Find all of the following, explained in plain-English: How your Social Security retirement benefits, spousal benefits, and widow/widower benefits are calculated How your benefits are affected if you have a government pension or if you continue working while claiming Social Security How to decide when is the best age for you (and your spouse, if you're married) to claim Social Security in order to get the most out of your benefits Whether or not it makes sense to take Social Security early in order to invest the money How to check your earnings record on the Social Security Administration's website to make sure you're getting the full benefit you deserve How Social Security benefits are taxed and how this affects retirement tax planning Please note that this book does not cover Social Security disability benefits or Supplemental Security Income (SSI).

    Simple, isn’t it? But what if you neither have the guts to leave the job nor know what you love to do? Complicated, isn’t it?Meet Raghav, who like millions of other software professionals, is stuck in a similar situation. But don’t worry, his destiny has better plans for him. What plans you may ask? Well, getting him fired.This novella takes you on a light-hearted tour of the contemporary software industry where you can ask the haunting question loudly- is getting sacked a blessing in disguise? About the author Sandeep is a software professional and lives in Pune. He is an IIT Bombay alumnus but doesn't brag about it unless a situation emerge. He spends more time observing people than on his monitor. He loves tea but hates many things like writing about himself as a third person. Thank God I'm Fired is his second book.

    From randomized clinical trials in medical research, to statistical models of risk in banking and hedge fund industries, to the statistical tools used to probe vast astronomical databases, the field of statistics has become centrally important to how we understand our world. But the discipline underlying all these is not the dull statistics of the popular imagination. Long gone are the days of manual arithmetic manipulation. Nowadays statistics is a dynamic discipline, revolutionized by the computer, which uses advanced software tools to probe numerical data, seeking structures, patterns, and relationships. This Very Short Introduction sets the study of statistics in context, describing its history and giving examples of its impact, summarizes methods of gathering and evaluating data, and explains the role played by the science of chance, of probability, in statistical methods. The book also explores deep philosophical issues of induction--how we use statistics to discern the true nature of reality from the limited observations we necessarily must make.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    Mixing investment instruments and capital markets with the theoretical detail on evaluating investments and opportunities to satisfy risk-return objectives along with how investment practice and theory is influenced by globalization. The material is intended to be rigorous and empirical yet not overly quantitative. Reilly/Brown provides the best foundation, used extensively by professionals, organizations, and schools across the country. A great source for those with both a theoretical and practical need for investment expertise.

    Includes a comprehensive chapter on stochastic models for digital image processing. Covers aspects of image representation including luminance, color, spatial and temporal properties of vision, and digitization. Explores various image processing techniques. Discusses algorithm development (software/firmware) for image transforms, enhancement, reconstruction, and image coding.

    But often, a company's published accounts offer clues to impending disaster, providing you know where to look. Through the forensic examination of more than 20 recent stock market disasters, Tim Steer reveals how companies hide or disguise worrying facts about the robustness of their business. In his lively style, he looks at the themes that underlie the ways companies hide the truth and he stresses that in an assessment of a company's accounts, investors should always bear in mind that the only fact is cash; everything else - profit, assets, etc - is a matter of opinion. Full of invaluable lessons for investors, the book concludes with some trenchant observations on what is wrong in the worlds of investment, audit and financial regulation, and what changes should be introduced.

    The prototypical New York liberal, he is also an oil man - a fact his left-leaning friends let slide until the word "fracking" entered popular parlance. "How can you frack?" they suddenly demanded, aghast. But for Sernovitz, the real question is, "How can we not?"Fracking has become a four letter word; an effigy to be burned by anyone who claims to care about the environment. But most people don't know what it means. For the first time in one book, Sernovitz explains the reality of fracking: how it can be made safer; how the oil business works; how a small change in extraction techniques shocked our assumptions about fueling the future. When we criticize fracking, what we're really criticizing is the shale revolution. And while we're right to question the safety of drilling for natural gas, we're wrong to ignore all the good that gas enables. If we lived in a perfect world, our lives would run cleanly on wind and solar power. But we live in this world, and this world needs fossil fuels.The Green and the Black bridges the gap in America's energy education and clears up the most critical controversies. It introduces readers to shale as the "Internet of oil," using lively wit and firsthand knowledge to persuasively demonstrate that fracking, when done correctly - safely, with respect for the surrounding environment - is the sustainable way to harness the benefits of the resources we have.

