The Early History of Financial Economics, 1478-1776: From Commercial Arithmetic to Life Annuities and Joint Stocks

Book Description

Despite being an integral part of modern economic science, the subject of financial economics has deep historical roots. Geoffrey Poitras provides an exhaustive account of the early development of the subject and, in so doing, provides a sound basis for the study of modern financial economics.

By the time The Wealth of Nations had appeared, financial economics featured a well developed body of scientific knowledge, covering subjects such as fixed income evaluation, life insurance and derivative securities. From beginnings which are traced back to the commercial arithmetic of the Renaissance reckoning schools, by the latter part of the 18th century financial economics had witnessed contributions by the likes of Abraham de Moivre, Edmond Halley and Simon Stevin. This book chronicles the development of early financial economics, from the appearance of the first printed commercial arithmetic in 1478 to the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776.

This book will prove invaluable to scholars of financial economics and the history of economic thought.

Quick Hits: 10 Key Surgical Strike Actions to Improve Business Process Performance
Average customer rating:

One of the best books in the BPM space

Quick Hits: 10 Key Surgical Strike Actions to Improve Business Process Performance
Kelvin F. Cross
Manufacturer: AMACOM/American Management Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Strategy & Competition | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Business Process Improvement Workbook: Documentation, Analysis, Design, and Management of Business Process Improvement

Business Process Change: A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

Process Mapping: How to Reengineer Your Business Processes

Business Process Management: Practical Guidelines to Successful Implementations

Lean Six Sigma for Service : How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions

ASIN: 0814472060

Book Description

Improving business processes, whatever or wherever they are in the enterprise, is an acknowledged way of improving the bottom line. Whether it's re-engineering, Six Sigma, TQM, or any number of other techniques, the problem is that it's usually such a huge undertaking that it's more work than it's worth. Kelvin F. Cross proposes that results can be achieved much more easily by going in and performing "surgical strikes" on specific areas that need improvement, without turning the entire thing into a "science project." And now his method is available for anyone seeking to streamline process structures.

Using case studies from companies including AT&T, GE, and Weight Watchers International to illustrate the remarkable results that can be achieved, Quick Hits sums up the ten key areas that are perfect targets for surgical strikes, demonstrating exactly how to handle each type of problem. By showing how to determine which approach to use for any given situation, the book gives readers an arsenal of tactical and judicious methods designed to be low risk, low cost, and very effective.

Customer Reviews:

One of the best books in the BPM space.......2006-02-28

I have read over half a dozen business process related books, but found Quick Hits to be one of the most practically helpful. This book does not cover IT's BPI role in detail ... perhaps because we already have a lot of literature on the topic. Otherwise, Quick Hits has lots of realworld examples from the author's corporate experience. The writing style is jargon-free and friendly. In my opinion, the ROI from Quick Hits should be pretty high!

Book Description

Presents the first efforts to explore ecological interactions between insects and plants across several trophic levels, with special focus on mediation of complex interactions by plant allelochemicals. First section looks at effects of plant allelochemicals on predator-prey and host-parasitoid interactions. Second section reveals the role of microorganisms as mediators of interactions between insects and plants. Third section unifies and extends current theory to examine the effects of allelochemicals on the second and third trophic levels. Final section traces the physiological effects of plant allelochemicals in animal behavior, population regulation, maintenance of mimicry systems, and evolution of host range.

Book Description

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic increase of interest in sophisticated string matching problems, especially in information retrieval and computational biology. This book presents a practical approach to string matching problems, focusing on the algorithms and implementations that perform best in practice. It covers searching for simple, multiple and extended strings, as well as regular expressions, and exact and approximate searching. It includes all the most significant new developments in complex pattern searching. The clear explanations, step-by-step examples, algorithm pseudocode, and implementation efficiency maps will enable researchers, professionals and students in bioinformatics, computer science, and software engineering to choose the most appropriate algorithms for their applications.

Customer Reviews:

Thin but useful.......2004-10-31

Don't let its small size (~200 pages) fool you. There's a lot of good material here, and in very usable form. In fact, that's the whole focus of the book: practical, efficient implementations.

The main topics, chapter by chapter, are simple matching of one desired word to a string, matching of multiple words, two levels of complexity in wildcards and regular expressions, and approximate matching. A number of important and historical algorithms are discussed in each chapter, in great detail. There's pseudo-code for the most important algorithms. Quite a few also have examples worked in detail. The mechanics are tedious and somewhat bulky, but anyone actually trying to implement these techniques will appreciate the examples.

