Book Description
The 2nd edition of this successful book has several new features. The calibration discussion of the basic LIBOR market model has been enriched considerably, with an analysis of the impact of the swaptions interpolation technique and of the exogenous instantaneous correlation on the calibration outputs. A discussion of historical estimation of the instantaneous correlation matrix and of rank reduction has been added, and a LIBOR-model consistent swaption-volatility interpolation technique has been introduced.
The old sections devoted to the smile issue in the LIBOR market model have been enlarged into several new chapters. New sections on local-volatility dynamics, and on stochastic volatility models have been added, with a thorough treatment of the recently developed uncertain-volatility approach. Examples of calibrations to real market data are now considered.
The fast-growing interest for hybrid products has led to new chapters. A special focus here is devoted to the pricing of inflation-linked derivatives.
The three final new chapters of this second edition are devoted to credit. Since Credit Derivatives are increasingly fundamental, and since in the reduced-form modeling framework much of the technique involved is analogous to interest-rate modeling, Credit Derivatives -- mostly Credit Default Swaps (CDS), CDS Options and Constant Maturity CDS - are discussed, building on the basic short rate-models and market models introduced earlier for the default-free market. Counterparty risk in interest rate payoff valuation is also considered, motivated by the recent Basel II framework developments.
Customer Reviews:
Best book on interest rate models.......2002-12-14
This is the best book available on interest rate models. Very detailed. Much more focused and readable than Rebonato's book. More pragmatic and explicit than Musiela and Rutkowski. Not as theoretical as Hunt and Kennedy. James and Webber also looks very good, but I'm not that familiar with it. All other books have only bits and pieces on interest rates.
The best book I have read on the subject.......2002-05-06
With all the due respect to the other authors I would say that if one is interested in a good theoretical book whihc is also good on the implementation side then the book of Brigo and Mercurion is definetly the best book I have ever read on the subject.
Anyone interested in implementing the LMM/BGM/MSS model in practice is well advised to read it.
I would just say that this is certainly a must have in the field.
New stuff and nice overview: hard to beat!.......2002-01-17
In the late nineties I went through Brigo's innovative work on stochastic nonlinear filtering with differential geometry techniques. I was favorably impressed by results and style, particularly in his dissertation and in his 'geometry in present day science' very readable overview. Interesting results are found and nicely told with accurate - but not pointlessly complicated - advanced mathematics for the problems at hand, I reasoned.
I've followed a similar path from control to finance, and having worked with interest rate models, I couldn't help but order this Brigo-Mercurio book. I had high expectations 'cause these two guys are working in a bank on the real thing.
Sure enough I'm not disappointed.
1-factor models are handled with great care, a ton of formulas and recipes are given. I've never seen this kind of analysis of pricing with Gaussian 1-f models. The new upgrade of the CIR model is interesting and accurate. "CIR++" is now my favorite 1-f model. I like the treatment of lognormal 1-f models and the explanation of Monte Carlo and trees -- the flow-chart for Bermudan swaptions is crystal clear! Plots of market implied structures and volatility calibration are useful additions.
The chapter on 2-f extensions has one of the best discussions on volatility, and two tons of useful formulas/recipes. Two dimensional trees!
The HJM chapter size is OK. I agree - the useful models embedded in HJM are short rate models and market models.
Market models - these three chapters alone are worth the book. You'll find yourself nodding as you read the guided tour. They make it look easy all the time. The exposition is focused, clear, intuitive, detailed. There's also new stuff, just check the calibration discussion! Smile modeling begins with a brilliant tour and ends with Brigo-Mercurio's new approach - the mixing dynamics - deserving a whole chapter if expanded.
The detailed explanation on products is a much welcome original addition. Cross currency derivatives!
Quotes - as in Brigo's old work - are a pleasant diversion while reading. The 500 and more pages are a treat given the competitive price.
Still there's room for improvements - more "CIR2++"! Something on 3-f models. Historical estimation of the correlation matrix and low-rank optimized approximations. Expand smile modeling! More hedging. Something on structured products. Cross currency libor model. chapter 9 - other interest rate models - sounds out of place and can be suppressed for other things.
This book rings true and has useful teachings for students, academics and practitioners. Although it requires some background in stochastic calculus, it's hard to beat on the pricing front. Kudos to Brigo and Mercurio! It only harms there aren't enough books like this.
Nicely written overview of interest rate models.......2001-12-15
This recent book, written by two Italian "quants" Mercurio & Brigo, gives a nice and accessible overview of interest rate models which is a compromise between the practitioner viewpoint, expressed for ex. in Rebonato's book "Interet Rate option models"
and the theoretical viewpoint such as the one in Musiela & Rutkowski.
The authors, themselves PhDs in quantitative finance/ applied maths, wrote this book while working as quants in an Italian bank and this first hand contact with the market gave them a
practical view on the subject which markes this book very interesting.
The book contains a "rational" catalogue of models used in practice ( as opposed to models which are impossible to implement!).
