The American Economy Its Problems and Prospects

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The American Economy Its Problems and Prospects
Alfred A. Knoff
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knoff
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000P9UX8K

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The American economy, its problems and prospects
Sumner H Slichter
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0007DE6SC

Book Description

The four major areas the author discusses are industrial relations, economic stability, international economic policy, and the incentives necessary to increase industrial capacity and production.

American Economy: Its Problems and Prospects

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American Economy: Its Problems and Prospects
Sumner H. Slichter
Manufacturer: ALFRED A. KNOPF
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OJPK9I

THE AMERICAN ECONOMY:ITS PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

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THE AMERICAN ECONOMY:ITS PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf NY
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Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000G3EPFM

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The American Economy: Its Problems and Prospects
Sumner Huber Slichter
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press Reprint
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Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTNUTA

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FAO in the front line of development
Edouard Saouma
Manufacturer: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Agricultural Sciences | Professional Science | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9251034001

Book Description

Advances in Inorganic Chemistry presents timely and informative summaries of the current progress in a variety of subject areas within inorganic chemistry, ranging from bioinorganic to solid state. This acclaimed serial features reviews written by experts in the area and is an indispensable reference to advanced researchers. Each volume of Advances in Inorganic Chemistry contains an index, and each chapter is fully referenced.

Book Description

This book is an elaboration of the author's lecture notes in a graduate course in statistical physics and thermodynamics, augmented by some material suitable for self-teaching as well as for undergraduate study. The first 4 or 5 chapters are suitable for an undergraduate course for engineers and physicists in Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics and include detailed study of the various ensembles and their connections to applied thermodynamics. The Debye law of specific heats and reasons for deviations from the Debye formulas are covered, as are the Einstein theories of Brownian motion, black-body radiation and specific heat of solids. Van der Waals gases and the reason for the apparent failure of his Law of Corresponding States are discussed.

The last 5 chapters treat topics of recent interest to researchers, including: the Ising and Potts models, spin waves in ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic media, sound propagation in non-ideal gases and the decay of sound waves, introduction to the understanding of glasses and spin glasses, superfluidity and superconductivity.

The selection of material is wide-ranging and the mathematics for handling it completely self-contained, ranging from counting (probability theory) to quantum field theory as used in the study of fermions, bosons and as an adjunct in the solutions of the equations of classical diffusion-reaction theory. In addition to the standard material found in most recent books on statistical physics the constellation of topics covered in this text includes numerous original items:

· Generalization of "negative temperature" to interacting spins
· Derivation of Gibbs' factor from first principles
· Exact free energy of interacting particles in 1D (e.g., classical and quantum Tonk's gas)
· Introduction to virial expansions, Equations of State, Correlation Functions and "critical exponents"
· Superfluidity in ideal and non-ideal fluids (both Bogolubov and Feynman theories)
· Superconductivity: thermodynamical approach and the BCS theory
· Derivation of "Central Limit Theorem" and its applications
· Boltzmann's "H-Theorem" and the nonlinear Boltzmann equation
· Exact solution of nonlinear Boltzmann Equation for electrons in time-dependent electric field and the derivation of Joule heating, transport parameters in crossed electric and magnetic fields, etc.
· Frequency spectrum and decay of sound waves in gases
· Exact evaluation of free energy and thermodynamic properties of the two-dimensional Ising model in regular and fully frustrated (spin-glass like) lattices
· The "zipper" model of crystal fracture or polymer coagulation - calculation of Tc
· Potts model in 2D: duality and Tc
· "Doi's theory" of diffusion-limited chemical reactions with some exact results — including the evaluation of statistical fluctuations in radioactive decay
· Thermodynamic Green Functions and their applications to fermions and bosons with an example drawn from random matrix theory

and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Just to clarify.......2006-06-22

I consider this book a very readable book, not from a genius, but a good book.
The problem with the people who rated it very bad is: They don't know what "statistical mechanics" means. To begin with statistical mechanis surely you have to know thermodynamics and physics. It's usual to study thermodynamics and "Statistical physics" as undergraduates and "Statistical mechanics" as graduates. Its just a nomenclature. But it helps to choose the books.
I rated it five starts just to bring the mean a good number of stars... This book has a heavy dispersion :)

Not for beginners.......2004-03-26

I'm sorry to say it, but the title of this book is misleading. The only way this book would be simple for you is if you have had a moderate class in probability and have had plenty of previous study in thermodynamics and physics. This book is definitely not for beginners.