What's really interesting is what's not in this book. You won't find a lot of theory, and you won't find some of the most famous algorithms in string matching. The authors make it clear that this is about practical algorithms with efficient implementations. Lots of the algorithms beloved by theoreticians are impractically complex or just plain slow. Those may be mentioned in passing or as the base for more practical algorithms, but are not welcome on these pages.

It's not an easy read, but it's not a book for people with easy problems. It discusses tradeoffs, like when one technique works well for short strings but another works better on long strings. It addresses the different needs of English-language processing and bioinformatics - just the different numbers of letters in each alphabet make a difference, in some cases.

This is a good one for anyone who takes string processing seriously. There's no cut&paste code here, but plenty for a knowledgable programmer to use. Even better, it offers references to the literature and to working code, and pointers to some books on related topics. I expect to get a lot of use out of this one.

//wiredweird

Solid Theory.......2003-06-04

This is an excellent book for someone with a strong foundation in computer science wanting to learn about regular expression and string matching. It is not for the feint-hearted, and would not be recommended to computer science novices. Written by one of the world experts in the field, the relatively thin book is packed with theory and comments on application. The algorithms are presented in a very concise form which often requires a fair amount of thought when trying to implement. However once understood, the book makes an excellent reference for the various algorithms.

Book Description

From reviews of previous editions:

"An excellent primer about these fascinating animals. Highly recommended."

— Wildlife Book Review

"Something very good in a small package: a natural history and practical ecology of the flying mammals that, next to wolves, must be the most unjustly persecuted creatures on earth.... The color photos and line drawings that profusely illustrate are top quality."

— ALA Booklist

"These breathtaking photographs depict bats as startlingly beautiful creatures. The combination of excellent photography and enlightening text in America's Neighborhood Bats is sure to stimulate an appreciation of the winged mammals in most—if not all—readers."

— Wildlife Review

Since its first publication in 1988, America's Neighborhood Bats has changed the way we look at bats by underscoring their harmless and beneficial nature. In this second revised edition, Merlin Tuttle offers bat aficionados the most up-to-date bat facts, including a wealth of new information on bat house design and current threats to bat survival.

Customer Reviews:

Informative book, goo read........2007-01-03

A good book for folks wanting to learn about our night-time visitors. Well worth buying.

Wonderful book!.......2003-07-31

I bought this book just because I was curious about bats. I had always thought they were "bad", until I visited a conservatory in Wyoming that had a bat house and explained how important they are. That was a surprise to me.
This book opened my eyes to how beneficial bats really are. It talks about the facts, myths and misconceptions about bats... what's true, what's not. It tells what to do if a bat comes into your house, and how to evict them if they have taken up residence in your attic or somewhere else you don't want them to be.
The book is well-written and an "easy" read. It has lots of good photos, and tells about some of the different species of bats and where they live. I recommend it for older children (maybe 10 and up) and adults. Well worth the money.

Merlin Tuttle: America's Neighborhood Bats.......2002-10-05

This is a very informative, well wriiten and beautifully photographed book on bats. The book includes beautiful color photographs of the most commonly seen bats in America. One of the most appreciated sections is the "Beginners' Key To American Bats", a well written, easy to comprehend section on identifying common bats of the region and placing them in their proper groups. Very important if you intend to build bat houses and hope to attract occupants and just general knowledge.
The book includes several other interesting chapters besides identification. It shows how bats navigate with radar. It addresses the many negative myths of bats, it explains how beneficial bats are in nature. If you want or need to know anything at all about these interesting creatures, THIS is the book and Merlin Tuttle is the expert to seek out. And even if you only need to know enough about bats to humanely evict them from your belfry, this book comes with even that information!
The author has dedicated his life to these interesting mammals. Even without knowing that fact, you can see from the entertaining way Mr Tuttle writes, how much he cares. All of his books are excellent. Check them all out!

A great, informative book.......1998-10-09

Dr. Tuttle has set out to redeem the reputation of the bat clan and if people would just read this book I believe he would succeed. This book is packed with information that will help dispel the fear and misunderstanding with which people view bats, but at the same time it is by no means too technical to be readily understood (I first read it when I was about fourteen iirc and enjoyed it as much then as I do now.) I would recommend this book to anyone anywhere who is the least bit interested in nature and also to anyone who is fearful or concerned about bats in their nieghborhood.