In contrast with academic books on interest rate modeling which deal with HJM formulation, there is a lot of emphasis here on LIBOR and Swap market models
(BGM -Jamshidian models) which reflects the current market practice. This is a positive point since there are not many books with details on implementing and using these "market models".
Part II: Interest rate models in practice is particularly useful because it deals with implementation and calibration which, as any practitioner knows, are important and usually delicate issues.
However calibration issues are dealt with somewhat lightly, especially recent developments on modeling cap/swaption smiles
are not included here.
This book can also be used for a graduate level/PhD course on interest rate models.
There are a lot of numerical examples in the book and mathematics is kept to the necessary level while keeping the
approach both rigorous and understandable.
Overall, it is one of the best books written on the subject.
I highly recommend it to PhD students, quants and researchers interested in this field.
Well written and useful book.......2001-11-04
In my humble opinion, this is the best book on Interest Rate modeling out there. The writing style is clear and focused and the appendices are fantastic. The book is rigorous but someone with some background in Stochastic Calculus will find it easy to follow. If you need refresher, dont worry the authors have you covered, see the appendix on Stochastic Calculus. Not an introductory book. Very exciting book.
Book Description
In the numbers explosion all around us in our modern-day dealings, the buzzword is data, as in, “Do you have any data to support your claim?” “The data supported the original hypothesis that . . .” and “The data bear this out. . . .” But the field of statistics is not just about data. Statistics is the entire process involved in gathering evidence to answer questions about the world, in cases where that evidence happens to be numerical data.
Statistics For Dummies is for everyone who wants to sort through and evaluate the incredible amount of statistical information that comes to them on a daily basis. (You know the stuff: charts, graphs, tables, as well as headlines that talk about the results of the latest poll, survey, experiment, or other scientific study.) This book arms you with the ability to decipher and make important decisions about statistical results, being ever aware of the ways in which people can mislead you with statistics. Get the inside scoop on number-crunching nuances, plus insight into how you can
- Determine the odds
- Calculate a standard score
- Find the margin of error
- Recognize the impact of polls
- Establish criteria for a good survey
- Make informed decisions about experiments
This down-to-earth reference is chock-full of real examples from real sources that are relevant to your everyday life: from the latest medical breakthroughs, crime studies, and population trends to surveys on Internet dating, cell phone use, and the worst cars of the millennium. Statistics For Dummies departs from traditional statistics texts, references, supplement books, and study guides in the following ways:
- Practical and intuitive explanations of statistical concepts, ideas, techniques, formulas, and calculations.
- Clear and concise step-by-step procedures that intuitively explain how to work through statistics problems.
- Upfront and honest answers to your questions like, “What does this really mean?” and “When and how I will ever use this?”
Chances are, Statistics For Dummies will be your No. 1 resource for discovering how numerical data figures into your corner of the universe.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent overview and/or review.......2007-09-21
Statistics for Dummies is an excellent overview of the fundamentals of statistics for those who have forgotten some of what they previously learned, those whose instructors left them dazed and confused, or those who just need a quick reference. Like all of the "for Dummies" books, it's not really intended to be a comprehensive instructional program or a definitive reference book. In my view, the book does exactly what it's intended to do.
Several reviewers have mentioned the lack of examples or exercises. They're right; however, there is a companion volume by the same author, Statistics Workbook for Dummies, that solves that problem. Why didn't they do it all in one book? Probably because it would have totaled over 600 pages.
So, this book won't teach you statistics from scratch, but it is a very good introductory level overview of the subject. Like all of the Dummies books, the format is attractive, the organization is clear, and the information is presented in small, easily digestible blocks. More importantly, the author uses just the right approach. She is both thorough and authoritative, but she doesn't assume much expertise among the readers. At the same time, she's never condescending.
This book is well worth the cost, and I recommend it highly.
Really concise.......2007-07-17
I recommend this book for all of those that, like me, need a way to start or remember basic principles of statistics. All the concepts are very clearly explained and come in blocks that can be read in a non-linear way.
Liked it very much.
"Consumer" should be in Title.......2007-07-15
While the book is useful, it should be made clear that this book is aimed at the consumer who has to interpret statistics that he/she reads about. This will be useful for the general public who are baffled by stuff that that is thrown at them, but I was hoping for something to help me get started with my own research problems. Only about 10% of the book does that.
It makes it simple.......2007-07-03
I struggled with statistics in college and could just not seem to grasp the relationships between the various pieces. This goes a long way toward explaining both what those pieces mean and how they fit together. Would recommend this book to anyone who needs or wants more than a superficial understanding of statistics.
Statistics for Dummies.......2007-05-13
Book was very informative and easy to understand. However it did not discuss many of the concepts needed for my statistics class.
Average customer rating:
- Cool
- Cartoons add little and subtract much
- A dry textbook + cartoons
- Not for the feint of heart
- Ok resource
|
Cartoon Guide to Statistics
Larry Gonick , and
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ASIN: 0062731025 |
Book Description
If you have ever looked for P-values by shopping at P mart, tried to watch the Bernoulli Trails on "People's Court," or think that the standard deviation is a criminal offense in six states, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Statistics to put you on the road to statistical literacy.