Not simple at all!.......2004-02-18

I bought this book after I saw an advertisement in Physics today. While I cannot judge whether it is a good book for people who are already deep into the subject, it is definitely not a book for beginners or intermediates. For the latter I would recommend Chandler or Hill.

Book Description

In 1967 the world of Milton studies was divided into two armed camps: one proclaiming (in the tradition of Blake and Shelley) that Milton was of the devil's party with or without knowing it, the other proclaiming (in the tradition of Addison and C. S. Lewis) that the poet's sympathies are obviously with God and the angels loyal to him. The achievement of Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin was to reconcile the two camps by subsuming their claims in a single overarching thesis: Paradise Lost is a poem about how its readers came to be the way they are--that is, fallen--and the poem's lesson is proven on a reader's impulse every time he or she finds a devilish action attractive or a godly action dismaying. Fish's argument reshaped the face of Milton studies; thirty years later the issues raised in Surprised by Sin continue to set the agenda and drive debate.

Customer Reviews:

After 300 years, the final word........2007-05-13

Critics, including Shelley, have argued over "Paradise Lost" for over 300
years. Stanley Fish has answered the crucial question once and for all: "What
was Milton doing?" In a critical masterpiece, Fish has opened for all of us
the pedagogic purpose of this monumental work. With a pattern of "mistake,
correction, instruction," Fish has broken the code; showing at once that we
are still "fallen" and susceptible to the rhetoric of Satan and his minions,
and in what ways we, as "fallen man" continue to respond to the persuasion
of the serpent in the Garden. It's hard to see what more can be written about
"Paradise Lost" after this landmark exigesis. Read it and see how easily we
can be seduced - and today's political discourse continues the tradition.

Over-Hyped and Under-Written.......2005-02-16

I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Bornholdt's review of Surprised by Sin. While Fish's analysis of Paradise Lost has become so over-hyped as to become akin to literary scripture in itself, his writing remains simplistic, his sentence structure convoluted, and his arguments riddled with holes. While it is true that there is plenty of theological research in evidence (in quite a few instances, the footnotes are larger than the main text on the page), there is noticeably little textual evidence sited in Paradise Lost itself; Mr. Fish is so busy engaging with other written texts that he fails to closely read the poem that he's supposed to be discussing.

Mr. Fish's idea that the reader is enticed to be "sinful" by the narrative is interesting: the problem, however, is that his argument is not based on Paradise Lost but on a personal belief system. While one must assume a certain religious system when reading a text like Paradise Lost, one must begin critical analysis with the poem itself and not with scripture. Often Paradise Lost does not adhere to Fish's theories; but rather than discuss such issues through textual evidence, Fish relies on the playground mentality/argument of "you're a sinner because you are."

Take Fish's analysis regarding the allusion to Ovid's Narcissus in Eve's birth, for example. Despite the fact that this moment is vital to the construction of Eve's character, Fish glosses over it in only three pages (out of 350). Why? Because his argument is lacking.

Regarding Eve's birth, Fish says that "one can either conclude . . . that 'we have glimpsed a dainty vanity in "our general mother" which the serpent will put to use' or contrive . . . to disengage her from the pejorative connotations of the myth." Ignoring the fact that there are more than these two ways in which this passage can be read, he himself says that, in order to "disengage" Eve from the negative connotations of the Narcissus allusion, one must "contrive" to do so ("contrive" meaning to devise, invent, or fabricate). One would think that if his theory was solid, he would not need to "contrive" an argument: he would simply have one.

