Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology In The Social Sciences) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology In The Social Sciences)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology In The Social Sciences). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology In The Social Sciences) ReviewThis book is by far the best research method book I have ever purchased.
I strongly recommend this book for anyone who is seriously interested in
research.Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology In The Social Sciences) Overview

Want to learn more information about Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists (Methodology In The Social Sciences)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments ReviewThis book grew out of a conference held in 2006 - it's taken a while to get to press, but this doesn't detract from (most of) the chapters. The editors should be applauded for having collected chapters from some of the best known researchers in quantitative social science. I was most interested in the first two chapters, on structural equation models. Chapter 1 (Bentler and Savalei) provides a brief review of what we might think of as 'conventional' structural equation models, and chapter 2 (Bollen, Bauer, Christ, Edwards) then covers the extensions - things like multilevel SEMN, mixture models and complex samples. Neither of these chapters are long (28 and 44 pages, respectively) but both give clear summaries of the issues, and hence form a useful reference - the sort of thing I like to mine for a pithy quote when I need to make a point briefly.
I'm less familiar with the techniques in the next couple of chapters. Chapter 3 (Hubert, Kohn, Steinley) is order-constrained proximity matrix represenations. Chapter 4 is multiobjective multidimensional scaling (Brusco, Stahl, Cradit). Although I don't know much about these, I kind of like having them on my shelf so if I'm asked, I can at least say something sensible, before I persuade the person asking to go elsewhere.
Chapter 5 is something of a change in tack and a rather long title - Critical differences in Bayesian and non-Bayesian inference and non-Bayesian inference, and why the former is better (Gill). It's a nicely written (although equation heavy, for my taste) description of Bayesian statistics. Does the world need another chapter/article explaining why we should all be Bayesians? Perhaps not, but this is as good as any other chapter I've read - although I'd be tempted to disagree with the title - there are times and places where it's good to be Bayesian, but it seems to me that it's not always necessary. (I'd also argue that Bayesian thinking is already employed in science, it's just not called that.)
Chapter 6 I found a little incongruous, it looks more like a journal article than a book chapter. It's called "A bootstrap test of shape invariance across distributions" (and it's by Rouder, Speckman, Steinley, Pratte, and Morey), the title pretty much tells you everything you need to know, except that it's used for reaction times.
The length of time between the conference and publication has harmed chapter 7 the most; chapter 7 will also stand the test of time less well than the others. It's on Statistical Software for the Social Sciences and it's by Hilbe. The trouble is that it tries to give very up to date information, for example, the prices of software, and these change. Even if the price doesn't change, the software does - it describes the capabilities of SPSS 16 which has changed its name to PASW and then (almost) back to IBM SPSS, and is on version 18. Similarly, Stata version 9 is described, version 11 was released last year.
There's a short chapter at the end that I can summarize as "Statisticians should hang out with social scientists more. And vice versa."
Two other minor gripes: It's expensive for a short book - $80 for a 200 page book makes 40 cents a page; I understand that they're not exactly expecting to outsell Harry Potter, but given that the authors and editors who do all the work get paid (I'm guessing) around about nothing, that's a lot. Second, the chapter authors aren't listed until the end of the chapters. Maybe it's me, but I want to know who wrote it when I'm flicking through.
Overall, I think that this is a useful reference that I'll be referring back to.
Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments Overview