The Cartoon Guide to Statistics covers all the central ideas of modern statistics: the summary and display of data, probability in gambling and medicine, random variables, Bernoulli Trails, the Central Limit Theorem, hypothesis testing, confidence interval estimation, and much more--all explained in simple, clear, and yes, funny illustrations. Never again will you order the Poisson Distribution in a French restaurant!
Customer Reviews:
Cool.......2007-08-29
This book is so cool! It makes the topic clear and fun at the same time.
Cartoons add little and subtract much.......2007-08-23
I have a B.S. (from a school you haven't heard of) and an M.S. (from one you have) in mathematics, and I teach math, but probability and statistics was my _worst_ undergraduate math class (I avoided it in grad school). I came across this book, and I bought it on a chance. I'm sorry to say, it was wasted money...
1) The cartoons at best merely illustrate points made in the text; at worst they are irrelevant interruptions. For example, here we have a cartoon of the reader in a straightjacket after the text mentions calculus. And there's a cartoon of a man rolling dice. This sort of stuff does not advance the discussion.
2) The cartoon format reduces the space available for text. The discussion is therefore abbreviated and compressed; points are made once only, without examples, and often after skipping important steps. I think it's _more_ difficult than a standard textbook.
3) There are no exercises! Who ever heard of a math book without exercises? We learn by doing, I always tell my students, not by just reading or listening.
I think this book may be useful to a former student of statistics who wants a review but I can't think of anyone else who would get much out of it.
A dry textbook + cartoons.......2007-06-12
Whenever I try reading this book my eyes just gloss over. It's extremely dry material with cartoons added to every page to make it seem as if it'll be entertaining and easy to learn from but IMO it's neither. On the contrary, it would probably be best as a reference book. Almost every page has a new equation or symbol on it and I rarely felt that they were adequately discussed. "What does it do? When is it useful? What does it mean if the value is high/low?" are questions I constantly asked myself and the book doesn't take the time to answer.
Not for the feint of heart.......2007-05-19
Some people will complain that the book is difficult and/ or uninteresting. To this I say, "Dude, it's statistics! Mr. Gonick makes the best of a difficult subject. This is certainly not less friendly than your stats text book." If you want an easy laugh, get a Get Fuzzy compilation, if you want a different and more intuitive approach to statistics, this is your best bet.
Ok resource.......2007-05-13
My MBA program suggested this book to all incoming first years. In reading it so far, it outlines the concepts well, but doesn't give enough opportunity to practice them and get comfortable with them. I am not getting very much out of it, but I may use it as a resource when I am taking my actual stats class.
Book Description
This revision of QUANTITATIVE METHODS FOR BUSINESS provides students with a conceptual understanding of the role that quantitative methods play in the decision-making process. This text describes the many quantitative methods that have been developed over the years, explains how they work, and shows how the decision-maker can apply and interpret data. Written with the non-mathematician in mind, this text is applications-oriented. Its "Problem-Scenario Approach" motivates and helps students understand and apply mathematical concepts and techniques. In addition, the managerial orientation motivates students by using examples that illustrate situations in which quantitative methods are useful in decision making.
Customer Reviews:
This textbook is TERRIBLE!.......2005-10-01
This book is written in unnecessarily complicated language and does not present information in a way that is easily understood. I teach graduate courses in quantitative methods and I made the mistake of ordering this book for one of my courses without reading it first. It was a disaster!
Unless you are getting a doctorate and need to know lots of complicated formulas without adequate explanations, DO NOT buy this book.
Quantitative MAnagement.......2005-07-10
IT's really oky book. But it took a little more time to get it ghrough me. There are few scratches on the book when i recd. it. The parcel is oky.
Thanks anyway,
Quant Methods Book.......2005-03-06
I have used this textbook for an upper level math class and although the book was hard to follow, I really feel that it did present the information in a well laid out format. Some of the words were hard to grasp, but as for the problems in the back, I found them very useful. I hope anyone out there will in fact give this book a chance.
ABSOLUTELY THE WORST TEXTBOOK FROM A STUDENT'S PERSPECTIVE.......2003-03-12
I am currently taking a Quant Meth class which is using this as the textbook. By far, this is the worst textbook I have ever encountered as a student. It is hard to understand and the answers that are given in the back do not explain how to get to the final solution. Because the problems are not paired (that is 1 is not like 2, 3 is not like 4, etc.) and the only answers are to the EVEN problems, you are basically lost. There is a website for the 9th edition that is "under construction" currently, so there is no help there. This is not a book conducive to learning. Teachers and colleges - PLEASE think twice before you choose this for your curriculum. Both you and your students will be miserable!
