Centennial" and "Alaska". Both are great books that I enjoyed imencely, but what sets the source apart is the way every period of history fits into the whole. Set at an archeological dig at the ancient Tel of Makor, The first chapter finds the scientists digging strait down into 40,000 years of history. At each level they find an artifact. Those artifacts are the basis for each of the ensuing chapters. "The Source" is particularly wonderful because each time period is distinct and complicated by itself, but effects the ones after it and paints an incredible picture of time's span and history. While in Israel I visited Meggido, the site which Michener based Makor on, making the book that much better. If you read nothing else in life, read "the Source".

One of Michener's early novels. His epic (this puppy is over 1000 pages long) writing style is definitely on display here though the overall construction of the book is unusual for Michener. The story starts with a "modern" day archeological dig (circa 1950). We are exposed to a range of relics of various types and ages dug up by the archeologists. There are 12 in all. The book then tells the "historical" tale surrounding each piece-12 stories. So, in essence, this is in reality a book of 12 interconnected and interrelated short stories-more novella's, really-- with a prolog and post-log involving the archeological dig.

Being an early effort and given it's unusual structure vis-à-vis Michener's traditional style the book lacks some of the elements of structure and style that so characterize Michener's later works-specifically, this book lacks the overall story line and continuity that characterize later efforts. On the whole I think this is actually a positive. A lot of Michener's books seem to weigh me down as I read them-the structure seems at times more important than the story and the stories so overblown as to be beyond the ken of merely mortal readers. Those aspects are absent here despite the books length. And while they book is more or less short stories/novellas, they are sufficiently detailed and expansive that interest is maintained but not abused.

The work is dated. While there is a sense that Michener was making a real effort to be apolitical and historically accurate, the fact is that the book nevertheless reflects the underlying predispositions of the time. I suspect if he were around to undertake this effort now the book would have a somewhat different flavor. This fac tin no way detracts from the viability nor the vitality of the stories, however.

On the whole, while this probably can't be adjudged Micheners best work from a technical or literary standpoint, I think it's his best work from readability and enjoy ability standpoint. A truly instructive and compelling read.

I agree completely with the reader from Ithaca. The last time
I used it for something important, there was a serious typo in a
formula, and much time was wasted.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

On the positive side, it contains a wealth of useful information about a large number of continuous probability distribution functions. I use it all the time as a reference in my work. The book contains a extensive bibliography which has been useful time and time again when I need to look up things in the literature.

My first complaint is there are a number of mistakes. I realize this is a huge mass of information and mistakes are inevitable, but I found it quite unacceptable that the probability density function for the Normal distribution was incorrect. Equation 13.1 is missing a factor of sigma in the denominator. This one was quite obvious, but there have been several more subtle errors, which have caused me to waste a large amount of time searching my own work for mathematical errors, until I finally realized the source of the error was the book!

My second complaint is consistency (or lack thereof). The symbols and notation used for one distribution are not necessarily used in the same way for another distribution. This can be quite frustrating! Also, the organization from chapter to chapter (each chapter corresponds to one distribution or one distribution family) is not consistent. For example, for the Lognormal distribution, there is one section (called "Introduction") which gives the pdf of the distribution and a second section (called "Moments and Other Properties") where the moments of the distribution are listed. For the Weibull distribution, both the pdf and the moments are in one section (labeled "Definition"). This sounds like a minor point, until it comes time for you to look one of these things up!

In summary, I need this book to do my job. But I keep wishing there was another book that had the same information, but with better accuracy and organization.

Johnson and Kotz in particular continue their series of ongoing descriptions and analyses of probability/statistics distributions which is an ingenious production. They have the Creative Genius talents of summarizing, organizing, emphasizing open questions, and open mindedness to new ideas (although I have not quite tested them on some very ideas of my own). These qualities in various combinations can also be found in Allday's 1998 book in physics (which I reviewed)and Weinberg's 1974 and later books in physics (some of which I reviewed). Johnson et al. have some Creative Genius categories which are rarely found. For one thing, they cross-categorize distributions ("graphs" for the non-specialist)by their applications to real world problems, which is usually notoriously lacking in math and physics publications (beyond one or two problems). Secondly, they CHARACTERIZE distributions by various properties such as heredity (the same distribution holds for a sum of variables as for one variable, etc.), exponential derivation from other distributions, conditional expectations (I would prefer logic-based probability (LBP) expectations, but it's better than nothing), etc. In other words, their very categorization of distributions is by critical research categories and fundamental logical-factual categories, at least as far as they know them. I recommend this book and the whole series from the same authors (or at least most of them) without reservations except the ones mentioned for LBP, and I urge specialists in these fields to recommend that their students and even "laymen" (non-academic people)purchase this volume and hire a consultant or tutor to translate them or explain them in closer to ordinary English if their probability/statistical background is lacking or deficient.