Customer Reviews

GIS For Dummies

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this book about a month ago and it surprised me how well it was put together and how much detail the author goes into without scaring the reader. I am a GIS professional and this is a great book for those who need to reference the inner workings of GIS, both technically and conceptually. I manage a small GIS shop with ~4 employees and two of them own this Book. On several occasions, I have seen them reference the book for project and class work. One said "It's easy to find what you're looking for in here; it's easily navigable!" The author does a great job of organizing the book into clear and concise sections that flow nicely. For the price, I strongly recommend this book; you are really getting 90% of a GIS textbook for 20% of the cost. Also, those who say this is too detailed for a dummies book, I say to you "what are you complaining about?" You are getting more bang for your buck! It is just like the rest of the dummies books in that it captures topic at hand in a clear manner; it is very understandable unlike several of the GIS books out there. Kudos on this book Dr. DeMers!

This is a great introductory book for persons with little or no knowledge about a geographical information system (GIS). The book explains what a GIS is, who would use it, how it can help organisations with their daily operations, vector and raster data models, coordinate systems, projections, datums, modelling, networks, types of geospatial data, data display and cartography in simple English.

The book provides some basic step-by-step instructions on how to perform queries using a GIS software, ESRI ArcGIS. The book, in summary, explains: (a) background information about the GIS; (b) what a GIS can produce (the product and its uses in the real world); and (c) the infrastructure and components that support GIS operations (the things that make a GIS work).

I do not recommended this book if one is studying a GIS program at a higher educational institution. There are better detailed GIS books to purchase in this case. However, if one has issues explaining the technicalities of a GIS (e.g. presenting a GIS to non-technical clients) in simple English, this book may be of interest; it has helped me to become a better communicator. I say it's a good reference book for GIS professionals.

Revised on 1 January 2012.

I ordered this book while I was taking a class in GIS and not understanding alot of the terminology and jargon being used. (raster, vector, metadata, etc.) It was so confusing. Shortly after I got this book, I was able to keep up with conversation and explain my project using new words that I learned from my book. Now, I know what my professors are referring to without making it so complicated for someone like me to understand. I recommend this book to anyone who feels like GIS is not for them. This book makes it simple and easy to understand.

Called 'for Dummies' this is not really a book for starters. A lot of technical terms, hardly explained, and full of academic theory. It serves as a good background for a young GIS novice student, but not for a 'dummy', who likes to get quickly into GIS, produce some maps, understand some GIS interpretations.
Nevertheless, surely interesting to read and to get some background.

GIS For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Prospective students of GIS often inquire about appropriate reading materials for background information. This book is perfect for this purpose; however, its utility value does not stop there.

I find that the "Dummies" book is a terrific resource for students, as well as professionals.

It's worth including in your library, especially at such a reasonable price point.

This book is completely unusable on the Kindle. You can't skip between chapters, but have to go through the thing page by page, the button that usually lets you go directly from one chapter beginning to the next doesn't work. For a text-book this is very irritating. Wish I hadn't bought it.

I bought this book after struggling for months with the vast nerdiness of ESRI's user forum, where users are expected to be comfortable with the command-line interface, and handy with scripting languages. I already know about the different projections, coordinate systems, and datums. I don't know how to tell ArcMap to take all the layers in my project and give them the same geospatial attributes. That process isn't as easy as advertised, and I was hoping to get beyond this barrier.
Other problems not addressed in "GIS for Dummies" include:
--how to build a geodatabase, and the difference between storing files in one and not
--how to import data into an attribute table, or enter it manually
I wished I'd known that this book explains the basic concepts, but doesn't show how to make them happen in ArcMap. I wasted my money on a book that explains things I already know. Off to eBay...

As a real dummy I was looking for a book that started as follows...to turn on hte computer push the on button...what I found is a college professor telling me how great it can be...that aint for dummies !