Customer Reviews

Decision Support Systems and Intelligent Systems (7th Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

As far as I can tell the prupose of this book is to separate you from a great deal of your money!

It has a great deal to say about nothing. There is very little substantive detail on anything! Which, given it's size, really is quite amazing! This book will not teach you how to concretely implement any decision support system. It waffles on at a very distant level about such systems but never gets down in the trenches, if you know what I mean. It's basically why (though only just) rather than how! And for me, that makes this book a very pricey door jam.

Seriously, I was really underwhelmed and disappointed by the book. I ended up buying Statistics, Data Analysis and Decision Modeling by Evens and Olson (isbn: 0130783838) to find the information and practice that I need (decision modeling rather than decision support systems per se). It also comes with phstat software which is a VERY useful excel statistical add-in.

For example, from this book, p681-685 is genetic algorithms -> in 5 Pages!!!!! with nothing substantive about recombination, crossover, mutation, fitness or anythign like that (the terms are mentioned but not explained)...all it does is refer you sompleace else! Fuzzy logic gets 4 pages...with no implementation details. That is seriously ordinary!

So I suggest you save your money and look at something else. SOmehow I don't see this book giving anybody too much joy. It amazes me it has lasted through 7 edition. If the 7th is this bad...I'd hate to see the first edition!!! So, as I said before, more a book about why and where to go to get knowledge of how to do rather than giving you the know-how. SO look for a book on how! This is a book for discovering that terms like knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) actually exist...and maybe what it means (like say webopedia) but certainly not how to do it...

Badly return overly verbose book.

Has copied too many things from too many other books and has failed to acknowledge the sources.

No author index, no complete reference listing.

There better books for DSS. chota phree stuff.

This book contains many empty references to other works, which indicate that the author(s) are well read, but does not help the reader at all (how many books does the author expect you to buy?). A lot of writing on each page, but little actual information. If you are looking for a book on how to actually implement a DSS, look elsewhere.

useless, terrible writing, terrible presentation, gratuitous hardcover to make book more expensive, captive audience of students forced to buy book, a true disgrace, intellectually lacking, this book will steal your money, steal your desire to read it, steal your sense of wonder and learning about the subject. This author must know it is horrible, long winded, overly expensive and quite often wrong academically and wrong in practical application

There is a need for such a book as its subject elements are eclectic in nature. Some integration effort exist in this edition but is far from being completed. By trying to be up-to date the book takes a form of a poor encyclopedia. It would have been much better to reduce the explosion of concepts to concetrate on few that are generic with well developped examples and illustrations. So at the end the student will say "yes I understand". The conclusion today is by most of my students "too [much money] "

When you're done with the millions of words and pounds of ink and paper, you can use this book as a door stop, or a paper weight, or even a boat anchor.

You could cut out two-thirds of the verbosity in this book without any sacrifice in content. There certainly must be a better sytems book out there.

Our class recently used this as a textbook for a graduate program. The entire class commented on how difficult the book was to read. With all of the notations within the text and the short stories or sometimes explanations of material it was hard to pick out the content. There were parts of chapter 17 that bordered on un-readable. Someone need to find a better was to layout the book. And why are there questions for review and question for discussion? I didn't see the point in splitting them up.

The author has lost the track. He should have concentrated in
one area than mixing up all topics. The presentation is
really bad for readers to understand. As most of the reader mentioned, there is a need for a good book in this area, but this is not the right one.

This book could get away with about 2/3 the volume of content still be interesting. There really does not seem to be any structure to the way a chapter flows. Its easy to skim, but difficult to read.

Good case studies;
The connection with the web is a little over-emphasized and sometimes unclear. I'd prefer a dense read, with some concise messages.

This is a good course text, not a favorite though.

Used it for school, found it dry, boring, ugly. I got frustrated every time I picked up the book. Really want to throw it into the trash if not for the resell value.