Customer Reviews

Essentials of Investments with S&P card (The Mcgraw-Hill/Irwin Series in Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate)

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

 

 

The book written in investment lingo, is by far the most hideous attempt I have ever seen reading a finance textbook. The explanations lack clarity and simplicity. If this is an intro for students to get excited about investment, it should be taken into consideration to revise the edition and make it much more user friendly. Everyone is able to follow simple formulas in excel, however it would also help to explain what the outcome is going to tell and why. Statistics like the standard deviation, the co-efficient, variance, as well as the co-efficient variation are explained in a very confusing way and the attempt to make up for it by using long formulas are not helping to make it any easier to understand the material. It takes hours to read through one chapter alone - the fun of investing is certainly numbed using this textbook for finance classes.

Amazon.com delivers its products and implements quick service to its customers no doubt about it.

This book contains so much details but sometimes it is hard to understand these concepts because they contain run- on sentences which is confusing. It takes more than 10 minutes for me to understand what the authors are trying to say. These professors are experts on their subject, but please write it more concisely and in lay men's terms. I guess this a complaint for publishers and authors who wrote the textbook.

I am glad that I bought the loose leaf format because I can bring whatever chapters I need to bring on campus, or take notes on lectures.

At this age, it is still hard to write on an iPad or tablet because it is not efficient to write down on a screen. If interfaces are needed to improve then this would work slowly in the digital age.

The book is quite detailed after Chapter 4. If you don't have a good understanding of math or are unwilling to learn, this book probably isn't for you.

Book is hard to follow. There are very few examples to help you through step-by-step in figuring out problems. It's all text and no breakdown of material - for a complex subject that's pretty bad. There's also no answer guide in the back so you can't check to see how you're doing (you might need to purchase the solution manual separately). If this is your assigned textbook for class, good luck.

Like many of you, I didn't really have the option to not buy the book. I thought it was well written, and fairly easy to follow. It is some fairly challenging material. If you haven't noticed there is a paper back edition of this book which is kinda difficult to fine on amazon. Same title and edition but doesn't have all the same authors listed in the amazon listing (even though it is the same). It costs about 1/5th as much as the hard cover book. Here is a link to the paperback edition Essentials of Investments

I agree with the other reviewers on this text, confusing and poorly written. This text is an albatross in my opinion. The math examples do not flow well; the Connect (on line section) has sub-par examples and work through of problems.
Being an older student and interested in learning,I need and want to use technology in my studies so I may be better prepared for the real world environment.

As I write this I am more aware of how disappointed I am in the progress of our educational system. The special interest groups like publishers, teachers, and administrators have become more entrenched than when I go got my other degrees 20 years ago.

As a tax payer I really wonder how the system is spending all the funds they receive. Paying labor and book publishers over and over each year to produce questionable products seems ignorant not enlightened to me. Embracing technology to become more flexible, lean, effective and efficient in the delivery of an education seems like a goal the highly educated should be able to achieve. Of course anyone studying finance knows moral hazard and the agency problem are always at work.

Call me naïve; I thought higher education would be able to practice what they preach, best practices, ethics, cost cutting, efficient processes and so forth.

Education can be fun and delivered much more creatively with more integrity.

Naïve

This book is totally essential for my finance class. Has all the formulas needed to calculate stock returns, market returns, etc.

I received the international version instead of the regular version--luckily there were no MAJOR differences in the text.

Book came well packaged. Was advertised to have an online access code but when code turned out to not work, company was prompt about refund. Overall good customer service and quality product.