But Fish fails to conduct a close reading of Milton's words in the same way that he fails to consider his own word choice. Blatantly ignoring the numerous parallels between the two characters that work against his theory, Fish suggests that the reader must not compare but contrast the two tales. But not only does he ignore the blatant parallels; he also ignores the blatant differences: he suggests that Eve is childlike and emphasizes that she eventually yields to Adam, but that's it. End of argument. He fails to deeply consider the language, content, or implications of the section. Amongst many other questions, what about the fact that Narcissus is cursed to fall in love with his own reflection while Eve is not? that Eve is interrupted and Narcissus is not? What about the implication of such words as "yield" and "seize"? After reading Ovid's story, any average reader could come up with at least half a dozen comparisons and/or contrasts between the two stories. But not only does he not support a reading against the comparison, but he does not successfully support his own reading for the contrasts either. He merely concludes that this section is a "puzzle" and that, since Eve could not possibly have been made flawed, she's not. Why? Because God wouldn't make Eve flawed. Where's the textual evidence? There is none. But any reader who thinks that Milton created a flawed Eve is a sinner. Why? Cuz you are.

(Any Eddie Izzard fans out there, cf. "You smell cuz you do. You're a twit cuz you are.")

This lack of textual engagement is the fatal flaw in Fish's analyses. While there may be something interesting in the idea that the poem is written in order to entice the reader to the Dark Side, Fish fails to prove it. Repeatedly his argument relies not on Paradise Lost itself but on (what seems to be) his personal belief system. For Fish the evidence is not in the poem but in scripture/doctrine/outside sources and the poem a mere inconvenience. Had I handed in such shoddy textual analysis in college, I never would have graduated.

Therefore I must disagree with Mr. Bornholdt's suggestion that Surprised by Sin is "lucid, engaging, responsible, illuminating." Fish's ideas are left unexplored, his conclusions unsupported and reductive. His writing style is rambling, his tone arrogant, and his parenthetical asides both distracting and often off-topic. There are a number of critics who have made similar (but better) arguments based in close textual readings and responsible scholarship; unfortunately (and inexplicably), Fish's book got all the press.

If you're a Milton scholar, you won't be able to avoid this book. But do yourself a favor and borrow it from the library. That $22 is much better spent photocopying the scholarship of others than slogging through this mess.

A classic of Milton criticism.......2001-07-19

According to Fish, "Paradise Lost" operates according to a mechanism of rhetorical indirection that works on all rhetorical levels, from depiction of character to deployment of tropes. Milton wants to show us how our fallen state corrupts and distorts our responses to poetry and instruction; the poem is constructed as a series of interlocking traps for the reader, who is lured into reacting in tempting but "wrong" ways to tropes ("with serpent error wandering") and characters (the apparently admirable Satan and his cohorts, the apparently tyrannical and odious God). The chapter on the poetics of prelapsarian Eden ("In Wandering Mazes Lost," I think it's called) is a masterpiece. Fish backs this all up with plenty of solid research into the theological doctrines Milton was known to endorse or was likely to have been familiar with.

This approach to Milton was regarded as radical when the book first came out, rather oddly, since Milton's tactics of indirection had already been noted by several critics, though not foregrounded as here. What's new is the thoroughness and clarity of the treatment, and Fish's sheer intelligence as a reader. This is criticism at its best: lucid, engaging, responsible, illuminating.

Book Description

The Memory of Mankind is an illustrated history of the unique role libraries have played in the history of civilzation.

Don Heinrich Tolzmann took the classic German-language work The History of Libraires by Alfred Hessel (published 1925 and translated by Reuben Peiss in 1950) and expanded it with additional text to cover the important past 75 years.

Tolzmann also completely rewrote the first chapter due to the discovery of many clay tablet libraries in the ancient Middle East, thus expanding our library history knowledge back 5,000 years.