    Major retailers are predicting everything from when their customers are pregnant to when they want a new pair of Chuck Taylors. It's a brave new world where seemingly meaningless data can be transformed into valuable insight to drive smart business decisions.But how does one exactly do data science? Do you have to hire one of these priests of the dark arts, the "data scientist," to extract this gold from your data? Nope.Data science is little more than using straight-forward steps to process raw data into actionable insight. And in Data Smart, author and data scientist John Foreman will show you how that's done within the familiar environment of a spreadsheet. Why a spreadsheet? It's comfortable! You get to look at the data every step of the way, building confidence as you learn the tricks of the trade. Plus, spreadsheets are a vendor-neutral place to learn data science without the hype. But don't let the Excel sheets fool you. This is a book for those serious about learning the analytic techniques, the math and the magic, behind big data.Each chapter will cover a different technique in a spreadsheet so you can follow along: - Mathematical optimization, including non-linear programming and genetic algorithms- Clustering via k-means, spherical k-means, and graph modularity- Data mining in graphs, such as outlier detection- Supervised AI through logistic regression, ensemble models, and bag-of-words models- Forecasting, seasonal adjustments, and prediction intervals through monte carlo simulation- Moving from spreadsheets into the R programming languageYou get your hands dirty as you work alongside John through each technique. But never fear, the topics are readily applicable and the author laces humor throughout. You'll even learn what a dead squirrel has to do with optimization modeling, which you no doubt are dying to know.

    

    

    The applications and computations in operations research are emphasized. Significantly revised, this text streamlines the coverage of the theory, applications, and computations of operations research. Numerical examples are effectively used to explain complex mathematical concepts. A separate chapter of fully analyzed applications aptly demonstrates the diverse use of OR. The popular commercial and tutorial software AMPL, Excel, Excel Solver, and Tora are used throughout the book to solve practical problems and to test theoretical concepts. New materials include Markov chains, TSP heuristics, new LP models, and a totally new simplex-based approach to LP sensitivity analysis.

     So many board members—especially of small nonprofits—want to support a nonprofit and readily accept the invitation to join the board. It’s only then that they discover they are in over their heads, with no idea of their expectations and responsibilities. The Little Book of Boards is here to throw that drowning board member a rope. Told with a conversational style, this book will lead you through the basics of being on a board, how meetings work, and what’s expected between meetings. In addition, at the back of the book are several in-depth resources for understanding Roberts Rules of Order, bylaws, committee structures, board leadership, and much more. Perfect for any new board member—or for an entire board that is feeling lost—this book and its common sense approach will serve you every year you are on the board.

    The authors believe that an effective managerial economics book must go beyond the nuts and bolts of economic analysis to show how these economic analysis techniques are used by practicing managers.

    On the heels of the most recent economic crisis, America is headed toward another: high inflation and dollar devaluation. Charles Goyette reveals the governmental errors that led to the current economic crisis and the bumpy road ahead. The signs are clear: Federal debt is compounding while growth has stalled, and America's foreign creditors are questioning the dollar's reserve currency status. Meanwhile, the "hidden" federal debt, much larger than the official debt, makes things even worse. So what can you do to safeguard your assets when the dollar heads south? This book is the essential guide for protecting yourself--and even profiting--in this time of financial turbulence. In clear detail, Goyette explains the alternative investments--from gold and silver to oil and agriculture-- that will remain strong in the face of mounting inflation. The Dollar Meltdown gives you the tools to maintain the value of your savings and captilize on the coming opportunities. Don't get left holding the bag after decades of government irresponsibility. The Dollar Meltdown shows you how to take the safety of your finances into your own hands.