America's Neighborhood Bats - Understanding And Learning To Live In Harmony With Them

Average customer rating:

America's Neighborhood Bats - Understanding And Learning To Live In Harmony With Them
Merlin D. Tuttle
Manufacturer: Univ. Of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000RIR2YC

Average customer rating:

America's Neighborhood Bats, Understanding and Learning to Live in Harmony with Them
Merlin D. Tuttle
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I3FE32

Average customer rating:

America's Neighborhood Bats: Understanding and Learning to Live in Harmony with Them
Merlin D Tuttle
Manufacturer: Univ of Texas Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORH41M

Average customer rating:

America's Neighborhood Bats: Understanding and Learning to Live in Harmony With Them

Manufacturer: Univ. of Texas
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HYSS9E

Self-Defense Nerve Centers and Pressure Points for Karate, Jujitsu and Atemi-Waza
Average customer rating:

Not worth the cost or time

Grate tips on self-defense.

EVERYONE MUST HAVE THIS BOOK!

Wonderful Treatment on Nerve centers and Pressure points

A mix of the obvious and the incorrect.

Self-Defense Nerve Centers and Pressure Points for Karate, Jujitsu and Atemi-Waza
Bruce Tegner
Manufacturer: Thor Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Martial Arts | Individual Sports | Sports | Subjects | Books
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Pressure-Point Fighting: A Guide to the Secret Heart of Asian Martial Arts

Pressure Point Karate Made Easy: A Guide to the Dillman Pressure Point Method for Beginners and Yount Adults

Humane Pressure Point Self-Defense: Dillman Method for Law Enforcement, Medical Personnel, Business Professionals, Men and Women

ASIN: 087407519X

Customer Reviews:

Not worth the cost or time.......2004-06-20

The information is common knowledge for the general public. Everyone is aware of all the points that is covered in this book. I was hoping that as I continued to read the book, that there would be something worthwhile. There was nothing. Save your money. My book went out with the trash.

Grate tips on self-defense........2003-07-26

This book I think is more for people who don't do any martial arts, but still want to learn about how to defend themselves. It has some tips and tricks for the average person to try out at home, and hopefully benefit from in a self-defense situation.

EVERYONE MUST HAVE THIS BOOK!.......2001-08-20

This is a book that describes all the vulnerable areas of the human body and how to hit them. Knowing your attacker's weak spots is just as important as knowing how to properly strike them. This is a book all martial artists should have in their library, but it isn't just for them only. This is a book that every person has to own.

The reason why this book is so great is that it is meant and written for the average person like you and me to understand. It talks about all the major weaknesses of the body and all the physical effects that will occur when hit with strikes of differing force. ITS GREAT.

The book is also loaded with a plethora of pictures and maps showing all the body's natural vulnerable areas.

Bruce Tegner is an excellent author. Mr. Tegner explains in detail the legal definition of what self-defense is and what it is not. He did a ton of reseach to make this book. For example, he debunks all the mythical "deadly blows" and he talks about how television shows and Hollywood have heavily distorted what actual self-defense is. This will seriously educate anyone about what real self-defense is.

If you desire to protect yourself adequately and realistically,

THEN YOU NEED TO GET THIS BOOK!

Wonderful Treatment on Nerve centers and Pressure points.......2001-08-02

What Bruce Tegner has done with this volume is to strip away the mystical, pseudo-magical approach to the topic and present a straight forward and highly effective amalgamation of nerve centers, pressure points, striking techniques, and common sense self defense. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the martial arts or self defense in general. It is a valuable addition to your library.

A mix of the obvious and the incorrect........2001-07-11

This book is not at all useful to practicing martial artists. Save your money.

Building a Writing Community: A Practical Guide
Average customer rating:

Best book for teaching writing to kids ever!

This is a wonderful book!

Valuable source of information that is easy to implement.

Well worth it!

Building a Writing Community: A Practical Guide
Marcia S. Freeman
Manufacturer: Maupin House Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Writing Skills | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books
General | Reference | Subjects | Books
General | Elementary School | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Language Arts | Specific Skills | Education | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Teaching the Youngest Writers: A Practical Guide

Models for Teaching Writing-Craft Target Skills

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Writing Whizardry: 60 Mini-Lessons to Teach Elaboration and Writer's Craft

ASIN: 0929895134

Book Description

New and experienced teachers appreciate this easy-to-use, comprehensive approach to teaching young writers style, genre characteristics, composition skills, conventions, and the writing process itself. The classroom-tested techniques satisfy young writers' need for structure and content, while offering them freedom to develop their style, repetoire, and voice. The book includes more than 350 classrooms-tested models, lessons, procedures, and activities and 37 reproducibles. If you want to create a community of writers who love to write and speak the language of writers, this book is the key.