Amazon.com

In the tradition of Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos, German scientist Gerd Gigerenzer offers his own take on numerical illiteracy. "In Western countries, most children learn to read and write, but even in adulthood, many people do not know how to think with numbers," he writes. "I focus on the most important form of innumeracy in everyday life, statistical innumeracy--that is, the inability to reason about uncertainties and risk." The author wisely uses concrete examples from the real world to make his points, and he shows the devastating impact of this problem. In one example, he describes a surgeon who advised many of his patients to accept prophylactic mastectomies in order to dodge breast cancer. In a two-year period, this doctor convinced 90 "high-risk" women without cancer to sacrifice their breasts "in a heroic exchange for the certainty of saving their lives and protecting their loved ones from suffering and loss." But Gigerenzer shows that the vast majority of these women (84 of them, to be exact) would not have developed breast cancer at all. If the doctor or his patients had a better understanding of probabilities, they might have chosen a different course. Fans of Innumeracy will enjoy Calculated Risks, as will anyone who appreciates a good puzzle over numbers. --John Miller

Book Description

At the beginning of the twentieth century, H. G. Wells predicted that statistical thinking would be as necessary for citizenship in a technological world as the ability to read and write. But in the twenty-first century, we are often overwhelmed by a baffling array of percentages and probabilities as we try to navigate in a world dominated by statistics.

Cognitive scientist Gerd Gigerenzer says that because we haven't learned statistical thinking, we don't understand risk and uncertainty. In order to assess risk -- everything from the risk of an automobile accident to the certainty or uncertainty of some common medical screening tests -- we need a basic understanding of statistics.

Astonishingly, doctors and lawyers don't understand risk any better than anyone else. Gigerenzer reports a study in which doctors were told the results of breast cancer screenings and then were asked to explain the risks of contracting breast cancer to a woman who received a positive result from a screening. The actual risk was small because the test gives many false positives. But nearly every physician in the study overstated the risk. Yet many people will have to make important health decisions based on such information and the interpretation of that information by their doctors.

Gigerenzer explains that a major obstacle to our understanding of numbers is that we live with an illusion of certainty. Many of us believe that HIV tests, DNA fingerprinting, and the growing number of genetic tests are absolutely certain. But even DNA evidence can produce spurious matches. We cling to our illusion of certainty because the medical industry, insurance companies, investment advisers, and election campaigns have become purveyors of certainty, marketing it like a commodity.

To avoid confusion, says Gigerenzer, we should rely on more understandable representations of risk, such as absolute risks. For example, it is said that a mammography screening reduces the risk of breast cancer by 25 percent. But in absolute risks, that means that out of every 1,000 women who do not participate in screening, 4 will die; while out of 1,000 women who do, 3 will die. A 25 percent risk reduction sounds much more significant than a benefit that 1 out of 1,000 women will reap.

This eye-opening book explains how we can overcome our ignorance of numbers and better understand the risks we may be taking with our money, our health, and our lives.

Customer Reviews:

Overwritten, yet not particularly clear.......2007-06-02

I am always looking for materials to use to help non-specialist students understand some of the basic statistical errors that pharmaceutical advertisers exploit (and that so many otherwise educated and informed medical personnel also seem to misunderstand).

It's surprisingly difficult: some are way too technical and eccentric (Hacking). Others are too cute and breezy ("How to Lie..") Some are marred by the author's own (ungrounded) evolutionary conjectures (Taleb, "Fooled By Randomness....") Some just aren't clear enough.

Gigerenzer's book falls in that 'not clear enough' category. It fails to be clear for several reasons. First, as another reviewer has observed, it is badly overwritten. The analytical points, such as they were, were presented VERY early on in the book. The book should have been a pamplet. But, really, it is worse than that: instead of deepening the points, or providing more of a conceptual roadmap,the author repeated them, and in some cases clouded them with dubious interpretations/speculations, etc.

Some things should have been more carefully explained (in English as well as numbers), notably the misuse of statistics in interpreting evidence, both in the courtroom and in the interpretation of 'DNA fingerprints.' Some things should have been omitted. The chapter about HIV counseling really did not add very much. On the contrary: I think it may have detracted. It is VERY difficult to perform and interpret the sort of study that the author's student chose to perform; the student's methodology study was SERIOUSLY flawed, as any social science researcher is uncomfortably well aware.

