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Books: Computers: Data Mining
Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Resultsby Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg List Price: $35.00 Available from Amazon $22.05 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Economist.com "a profound and powerful critique of America’s health-care system. It deserves to be read widely. And probably will be." Book Description The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums-not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets.
In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying-and largely overlooked-causes of the problem, and provide a powerful prescription for change.
The authors argue that participants in the health care system have competed to shift costs, accumulate bargaining power, and restrict services, rather than create value for patients. This zero-sum competition takes place at the wrong level-among health plans, networks, and hospitals-rather than where it matters most, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining health care competition based on patient value. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move to a positive-sum competition that will unleash stunning improvements in quality and efficiency.
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The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Cultureby John Battelle List Price: $25.95 Available from Amazon $16.35 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Product Review If you pick your books by their popularity--how many and which other people are reading them--then know this about The Search: it's probably on Bill Gates' reading list, and that of almost every venture capitalist and startup-hungry entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In its sweeping survey of the history of Internet search technologies, its gossip about and analysis of Google, and its speculation on the larger cultural implications of a Web-connected world, it will likely receive attention from a variety of businesspeople, technology futurists, journalists, and interested observers of mid-2000s zeitgeist. This ambitious book comes with a strong pedigree. Author John Battelle was a founder of The Industry Standard and then one of the original editors of Wired, two magazines which helped shape our early perceptions of the wild world of the Internet. Battelle clearly drew from his experience and contacts in writing The Search. In addition to the sure-handed historical perspective and easy familiarity with such dot-com stalwarts as AltaVista, Lycos, and Excite, he speckles his narrative with conversational asides from a cast of fascinating characters, such Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Yahoo's, Jerry Yang and David Filo; key executives at microsoft and different VC firms on the famed Sandhill road; and numerous other insiders, particularly at the company which currently sits atop the search world, Google. The Search is not exactly the corporate history of Google. At the book's outset, Battelle specifically indicates his desire to understand what he calls the cultural anthropology of search, and to analyze search engines' current role as the "database of our intentions"--the repository of humanity's curiosity, exploration, and expressed desires. Interesting though that beginning is, though, Battelle's story really picks up speed when he starts dishing inside scoop on the darling business story of the decade, Google. To Battelle's credit, though, he doesn't stop just with historical retrospective: the final part of his book focuses on the potential future directions of Google and its products' development. In what Battelle himself acknowledges might just be a "digital fantasy train", he describes the possibility that Google will become the centralizing platform for our entire lives and quotes one early employee on the weightiness of Google's potential impact: "Sometimes I feel like I am on a bridge, twenty thousand feet up in the air. If I look down I'm afraid I'll fall. I don't feel like I can think about all the implications." Some will shrug at such words; after all, similar hype has accompanied other technologies and other companies before. Many others, though, will search Battelle's story for meaning--and fast. --Peter Han
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Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Managementby Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton List Price: $27.50 Available from Amazon $17.33 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page BusinessWeek "…a rarity on the crowded management shelf…a useful reminder that the gut is often trumped by the facts." Chicago Tribune, April 24, 2006 "The workplace version of Consumer Reports, it evaluates virtually every aspect of managing a business against old and new thinking" |
Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Futureby Jeff Goodell List Price: $25.95 Available from Amazon $16.35 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. After a generation out of the spotlight, coal has reasserted its centrality: the United States "burn[s] more than a billion tons" per year, and since 9/11 and the Iraq war, independence from foreign oil has become positively patriotic. Rolling Stone contributing editor Goodell's last book, the bestselling Our Story, was about a mine accident, which clearly made a deep impression on him. Our reliance on coal—the unspoken foundation of our "information" economy—has, Goodell says, led to an "empire of denial" that blocks us from the investments necessary to find alternative energy sources that could eventually save us from fossil fuel. Goodell's description of the mining-related deaths, the widespread health consequences of burning coal and the impact on our planet's increasingly fragile ecosystem make for compelling reading, but such commonplace facts are not what lift this book out of the ordinary. That distinction belongs to Goodell's fieldwork, which takes him to Atlanta, West Virginia, Wyoming, china and beyond—though he also has a fine grasp of the less tangible niceties of the industry. Goodell understands how mines, corporate boardrooms, commodity markets and legislative chambers interrelate to induce a national inertia. Goodell has a talent for pithy argument—and the book fairly crackles with informed conviction. (June 8) Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Viewing the political and economic heft of the American coal industry, journalist Goodell presents an admiring view of the workers who mine, transport, and burn coal and an adversarial posture toward the CEOs, lobbyists, and politicians who monitor industry interests. In the background of the author's narratives, which are pegged to his visits to coalfields, coal-hauling trains, and power plants, lurks environmental pollution. Goodell injects relevant statistics (e.g., on average, an American uses 20 pounds of coal in a lifetime) that effectively personalize the reader's connection to an industry most ignore until a power outage. He astutely recognizes and heavily criticizes how mining companies and utilities capitalize on this disconnection in their public relations. Disputing their assertions that standards of living will suffer from the host of regulations and treaties he favors, Goodell particularizes his objections in detail useful to those who closely follow environmental issues. The circulation numbers of a comparable critique of the fossil fuels complex, Boiling Point, by Ross Gelbspan (2004), may predict Goodell's appeal to library patrons. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved |
The Elements of Statistical Learningby T. Hastie, R. Tibshirani, and J. H. Friedman List Price: $89.95 Available from Amazon $71.59 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Book Description During the past decade there has been an explosion in computation and information technology. With it has come vast amounts of data in a variety of fields such as medicine, biology, finance, and marketing. The challenge of understanding these data has led to the development of new tools in the field of statistics, and spawned new areas such as data mining, machine learning, and bioinformatics. Many of these tools have common underpinnings but are often expressed with different terminology. This book descibes theimprtant ideas in these areas ina common conceptual framework. While the approach is statistical, the emphasis is on concepts rather than mathematics. Many examples are given, with a liberal use of color graphics. It should be a vluable resource for statisticians and anyone interested in data mining in science or industry. The book's coverage is broad, from supervised learing (prediction) to unsupervised learning. The many topics include neural networks, support vector machines, classification trees and boosting--the first comprehensive treatment of this topic in any book. Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, and Jerome Friedman are professors of statistics at Stanford University. They are prominent researchers in this area: Hastie and Tibshirani developed generalized additive models and wrote a popular book of that title. Hastie wrote much of the statistical modeling software in S-PLUS and invented principal curves and surfaces. Tibshirani proposed the Lasso and is co-author of the very successful An Introduction to the Bootstrap. Friedman is the co-inventor of many data-mining tools including CART, MARS, and projection pursuit. Book Info Describes important statistical ideas in machine learning, data mining, and bioinformatics. Covers a broad range, from supervised learning (prediction), to unsupervised learning, including classification trees, neural networks, and support vector machines. DLC: Supervised learning (Machine learning). |
Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modelingby Wayne L. Winston List Price: $39.99 Available from Amazon $25.19 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Book Description Apply the techniques that business analysts at leading companies use to analyze and transform data into bottom line results. Well known consultant, statistician, and business professor Wayne Winston teaches by example the best ways to use microsoft Excel for data analysis, and modeling About The Author Wayne L. Winston teaches decision sciences at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. For more than 10 years he has taught business analysts how to use Excel to make better decisions. His clients include Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; Cisco Systems, Inc.; Eli Lilly and Company; Ford Motor Company; General motors Corporation; Intel Corporation; microsoft Corporation; NCR Corporation; Owens Corning; Pfizer, Inc.; Proctor & Gamble; the U.S. Army; and the U.S. Department of Defense. Wayne and business partner Jeff Sagarin developed a player rating system that the Dallas Mavericks use to identify statistical trends and evaluate players. Wayne is also a two-time Jeopardy! Champion. |
Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming (Programmer to Programmer)by Robert Vieira List Price: $59.99 Available from Amazon $37.79 On 7-22-2006
See Item's Page Product Review When it comes to selecting computer books, deciding which book to buy can sometimes be even more confusing than the software it is written about. However, if you are looking for a book to instruct you on the use of SQL Server 2000, Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming is an excellent choice. In addition to providing a thorough treatment of SQL Server 2000 development, Rob Vieira's extensive reference also devotes quite a lot of space to covering SQL in general and issues relating to database design. Included is a complete introduction to Transact-SQL and an excellent chapter on normalization that will help demystify an over-referenced but much misunderstood database design concept. There is also in-depth information on the new features of SQL Server 2000, including indexed views, user-defined functions, and support of XML. Sadly, there's no accompanying CD-ROM, but source code for the book can be downloaded from the Wrox Web site. While you don't need any knowledge of SQL Server or database administration to make the most of this book, you will need a reasonable understanding of programming fundamentals. That said, the author's down-to-earth style makes it possible for anyone with some programming background, and the will to learn, to really get comfortable with SQL Server 2000 development. If you are looking for a book that combines rich content with clear explanation, look no further. --Peter Lunn, Amazon.co.uk
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
SQL Server 2000 is the latest and most powerful version of Microsoft's data warehousing and relational database management system. This new release is tightly integrated with Windows 2000 and offers more support for XML, as well as improved Analysis Services for OLAP and data mining. Professional SQL Server 2000 provides a comprehensive guide to programming with SQL Server 2000, from a complete tutorial on Transact-SQL to an in-depth discussion of new features, such as indexed views, user-defined functions, and the wealth of new SQL Server features to support XML. Whether you're coming to SQL Server 2000 from another relational database management system, upgrading your existing system, or perhaps wanting to add programming skills to your DBA knowledge, you'll find what you need in this book to get to grips with SQL Server 2000 development. What does this book cover? Here are just a few of the things covered in this book:
Who is this book for? This book is aimed at the SQL Server developer who wants to make the most out of the new features of SQL Server 2000. No knowledge of SQL Server is assumed, although in order to follow this book, you do need to have an understanding of programming basics such as variables, data types, and procedural programming. Database administration is also covered but only as it affects the SQL Server developer.
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The Camel Clubby David Baldacci List Price: $26.95 Available from Amazon $16.98 On 7-22-2006 
See Item's Page Product Review Conspiracy theories--everybody has one. The difference with this conspiracy is that it's all too real. David Baldacci's The Camel Club takes readers inside the Beltway as four unlikely misfits struggle not only to survive, but to save their president and their country from a plot that will lead to nuclear disaster. Bestselling Baldacci
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