Want to learn more information about Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Random Networks for Communication: From Statistical Physics to Information Systems (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Random Networks for Communication: From Statistical Physics to Information Systems (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Random Networks for Communication: From Statistical Physics to Information Systems (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Random Networks for Communication: From Statistical Physics to Information Systems (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics) ReviewThis book is about random network models and how local connectivity properties give rise to large scale properties that emerge as the network grows in size. The study of emergent properties of evolving, random structures, with most prominent that of random graphs, has been the focus of many researchers coming from widely diverse disciplines that include physics, mathematics, computer science as well as social sciences. The core idea behind all these studies is that a simple local connectivity rule that defines how two elements of the structure interact with each other can give rise to more complex connectivity properties that hold globally on the structure and manifest themselves (emerge) as the structure's size increases. Moreover, it appears that there is some critical point, or threshold value, for the local connectivity rule such that the properties emerge suddenly from non-existent to existent, when the rule crosses this point. These emergent properties are, then, aptly called threshold properties. The book is focused on the study of two elementary, but rich in properties and modelling power, combinatorial structures: the random tree and the random grid. In the random tree model, we have a tree composed of an infinite number of vertices each having k children, with k > 0. Also, a probability value p is fixed and then each edge of the tree appears in the tree, independently of the others, with probability p. In the random grid model, the nodes are positioned on the points of the two-dimensional integer grid. These models are in contrast with the classical pioneering Erdos-Renyi random graph models in which that in these models adjacency between two vertices is defined by physical proximity while in the latter adjacency can be potentially appear between any pair of vertices.
In addition to the theoretical exposition, each chapter is aptly complemented by exercises that, most often, encourage the reader to finish sketched or incomplete proofs given in the text. The exercises are carefully designed so as to be tractable, with some effort, and to increase, at the same time, the intuition and understanding of the reader of the similarities and differences between the various random graph models. Also, in the end of the book, the authors provide an Appendix with some useful background material on basic probability theory.
In summary, this book is a clear, readable and highly intuitive introduction to the properties and applications of random network models that, also, provides all the rigorous details or invites the reader to fill them in, in the exercises section. The models tackled by the authors are characterized by the important property that the geometry of the nodes has a pivotal role in the formation of the network connections, as opposed to classical Erdos-Renyi random graph models in which there is no notion of geometry and edges can be inserted (with some probability) between any pair of nodes. The balance between intuition and rigor is ideal, in my opinion, and reading the book is an enjoyable and highly rewarding endeavour. I believe this book will be useful to physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists alike that look at random graph models where point locations affects the shape and properties of the resulting network: physicists will acquaint themselves with complex networks having rich modelling capabilities (e.g. models for random interaction particle systems such as spin glasses), mathematicians may discover connections of the networks with formal systems (much like the connection of the classical Erdos-Renyi random graph properties with first and second order logic), and computer scientists will greatly appreciate the applicability of the theory given in the book to
the study of realistic, ad-hoc mobile networks in which network node connections change rapidly and unpredictably as a function of the geometry of the current node positions.
Random Networks for Communication: From Statistical Physics to Information Systems (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics) Overview

Want to learn more information about Random Networks for Communication: From Statistical Physics to Information Systems (Cambridge Series in Statistical and Probabilistic Mathematics)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Web Data Mining: Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data (Data-Centric Systems and Applications) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Web Data Mining: Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data (Data-Centric Systems and Applications)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Web Data Mining: Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data (Data-Centric Systems and Applications). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Web Data Mining: Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data (Data-Centric Systems and Applications) ReviewSo what does the author, Bing Liu know about Web data mining to write the book "Web Data Mining - Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data"[1] ? Fortunately the answer is "a lot!" This fact along with the title which had some cosine similarity with the names of my research lab and a graduate course that I have been teaching at the University of Louisville since 2004, and prior to that at the University of Memphis since 2000, are the reasons why I ordered a copy of this book. Bing Liu is a well seasoned researcher who has made significant contributions to association rule mining, in particular classification using association rule mining and association rule mining with multiple supports. He has also worked on Web data extraction, and more recently on opinion mining. In addition to the expertise of the author, two of the chapters, Chapter 8, Web Crawling, and Chapter 12, Web Usage Mining, were contributed by two leading experts in these respective areas, Filippo Menczer for the former and Bamshad Mobasher for the latter.
This book is appropriate for students at the graduate or senior undergraduate level, for practitioners in industry, and even as a good comprehensive reference for researchers in academia.
The Table of Contents held a surprise for someone who had always found it hard to limit the number of textbooks to one book in a web mining course that does not have data mining as prerequisite, and thus typically prescribes a good data mining book to introduce data mining techniques, in addition to a second book related to web mining. This book, on the other hand, has two parts, one devoted to data mining, and the other devoted to Web mining. While it was not a problem to find a very good data mining book (I have a few of them on my bookshelf), it was harder to find a book that addressed data mining and Web mining. It was also hard to find a good and comprehensive Web mining book, since most of them tend to focus on one or only two of the three main Web mining areas of Web structure, content, and usage mining (typically leaving Web usage mining in the dark, with just a small section, citing that it is an emerging area). This book, on the other hand, is a serious book on Web mining that also devotes a decent portion to data mining. I would describe the way the topics are presented as deep and rigorous enough in most chapters, which is in contrast to a large number of books on data mining and web mining. That said, because the book is full of simple examples that illustrate the methods being discussed, it is useful even for beginners, making it also appropriate for an introductory level course.
Web Data Mining: Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data (Data-Centric Systems and Applications) Overview

Want to learn more information about Web Data Mining: Exploring Hyperlinks, Contents, and Usage Data (Data-Centric Systems and Applications)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Social and Behavioral Foundations of Public Health Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Social and Behavioral Foundations of Public Health? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Social and Behavioral Foundations of Public Health. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Social and Behavioral Foundations of Public Health ReviewThis book was a tremendous help for my online class. It was very informative and easy to read each chapter. I actually learned a lot from the course I took and using this book as a guide.Social and Behavioral Foundations of Public Health Overview

Want to learn more information about Social and Behavioral Foundations of Public Health?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...