The value chain. Five forces. Industry structure. Differentiation. Relative cost. If you want to understand how companies achieve and sustain competitive success, Michael Porter’s frameworks are the foundation. But while everyone in business may know Porter’s name, many managers misunderstand and misuse his concepts.Understanding Michael Porter sets the record straight, providing the first concise, accessible summary of Porter’s revolutionary thinking. Written with Porter’s full cooperation by Joan Magretta, his former editor at Harvard Business Review, this new book delivers fresh, clear examples to illustrate and update Porter’s ideas.Magretta uses her wide business experience to translate Porter’s powerful insights into practice and to correct the most common misconceptions about them—for instance, that competition is about being unique, not being the best; that it is a contest over profits, not a battle between rivals; that strategy is about choosing to make some customers unhappy, not being all things to all customers.An added feature is an original Q&A with Porter himself, which includes answers to managers’ FAQs.Eminently readable, this book will enable every manager in your organization to grasp Porter’s ideas—and swiftly deploy them to drive your company’s success.

    Students will find concepts easy-to-understand through the clear writing style and full-color figures that illustrate current technology and trends. Examples and cases are drawn from actual systems projects that enable students to learn in the context of solving problems, much like the ones they will encounter on the job. This approach, combined with motivating tools such as the SCR Associates interactive Web-Based Case Study, Systems Analyst's Toolkit, the Student Study Tool on CD-ROM, and more, makes Systems Analysis and Design, Seventh Edition a wise and exciting choice for your introductory systems analysis and design class.

    In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas—namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never more needed than in this age of confusing economic headlines.In a bold new concluding chapter entitled “The End of the Worldly Philosophy?” Heilbroner reminds us that the word “end” refers to both the purpose and limits of economics. This chapter conveys a concern that today’s increasingly “scientific” economics may overlook fundamental social and political issues that are central to economics. Thus, unlike its predecessors, this new edition provides not just an indispensable illumination of our past but a call to action for our future. (amazon.com)

    It is designed as a reference for students in the physical sciences and engineering.

    Switching from thin tailed to fat tailed distributions requires more than "changing the color of the dress." Traditional asymptotics deal mainly with either n=1 or n=∞, and the real world is in between, under the "laws of the medium numbers"-which vary widely across specific distributions. Both the law of large numbers and the generalized central limit mechanisms operate in highly idiosyncratic ways outside the standard Gaussian or Levy-Stable basins of convergence. A few examples: - The sample mean is rarely in line with the population mean, with effect on "na�ve empiricism," but can be sometimes be estimated via parametric methods. - The "empirical distribution" is rarely empirical. - Parameter uncertainty has compounding effects on statistical metrics. - Dimension reduction (principal components) fails. - Inequality estimators (Gini or quantile contributions) are not additive and produce wrong results. - Many "biases" found in psychology become entirely rational under more sophisticated probability distributions. - Most of the failures of financial economics, econometrics, and behavioral economics can be attributed to using the wrong distributions. This book, the first volume of the Technical Incerto, weaves a narrative around published journal articles.

    In his most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), Keynes critiqued the laissez-faire policies of his day, particularly the proposition that a normally functioning market economy would bring full employment. Keynes's forward-looking work transformed economics from merely a descriptive and analytic discipline into one that is policy oriented. For Keynes, enlightened government intervention in a nation's economic life was essential to curbing what he saw as the inherent inequalities and instabilities of unregulated capitalism.

    Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relational graphics, data maps, multivariate designs. Detection of graphical deception: design variation vs. data variation. Sources of deception. Aesthetics and data graphical displays. This is the second edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Recently published, this new edition provides excellent color reproductions of the many graphics of William Playfair, adds color to other images, and includes all the changes and corrections accumulated during 17 printings of the first edition.

    From MoneySense index investing expert Dan Bortolotti, plus a foreword by Editor Jonathan Chevreau.

    It has sold 30,000 copies in each edition and will continue to reach a huge academic audience.In this renowned book, Everett M. Rogers, professor and chair of the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico, explains how new ideas spread via communication channels over time. Such innovations are initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome this uncertainty, most people seek out others like themselves who have already adopted the new idea. Thus the diffusion process consists of a few individuals who first adopt an innovation, then spread the word among their circle of acquaintances--a process which typically takes months or years. But there are exceptions: use of the Internet in the 1990s, for example, may have spread more rapidly than any other innovation in the history of humankind. Furthermore, the Internet is changing the very nature of diffusion by decreasing the importance of physical distance between people. The fifth edition addresses the spread of the Internet, and how it has transformed the way human beings communicate and adopt new ideas.

    Each chapter is relatively self-contained and can be used as a unit of study. The algorithms are described in English and in a pseudocode designed to be readable by anyone who has done a little programming. The explanations have been kept elementary without sacrificing depth of coverage or mathematical rigor.

    In this book, a wealth of exercises are provided throughout each section, designed to reinforce learning and the logical comprehension of topics. The use of real data is incorporated much more extensively than in any other book on the market. Consist of strong coverage of computer-based methods, especially in the coverage of analysis of variance and regression. This text stresses mastery of methods most often used in medical research, with specific reference to actual medical literature and actual medical research. The approach minimizes mathematical formulation, yet gives complete explanations of all important concepts. Every new concept is systematically developed through completely worked-out examples from current medical research problems. Computer output is used to illustrate concepts when appropriate.

    Featuring additional content in the form of photographs and record-breaking facts, The Bonus Chapter also provides a behind-the-scenes look at Guinness World Records. The Bonus Chapter is available exclusively as a richly designed eBook and includes our Top 10 Claimants, a 'Day in the Life of an Adjudicator' as well as a special section on the Olympics and a quiz to test your superlative knowledge. A perfect accompaniment to Guinness World Records 2013, The Bonus Chapter is for all those fans who want to learn even more about the ultimate authority on record-breaking.

    This easy-to-use guide is updated and expanded to include new computer and technology signs and offers a fast and simple approach to learning. Includes:- Vocabulary reviews- Fingerspelling exercises- Sign matching and memory aids- A complete glossary and a comprehensive index- Clear instructive drawings

    He includes information on Java Platform Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) and offers complete coverage of the Java language, its syntax, keywords, and fundamental programming principles.

    The science of complexity studies how single elements, such as a species or a stock, spontaneously organize into complicated structures like ecosystems and economies; stars become galaxies, and snowflakes avalanches almost as if these systems were obeying a hidden yearning for order. Drawing from diverse fields, scientific luminaries such as Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow are studying complexity at a think tank called The Santa Fe Institute. The revolutionary new discoveries researchers have made there could change the face of every science from biology to cosmology to economics. M. Mitchell Waldrop's groundbreaking bestseller takes readers into the hearts and minds of these scientists to tell the story behind this scientific revolution as it unfolds.