Customer Reviews:

Best book for teaching writing to kids ever!.......2003-06-08

Marcia's book is the best! It is completely practical and has step-by-step information about how to teach every genre of writing in totally KID-FRIENDLY terms! If your students aren't getting better by just going through the writing process, then this is the book for you! Her approach is unlike anything else on the market. It can make teaching writing, if not a breeze, then at least something over which you can gain control. I can't say enough about how useful this book is. If you can only buy one book to help you teach writing, then this is it!

This is a wonderful book!.......2002-04-04

This book is a great resource for all elementary teachers. It is easy to understand and practical for everyday ideas. This book is full of wonderful activities that can come in handy when planning a lesson plan.

Valuable source of information that is easy to implement........2001-05-31

Marcia Freeman recntly addressed the teachers in our county on this book. Everyone present was moved with her easy and practical advice for teaching writing. It was a truly innovative and exciting workshop. This book is full of useful and easy-to-implement teaching methods that actually make teaching writing easier with the results we want: better writing from our students.

Well worth it!.......2000-07-02

This book is a fabulous resource for constructing a school-wide writing community. We purchased it as a resource for all of our teachers and immediately began discussing it in small groups and staff developments. The teachers see it as a tool to help them keep student writers at the edge of their learning. We have seen writing scores on state-wide assessments increase in our school using the target skills and craft models discussed in this book.

This book is easy to read and will be a great resource for years to come!

Amazon.com

No artist has come up with anything to match History of Everything, Sigmar Polke's profound response to the age of Osama bin Laden, and this book does a flawless job of illuminating his headspinningly bold associative leaps. Solid reproductions and remarkably lucid essays by art star Dave Hickey and cocurator Chalres Wylie guide us through what obviously was a knockout show at the Dallas and Tate museums. Known as Richter's rival, Germany's abominable shaman spinning variations on Rosenquist, Rauschenberg, and benday-dot painter Lichtenstein, Polke makes more than mischief and "Polke dots" here: it adds up to a masterpiece.

The central image comes from a newspaper diagram of a spy satellite relaying the image of Al Qaida fleeing on horseback to CIA and RAF HQ and the US Army in Afghanistan. The picture rhymes with two 19th-century engravings, one showing a uniformed Frenchman astride a deer on a platform attached to a balloon, the other a German whose balloon is guided by eagles hitched up like horses. Today, machinery has displaced flesh: the steeds are earthbound, the balloons and eagles replaced by Predator drones, the balloonist's eyes with cameras and mechanical imagemaking. The halftone reduces the Al Qaida horsemen to a cartoon, then a still tinier inkblot. In his huge abstract painting I Live in My Own World, But It's Ok, They Knew Me Here, Polke further simplifies them into a blotch that resembles a flaw in a halftone, a mechanical artifact. It's all about patterns: in a painting of a halftone of a cowboy checking out a target, says Dickey, "the circular shape of the buckshot p! ellet, the pattern of circular holes the pellets make in the target, and the benday dots that constitute their photo representation flash back and forth in our perception in such a way that shooting guns, shooting pictures, and looking at pictures are proposed as analogous activities." This book teaches you a new way to see. -Tim Appelo

Book Description

Sigmar Polke is one of the world's most revered and influential contemporary artists. This handsome book documents Polke's recent work, which continues and deepens the artist's famed explorations of how images are made, used, and thought about in our media-dominated culture. The works also pose intriguing questions about how the eye and mind become crucial players in the perceptual game we undertake daily. Using topical subject matter-such as the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and the Middle East and the everyday presence of guns in American life-both for its inherent content and metaphoric possibilities, Polke has created a cohesively thematic yet ingeniously diverse group of monumental paintings and large-scale drawings. The source materials for these images are often drawn from American and European newspapers, magazines, and books. All of this work by Polke reflects a fiercely intelligent yet remarkably accessible interpretation of how we perceive and misperceive the social, political, and aesthetic worlds that we live in. In the text, Charles Wylie discusses how Polke's recent work presents a coherent visual essay on the literal and symbolic construction of images. Noted art critic Dave Hickey provides an interpretive essay on the artist and these new works. Both essays are interspersed with a valuable compendium of Polke's source materials.

Sigmar Polke: History of Everything, Paintings and Drawings 1998-2003

Average customer rating:

Sigmar Polke: History of Everything, Paintings and Drawings 1998-2003
John R.; Wylie, Charles; Hickey, Dave Lane
Manufacturer: Dallas Museum of Art
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Average customer rating:

Sigmar Polke: History of Everything, Paintings and Drawings, 1998-2003
Sigmar Polke
Manufacturer: Dallas Museum of Art
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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