Another candidate for deletion is the author's discussion of domestic violence. The statistical point is well made (and familiar): you have to have the right contrast class, or nothing you infer has any validity re: alleged connections between battering and killing. But the author's more 'philosophical' observations and speculations about violence against women....well, here again, I cringed. This IS an area in which there has been much examination, analysis, and--yes--speculation. The author's conjectures were painfully naive. I am sure he did not mean to appear flippant or to be laying claim to consideration as a serious investigator of the problem of domestic abuse. Still.....

I gave the book two rather than three stars at least in part because, in the end, there were serious audience questions: for WHOM was the author really writing? I honestly don't know. Not for me (a non-mathematician who nevertheless understands a fair amount). Not for my students, who are bright but more statistically naive. Not for the general layperson: the discussions are too mathematicized yet underexplained.

A good editor could have done wonders...

The truth about, fingerprints, DNA, AIDS, legal drugs, and so much more........2005-12-29

The book "Calculated Risk: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You", by Gerd Gigerenzer, will increase your risk aptitude. The 4 1/2 star (Amazon.com) book does not discuss statistical innumeracy from the IT perspective, but discusses innumeracy mainly in contemporary medicine, the justice system, and life in general.

Gerd describes four aspects of innumeracy as follows:
01) Illusion of certainty:
For example: Fingerprint and DNA testing.
02) Ignorance of relevant risks:
For example: "It is more likely that a young American male
knows baseball statistics than that his chances of dying on
a motorcycle trip is about 15 times higher than his chances
of dying on a car trip of the same distance."
03) Miscommunication of risks:
For example: One can communicate the chances that a test
will actually detect a disease in various ways ... The most
frequent way is in the form of a conditional probability: If
a person has cancer, the probability the he/she will test
positive on a screening is 90 percent. Many physicians
confuse that statement with this one: If a person test
positive on a screening, the probability that he/she has
cancer is 90 percent.
04) Drawing incorrect inferences from statistics:
For example: "Consider a newspaper article in which it is
reported that men with high cholesterol have a 50 percent
higher risk of heart attack. The figure of 50 percent
sounds frighting, put what does it mean? It means that out
of 100 fifty-year-old men without high cholesterol,
about 4 are expected to have a heart attack within ten years,
whereas among men with high cholesterol this number is 6. The
increase from 4 to 6 is the relative risk increase, that is,
50 percent. However. if one instead compares the number of
men in the two groups who are not expected to have heart
attacks in the next 10 years, the same increase in risk is
from 96 to 94, that is, about 2 percent (absolute risk). Now
the benefit of reducing one's cholesterol level no longer
looks so great."

Far from being a dry book on risk, uncertainty, and statistics, Gerd Gigerenzer is entertaining, provocative, irreverent and a bit of a maverick
.
" ... 1 out of every 90 Americans will lose his or her life in a motor vehicle accident by the age of 75. Most of them die in passenger car accidents."

" ... the terrorist attack on September 11. 2001, cost the lives of some 3,000 people. The subsequent decision of millions to drive rather than fly may have cost the lives of many more."

"... DNA ... match probability of 1 in 16 for a brother ... "

This book provides "tools for overcoming innumeracy that are easy to learn, apply, and remember."

A couple of great ideas.......2004-08-06

This book illustrates two important concepts very well: Statistics confuse even intelligent people, and the meaning of "false negative" and "false positive" data, especially when reported as percentages, can be far from intuitive.

Why only three stars? Both of these ideas are thoroughly illustrated and then beaten to death by page 50 of this 300 page book. (You can get most of the information from reading one or two of the other reviews here on Amazon).

The remainder of the book uses various medical examples to make the point that a percentage of a percentage may sound more significant than it is (or less significant than it is). As Gigerenzer illustrates, doing the arithmetic to determine the actual numbers of each case represented will untangle most misunderstandings. After about a dozen of these, though, only a reader with an interest in the specific examples will remain engaged.

The writing is clear, the examples are all good, and the book does amply illustrate the quotation cited in Mark Twain's Autobiography: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

How to interpret test results better than your Doc!.......2004-06-03

This is a very clearly written book. It demonstrates many numerical errors the press, the public, and experts make in interpreting the accuracy of medical screening test (mammography, HIV test, etc...) and figuring out the probability of an accused person being guilty.