Quantitative Methods 8th Edition.......2002-02-01
I am a professor using this book to teach a graduate level Quantitative Methods math class. This book is hard to understand for the students. Exercises included at the end of the chapters are hard to figure for the student based on what is presented in the text alone.
For the instructor, no teacher support is available except a solutions manual. All other texts I have used provides sample lecture material, additional cases, etc. This text provides no such support with a useless web site.
Book Description
In recent years, there has been growing interest in the development and application of quantitative statistical methods to study choices made by individuals. This primer provides an introduction to the main techniques of choice analysis and also includes details on data collection and preparation, model estimation and interpretation and the design of choice experiments. A companion website offers practice data sets and software to apply modeling and data skills presented in the book.
Customer Reviews:
Everything you need to learn to carry out a choice model.......2005-10-17
This book is massive, and hence the term "primer" may be a little misleading. But if you really want to understand how to model choice data for a range of models, the book is outstanding. Other books focus more on the econometrics of the models, which are pivotal to know. But this book builds upon that by walking you through a series of increasingly-complex models, allowing you to understand why you need to perform particular modeling tasks.
The book focuses on NLogit software, but once you understand how to actually estimate choice models utilizing software, the skills can be easily carried into other software programs. However, without such experience, the other books available may fall short in enabling you to estimate choice models. Indeed, this was the case for me -- I understood the econometrics of the models, but had difficulty estimating complex models using software, simply beacuse I was uncomfortable with the syntax.
Hensher et al. removes this obstacle by giving the reader thorough training in both understanding what a given set of choice data may represent (e.g., observations from a particular choice experiment), and how to physically estimate models. The increase in confidence I received from working through the exercises in the book is why I rate the book so highly. Not only are the econometric concepts explained, but the nuts and bolts of model estimation are revealed, and that made all the difference.
An ambiguous oriented book.......2005-10-05
The whole book serves as a software (NLogit) manual. If you already know about the discrete choice analysis, you might be able to find out the messages that the authors try to convey. And it contains barely new information, so it doesn't help you anyway. But if you are new to this area, this is not the good book for you to start.
The book is extremely verbose and the ideas are hidden behind lines and ill-presented. It turned out that it's very difficult to comprehend the essence or even sense of the choice methods from this book. The best one can get is becoming a software user of the authors' own program.
Besides, the software, Nlogit, is not user-friendly and can't serve as a mainsteam tool.
Book Description
This introductory text provides a clear understanding of the intuition behind derivatives pricing, how models are implemented, and how they are used and adapted in practice. M. Joshi covers the strengths and weaknesses of such models as stochastic volatility, jump diffusion, and variance gamma, as well as the Black-Scholes. Examples and exercises, with answers, as well as computer projects, challenge the mind and encourage learning how to become a good quantitative analyst.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent starting point. ... .......2007-01-24
This book is excellent for a deeper introductory look at mathematical
finance. It is well-written, and strikes a nice balance
between sophistication and accessiblity. Its companion volume on
C++ development in the context of quantitative finance is also well
worth examining. I look forward to seeing the follow up volume, which
will cover additional, more advanced topics.
Very Good.......2006-11-03
I'm totally satisfied. About the timing of the shipment, to me very quick and about the quality of the product, that was in good condition.
Very useful book.......2006-02-01
This is a great book for those who want to learn quantitative finance, but don't have the benefit of being enrolled in a financial engineering program. It has the advantage of being self-contained and begins instruction from the ground up: you can "cold start" on the subject with this book. Just a basic knowledge of differential equations (non-stochastic) is required.
It is natural to compare Joshi's book with Hull, but I would recommend reading them together as they have complementary strengths. Hull is over-simplified but provides financial intuition and descriptions of real-world practices. However it does not have modern notation. It also does not teach you how to solve actual pricing problems from the mathematical or computational point of view. Joshi's book does all of that and even helps you develop some mathematical intuition for the models. It also has some computing projects in c++ that a student could do.
The real comparison should be with Neftci's mathematical finance book and Baxter and Rennie. I think Joshi's book is much better than either of the two. I could barely read Neftci after a while because of the errors and bad organization. B&R is way too formal in my opinion for such an applied subject. Joshi's book has good notation and organization which builds confidence in the author, plus it is very applied so you feel you are learning something useful. It has none of that lemma-proof style which can be so unappealing to non-pure mathematicians.
If you already know the field.......2005-10-11
If you already know almost everything it is a very good book. No error and the guy knows what he is doing. However, if you know everything, why do you want to buy this book?
Unfortunately, if you do not know everything, the book is very difficult to understand. At a first lecture I never get the point. After reading some others books and implement the problem, I can indeed understand the chapter... but what is the use? Maybe we (the author and me) do not have the same way of thinking...
Another bad point is that there is no implementation. So if you are blocked somewhere you are dead.
Moreover the authors spend 16 chapter of 18 on equities and 2 on interest rate. But this last field correspond to 90% of the market! ...
