Customer Reviews

Management Science: The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, Excel 2007 Update

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

 

 

I bought this book because it is mandatory reading material for a course which I am taking. So far, I like the book and I find it easy to follow. The book provides good practical examples and the publisher's companion site provides a download of all major spreadsheets which are used as examples in the text. The one problem which I have had so far is that I have not been able to download Oracle's Crystal Ball trial software which is supposed to be provided as a companion to the book. The user name and password combination provided with the book does not match what is requested on the download website.

I used this book for a course in quantitative decision making, which required the heavy use of statistics to derive information to guide business decisions. Unfortunately, the book teaches concepts in the context of examples, hardly ever explaining a theory in a way that is universally applicable. When performing homework assignments, I found this particularly frustrating since the questions I was answering unilaterally contained different scenarios than the ones in which each concept was explained in the book. If this is a required textbook for your course, I wish you the best of luck, but if you're looking to do some "light reading" on the subject, seek help elsewhere.

This provides a pretty good overview for using Excel to model a variety of business problems, with examples and tips and tricks. The claim, written right on the cover of the book, that it is includes software is, unfortunately, incorrect. The book does not include a CD. Instead, it includes links to various sites to download trial versions. In the case of Crystall Ball, the link is invalid. For Premium Solver, the license has to be set up with a professor at a school, so anyone buying this text as a personal reference book is out of luck. And so on and so forth. I bought this book new partly so that I would have the software, which I need on my home compnuter for a course that I am taking. I am out of luck in this regard, I'm not happy and I wish that I had bought this book used.

I just used this book for the summer quarter. Prepare to learn excel thoroughly, and learn how deal with math formulas in excel, the sum and average factor. Learning how to apply the basics in college algebra, in Excel. The basics in learning work relationships in modeling steps. Proper sketching is examined in understanding the next step to modeling a spreadsheet with minimum errors, or none at all. Getting familiar with the lingo of modeling and understanding the inter-workings of excel in business or like I've stated work relationships. This book touches allot of areas, prepare to understand and read.

This book includes detailed description of how to do various excel programming where anyone form the novice to the experienced can find something useful. I have only worked my way through to chapter 4, so far so good...

Book arrived quickly and in excellent shape. All extra software licenses and information was intact.