At the foundation of the above confusions lies the interpretation of Baye's rule. Taking one example on page 45 regarding breast cancer. Breast cancer affects 0.8% of women over 40. Mammography correctly interprets 90% of the positive tests (when women do have breast cancer) and 93% of the negative ones (when they don't have breast cancer). If you ask a doctor how accurate this test is if you get a positive test, the majority will tell you the test is 90% accurate or more. That is wrong. The author recommends using natural frequencies (instead of conditional probabilities) to accurately interpret Baye's rule. Thus, 8 out of every 1,000 women have breast cancer. Of these 8 women, 7 will have a positive mammogram (true positives). Of, the remaining 992 women who don't have breast cancer, 70 will have a positive mammogram (false positives). So, the accuracy of the test is 7/(7+70) = 10%. Wow, that is pretty different than the 90% that most doctors believe!

What to do? In the case of mammography, if you take a second test that turns positive, the accuracy would jump to 57% (not that much better than flipping a coin). It is only when taking a third test that also turns positive that you can be reasonably certain (93% accuracy) that you have breast cancer. So, what doctors should say is that a positive test really does not mean anything. And, it is only after the third consecutive positive test that you can be over 90% certain that you have breast cancer. Yet, most doctors convey this level of accuracy after the very first test!

What applies to breast cancer screening also applies to prostate cancer, HIV test, and other medical tests. In each case, the medical profession acts like the first positive test provides you with certainty that you have the disease or not. As a rule of thumb, you should get at least a second test and preferably a third one to increase its accuracy.

The author comes up with many other counterintuitive concepts. They are all associated with the fact that events are far more uncertain than the certainty that is conveyed to the public. For instance, DNA testing does not prove much. Ten people can share the same DNA pattern.

Another counterintuitive concepts is associated with risk reduction. Let's say you have a cancer that has a prevalence of 0.5% in the population (5 in 1,000). The press will invariably make promising headline that a given treatment reduces mortality by 20%. But, what does this really mean? It means that mortality will be reduced by 1 death (from 5 down to 4). The author states that the relative risk has decreased by 20%; but, the absolute risk has decreased by only 1 in 1,000. He feels strongly that both risks should be conveyed to the public.

The author shows how health agencies and researchers express benefits of treatments by mentioning reduction in relative risk. This leads the public to grossly overstate the benefits of such treatment. The author further indicates how various health authorities use either relative risk or absolute risk to either maximize or minimize the public's interpretation of a health risk. But, they rarely convey both; which is the only honest way to convey the data.

If you are interested in this subject, I strongly recommend: "The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making" by Scott Plous. This is a fascinating book analyzing how we are less Cartesian than we think. A slew of human bias flaws our own judgment. Many of these deal with other application of Baye's rule.

Calculated Risks by Gigerenzer.......2003-10-28

The author presents some important observations about calculated
risks, probabilities and statistical test inferences. He makes
clear the necessity to understand risks clearly at the outset
of any important decision. For instance, a physician must take
into consideration "false positive " test results so that
he/she does not over-react. An over-reaction could cause the
physician to take unnecessary precautions that could do more
to endanger the patient than help. In addition, the author
cautions against fabrication of certainty or the use of
statistics to prove a predetermined result. This book is
useful in arriving at a realistic design for a statistical
test or any other test from which an important scientific
inference will be made.

Book Description

Alternatives to Deforestation explores some of the possible sustainable uses of the world's largest rain forest, the Amazon. The collection by scientists, policymakers, and foundations presents innovative approaches and technologies that will permit simultaneous use and conservation of the rain forest, and will benefit the population of Amazonia as a whole, rather than just a small rural minority. By presenting sustainable land-use alternatives that are both economically viable and ecologically sound, this book represents a valuable contribution in the effort to end the tragic consequences of tropical deforestation.

Customer Reviews:

From the inner place.......2000-04-15

The best review of the aspects nd consequences of tropical deforestation!

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