Well,..., However,... not so bad ... so, 3 stars
This is a highly recommended work for any quant........2005-06-18
As I write this in June of 2005, quantitative finance has grown up. What was once a cross-over subfield of finance with a veneer of mathematics is now a field unto itself, and hence, in the past decade there have been an explosion of books which often replicate or restate what has been said before with little new to add. Also, there remains an unforgiving gap between introductory texts that are too superficial and specialists' mathematics books that are rigorous and difficult works beyond the commitment for mastery of the busy, intelligent, practical front-line quant. In addition, works that were once adequate are now simplistic and under serve their readers by lulling them into false confidence. Into this fray Dr. Mark S. Joshi's "The Concepts and Practice of Mathematical Finance" enters with a modern voice and delivers what previous texts have only promised and failed to. The work lives up to its title by presenting both concepts and practicalities, and makes other works that do neither well obsolete. Those familiar with my other reviews on quantitative finance texts know that I place a premium on clarity, and on this front Joshi deserves six stars, for he is a master of what William Strunk called "the plain style." I am always sensitive to the fact that many of the world's best quants come from nations where English is not the first language. Readers from China, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Russia and eastern Europe will enjoy Joshi's clarity and find his English easy to follow. It would be impossible to cover everything in quanfin in a single volume, however there is nothing horribly glossed over here and neither is there a single wasted word or equation.
I recommend Amazon review readers refer to the table of contents in the "Look Inside" feature to see what Joshi covers, but my own highlight is how welcome it is that Joshi focuses on risk from the very first word. Since Louis Bachelier risk measurement is what separates quantitative finance from "finance." Other books, including some quantitative finance works, start with cash flows, valuation, and discounting, and only add risk as an antecedent. Joshi correctly emphasizes risk first, last, and always, and for that elevation alone his work deserves five stars. From this foundation Joshi then covers very well pricing methods and arbitrage, simple and high dimensional trees, and the useful shortcuts of Ito calculus that makes tractable Zeno's paradox. Joshi also covers risk neutral and martingale methods, continuous barrier options, multi-look exotic options and incomplete markets and jump processes with an aim of showing these as typical problems for the working quant. Joshi's own references, index, and footnotes testify that by no means is he offering the first, nor the last, word on these knotty subjects, but his treatment is welcome just the same.
The target audience who would benefit from this text over others is four-fold. The primary audience is for first semester students in a graduate financial engineering program, for Joshi's "Concepts and Practice" will be handy throughout his or her studies and career. For those students unsure of their skills and with a limited budget considering between this and an introductory quantitative finance text I recommend Joshi over, say, Wilmott, for this work is more rigorous and in the long run will provide the better value as a practical companion. Within this audience I include professors looking for a high level foundational text for teaching practical risk management and derivatives pricing: this is the book to adopt, yes, even over Hull.
The second audience is for those trained in other science fields: pure mathematics, statistics, physics, etc. who are moving to finance jobs. This volume is an easy "one-stop shop" for you to re-tool your own background towards those topics and techniques used on a quant desk. While by no means covering everything, Joshi speaks your language and after digesting this work all else will fall into place and be understood and used with greater efficiency.
The third and broadest audience is one I am a member of: the already trained and practical "quant." Why should we need this book? My observation is that between reading (for example) Hull and Wilmott, Joshi's "Concepts" unavoidably covers many of the same topics, but also some things they do not and in ways they never could. Joshi is an expert practitioner at the top of his art, and that practical spirit is in every single page. For example, while Hull and Wilmott cover the concept and mathematics of stochastic volatility, Joshi writes from the point of view of the coding quant and discusses the issues of implementation. Joshi's "Concepts and Practice" serves a two fold purpose for a qaunt: it provides an additional voice and explanation of inescapably fundamental material, while bridging the gap of technical deployment for front line practitioners. This is not to say that Joshi offers us up a cookbook, for by no means is this such. Anyone who thinks they can simply buy this book and in a sleepy afternoon plug away code and technique and be done is missing the point: for this is a teaching text. Moreover, each house and set of problems and instruments and structured products to offer are different, to say nothing of the platforms one will be working on. That is why they call it "work." Therefore the practical quant should look to this text as a reference guidebook in a tool box.
As a fourth audience I cautiously recommend this book for those who are going into exotic product sales, but only those who have a good grounding in upper level calculus, linear and matrix algebra, time series analysis, and trees. Why? Simply put, you will be offering products built by quants who simply assume the knowledge in this book is a given. In addition, your better clients will (or should) have quants speaking this language, and the greater your own understanding of the concerns of your team and your clients the better your sales. If this work is too rigorous, then Wilmott's "Introduction to Quantitative Finance" quickly followed by Joshi's "Concepts and Techniques" is the course to follow.
Who is this work not for? Here are some tests. If you are a quant who can type at five lines of code a minute and can read Shreve and Karatzas drinking beer, then this work is too redundant for you. On my desk is a paper on a stochastic process with drift and viscosity under regime switching. If you are reading the same journal, then this work is too simple for you. If you have no idea what I've written about in the past three sentences, then this work is too hard for you.
In summary, Dr. Mark Joshi advances his excellent reputation as an intelligent, practical, and generous quant in offering "The Concepts and Practice of Mathematical Finance" and I recommend this book's wide adoption in graduate programs and its addition to reference libraries.
Book Description
A veteran GE manager explains the tools of Six Sigma--in plain English
This is the first simple, low-level guide to using the powerful statistical tools of Six Sigma to solve real-world problems. Warren Brussee, a Six Sigma manager who helped his teams generate millions of dollars in savings, shows how to plot, interpret, and validate data for a Six Sigma project. The basic statistical tools in the book can be applied to manufacturing, sales, marketing, process, equipment design, and more. Best of all, no background in statistics is required to start improving quality and initiating cost-saving improvements right away.
- Features dozens of Six Sigma statistical problem-solving case studies
- Presents a simplified form of the most common Six Sigma tools
- Simplifies Greenbelt training with one concise reference
- Explains how to use Excel to make Six Sigma problem-solving calculations
- Includes all the basic Six Sigma formulas and tables
Download Description
A veteran GE manager explains the tools of Six Sigma--in plain English This is the first simple, low-level guide to using the powerful statistical tools of Six Sigma to solve real-world problems. Warren Brussee, a Six Sigma manager who helped his teams generate millions of dollars in savings, shows how to plot, interpret, and validate data for a Six Sigma project. The basic statistical tools in the book can be applied to manufacturing, sales, marketing, process, equipment design, and more. Best of all, no background in statistics is required to start improving quality and initiating cost-saving improvements right away.Features dozens of Six Sigma statistical problem-solving case studies Presents a simplified form of the most common Six Sigma tools Simplifies Greenbelt training with one concise reference Explains how to use Excel to make Six Sigma problem-solving calculations Includes all the basic Six Sigma formulas and tables
Customer Reviews:
Facil de leer y de entender, un texto magnifico.......2007-09-17
Es un libro de altisima calidad, escrito en un lenguaje simple y fácil de entender. Altamente recomendable para todo aquel que quiera introducirse en los conceptos de SixSigma
Recommended for Managers of all levels.......2007-07-09
I like the level of detalization in this book and simple language explaining the concept, application of statistics, and Sigma methods. The value of this book from my practical point of view is the Case Studies which help to better understand when and how statistics for Six Sigma can be used.
Highly recommended!!.......2006-08-07
Brussee's Statistics for Six Sigma Made Easy is a wonderful "how to" text for six sigma stat tools that is very readable, and usable, by anyone with at least a high school level background in mathematics. He has done a great job of simplifying much of what a Green Belt would use from the Six Sigma toolkit, and he presents the material in a format highly conducive to application. The result is a valuable statistics manual for the Six Sigma implementer.
Wow.......2006-07-11
Nice customer seervice and quick shipping. This is Six Sigma style. AAAA+.
A Truly Unique and Friendly Six Sigma Book.......2006-02-27
I am a Black Belt and program manager at a Fortune 100 company. I use and teach Six Sigma regularly, and I strongly believe in the power of this methodology. However, Six Sigma can be complex, bureaucratic, and confusing. This sometimes makes it difficult to get buy-in from others.
I constantly search for books that make Six Sigma easier to use and understand. I have used Brussee's Statistics for Six Sigma Made Easy for over a year and have found no other book as successful in making Six Sigma truly useable for those who don't plan to make Six Sigma their life's major undertaking. Not everyone wants to be a Six Sigma Black Belt!
The author has simplified many of the Six Sigma tools, with no reduction in their usefulness. In fact, the simplification on the QFDs and the FMEAs make them MORE useful, because they aren't so tedious and boring. And the Simplified Gauge Verification, which incorporates aim into the formula, makes the output far more meaningful.
Testing for statistical significance, which in most Six Sigma books is either skipped completely or treated with the same complexity as in a high-level statistics book, is incorporated as a straight-forward test, with no unnecessary jargon. And all calculations can be done with Excel. Although I feel comfortable using Six Sigma specific software, I find that most people who are not doing Six Sigma calculations on a daily basis are much more comfortable using Excel.
The included Six Sigma case studies seem to indicate that the author has truly lived through Six Sigma projects, not just observed them as a consultant. As someone who has to live with the results of their work for many years, I appreciate this difference.
I think that Brussee's approach to Six Sigma will become the standard as this valuable methodology continues to be incorporated into more industrial and non-industrial processes. I highly recommend this book.
Dedicated Black Belt
Book Description
Finance is one of the fastest growing areas in the modern banking and corporate world. This, together with the sophistication of modern financial products, provides a rapidly growing impetus for new mathematical models and modern mathematical methods. Indeed, the area is an expanding source for novel and relevant "real-world" mathematics. In this book, the authors describe the modeling of financial derivative products from an applied mathematician's viewpoint, from modeling to analysis to elementary computation. The authors present a unified approach to modeling derivative products as partial differential equations, using numerical solutions where appropriate. The authors assume some mathematical background, but provide clear explanations for material beyond elementary calculus, probability, and algebra. This volume will become the standard introduction for advanced undergraduate students to this exciting new field.
Customer Reviews:
Good Buy.......2007-08-29
maps one to one with many chapters in Hull. more elaborate derivations than Hull. Fixed income area treatment is very slim though. Good Buy for the Price.
Okay but not an introduction.......2006-07-31
If you want an introduction, read another book like Hull. If you want to learn how to apply Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) approach to finance then it is a useful book. However, it is better to read an elementary PDEs book before reading this book. At least, learn how to solve parabolic PDEs analytically because the technical notes in the book would not help much.
Introduction to partial differential equations in finance.......2005-10-13
This book treats only the partial differential equations
in Finance and how to treat them using Finite Differences
and Tree. For this purpose it is very well written and
understandable. A very good beginning for student. Even
undergraduate.
Now after reading it you should understand the martingales reading the baxter and how to implement Monte Carlo using, for example Glasserman (see my reviews)
A good introduction to the PDE approach.......2005-10-10
Contrary to what many readers believe, this book explains the pricing of derivatives much better than Hull. Hull gives an overview of the mechanics and properties of the derivative pricing industry, along with its pricing methodologies, and this book provides an in depth method to one of the pricing methods.
Financial derivatives can be priced by a wide range of methodologies, among some the elegant equivalent martingale measure approach (or risk-neutral pricing), replication, multinomial tree approximation, Monte Carlo simulation, partial differential equations etc etc.
This book gives an excellent introduction, and an insight to the PDE approach. Although being a big fan of the Girsanov-change-of-measure method myself, these analytical methods often fail in the valuation of highly complex derivatives like the exotics. Pricing americans prove to be hard and inefficient too, even with simulation and the risk-neutral approach.
This is where PDE methods come in. Since most derivatives (or term structures) have a PDE describing its evolution, solving the PDE seems to be a good (or sometimes the best) way, no matter how complex the derivative can get. PDEs on the other hand, have very robust and easy methods for solving. Therefore, this book brings the reader through basic PDE solving methods, analytical solutions, techniques for fast and efficient numerical approximations as well as rigorous technical explanations for some of the mathematics of partial differential equations (which arise in the financial industry).
The authors are famous for their research in the field of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and this book continues to be a classic for undergraduates in mathematics in Oxford. If you want to have an overview of the pde approach to option valuation, without the hassle of learning up Radon-Nikodým and martingales, I highly recommend this book!
waste of time.......2005-03-10
This book is very bad, lacks almost everything you can think of, but if you don't know any better you probably won't care. It certainly needs to be supplemented by a respectable book if you want to learn derivatives (c.f. Hull's textbook, for example), and on the other hand, the math isn't rigorous at all, so you'll need a book on stochastic calculus (e.g. Michael Steele's, actually there are tons of better books out there, it's not hard to find better).
Book Description
In today's increasingly competitive financial world, successful risk management, portfolio management, and financial structuring demand more than up-to-date financial know-how. They also call for quantitative expertise, including the ability to effectively apply mathematical modeling tools and techniques. An Introduction to Credit Risk Modeling supplies both the bricks and the mortar of risk management. In a gentle and concise lecture-note style, it introduces the fundamentals of credit risk management, provides a broad treatment of the related modeling theory and methods, and explores their application to credit portfolio securitization, credit risk in a trading portfolio, and credit derivatives risk. The presentation is thorough but refreshingly accessible, foregoing unnecessary technical details yet remaining mathematically precise. Whether you are a risk manager looking for a more quantitative approach to credit risk or you are planning a move from the academic arena to a career in professional credit risk management, An Introduction to Credit Risk Modeling is the book you've been looking for. It will bring you quickly up to speed with information needed to resolve the questions and quandaries encountered in practice.
Customer Reviews:
read this before going for it.......2007-04-23
Well first off I would like to tell anyone who doesn't have a solid working knowledge of calculus (including multivariate) to avoid this book as it requires multiple integrals and infinite series and sequences. Now onto the good and the bad:
THE GOOD:
This text explains concepts very well and is FULL of examples. I mean literally 3/4 of the book, maybe more, is examples. Every chapter also has a section of problems that have partial solutions, which can come in very handy. This is pretty much all that is good about this text, but keep in mind that explaination is the most important part of any textbook.
THE BAD:
The proofs skip plenty of steps. And I mean plenty, so much that a proof in the book would take 5 lines but when my professor proved it in class it would take him nearly 15. Also while there are tonnes of examples, too many are theoretical and very hard. The book costs a hefty amount of change and is suprisingly small, Author couldl have given few more examples to make it interesting. However the worst thing about this book is how the author leaves important things in with the text often. However most these things are small, and overall the text is a good intro to probability theory.
a very good book.......2006-10-31
The authors wanted to write the book that they themselves would have liked to read before starting a profession in risk management. I am working for a treasury consultancy firm. This book was the best of the five I bought. The text is very clear yet does not assume too much prior knowledge. It covers theory as well as industry practice. The book contains much advanced statistics and readers must have some background in order to handle this. The authors keep it simple but not too simple. Their approach is pragmatic throughout. I am really happy to have read this book when I started doing work in credit risk management.
good combination of math and finance.......2006-02-22
As indicated on the back of the book, the authors are aiming at audience who have some knowledge in both math and finance but may be weak in one and strong in another. Either way, this is a good book to read on credit risk.
Clear and comprehensive.......2005-10-27
This book clearly articulates basic concepts of credit risk modeling. At the same time it is mathematically rigorous. This book enables non mathematician with some (basic) knowledge in probability statistic to better understand and develop his risk management skills.
A good read!.......2004-08-19
Easy to understand with not a tremendous amount of complicated math to dicipher. Just what the doctor ordered.
Average customer rating:
- Tufte's Classic Is A Must Read In Our Statistical Times
- Essential for anyone working with charts and graphs
- Good ideas, nice layout, kinda rambling though
- Fascinating. Quick. Friendly for the non-expert
- An absolutely superb book.
|
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition
Edward R. Tufte
Manufacturer: Graphics Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Similar Items:
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Envisioning Information
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Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
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Beautiful Evidence
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Visual & Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Decision Making
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The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Second Edition
ASIN: 0961392142 |
Amazon.com
A timeless classic in how complex information should be presented graphically. The Strunk & White of visual design. Should occupy a place of honor--within arm's reach--of everyone attempting to understand or depict numerical data graphically. The design of the book is an exemplar of the principles it espouses: elegant typography and layout, and seamless integration of lucid text and perfectly chosen graphical examples. Very Highly Recommended.
Customer Reviews:
Tufte's Classic Is A Must Read In Our Statistical Times.......2007-10-06
This book established Tufte as the authority on the subject of graphs, charts, tables, indeed the display of data by any means. The book is readable by most anyone and will add to your library and your ability to make your way intelligently and critically through the flood of statistical and graphical arguments and pitches placed before us every day.
Simply and confidently Tufte lays out the basics of the right and the wrong, the good and the bad (and occasionally ugly) regarding graphical depictions of data and information.
This book (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition )is the first and the foundation of four books by Tufte (I. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition. II. Envisioning Information. III. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. IV. Beautiful Evidence.) that should be read in the order of publication. You will be a wiser person for the effort.
His short book, "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within", while not part of the "four volume set" is a withering attack on the ubiquitous software program, an attack based on the fact that it encourages the user to break nearly every principle that Tufte has spent the last 20 years elucidating in his books regarding the reading and the writing and presentation of well thought out and presented arguments and reports. I've read it and was convinced; PP constrains complex thought, argument, and statistical (indeed any form of) reasoning with its "bullet points", and is a very inefficient means of depicting information as well, cluttering the display space with useless clip art, huge fonts, and often misleading cookie-cutter graphs. (His satirical PP presentation of the Gettysburg Address humorously makes his points, while his analysis of a very real NASA PowerPoint slide from the decision-making meetings regarding the danger to the Space Shuttle Columbia before its destruction on re-entry makes his points in a very sobering manner.)
All this being said, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a Great Book. In the internet age we all spend many hours per week looking at visual depictions of information. Tufte's book will make you a more critical user of nearly everything, from the newspaper, to websites, to work presentations, the sports pages, and even your car's speedometer and other gauges. It is the foundation to all of his published work from the last two decades.
Buy this book!
Essential for anyone working with charts and graphs.......2007-03-10
This book fuses mathematical information with art to tell the underlying story and get your message across to the viewer. I would reccommend it to anyone responsible for conveying objective information to others.
Good ideas, nice layout, kinda rambling though.......2007-03-08
This book was very nicely laid out, and the ideas for presenting were good. Sometimes it was a little hard to follow because it rambled a little. But I did get some good pointers that I can use to visualize my data.
Fascinating. Quick. Friendly for the non-expert.......2007-01-09
The book strikes a good balance between major concepts and academic nitty-gritty.
An absolutely superb book........2006-11-23
Tufte presents an examination of a frankly under-esteemed method of data analysis that can be accurately described as passionate. As a Behavioural Scientist trained in sophisticated methods of statistical analysis, I previously was arrogantly inclined to regard charts and graphs as simplistic and naive approaches to data interpretation. However, I now apprehend the undeniable utility of graphical representation, and have acquired a fascination with the field through Tufte's contagious enthusiasm.
If you work with data of any form, it is IMPERATIVE that you read this book.
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- Interest Rate Models - Theory and Practice: With Smile, Inflation and Credit (Springer Finance)
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- Introduction to Management Science
- Introduction to the Mathematics of Financial Derivatives
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- Marketing Research: An Aid to Decision Making
- Martingale Methods in Financial Modelling (Stochastic Modelling and Applied Probability)
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