Customer Reviews

VBA for Modelers: Developing Decision Support Systems Using Microsoft® Excel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

VBA for Modelers by Albright is a jewel. The author, who's other books include Practical Management Science: Spreadsheet Modeling and Applications and Data Analysis & Decision Making with Microsoft Excel among others, targets this book for those with little or no programming experience. Forget the Excel VBA coverage in books like Benninga's Financial Modeling or Advanced Modeling in Finance Using Excel and VBA by Jackson and Staunton. Each of these books has strengths but their coverages of VBA is considerably more disjointed and sketchy. At best, Benninga and Jackson and Staunton can be said to "demonstrate" how VBA can enhance financial modeling in Excel, while providing little in the way of quality instruction on VBA.

Albright's strength is concise, effective language supplemented with numerous examples and an ample number of extended exercises which enable readers to solidify and extend understanding. Chapters 1-13 are a quality VBA primer for readers with little or no programming experience. A distinguishing feature of the book is the coverage in Chapters 14-30 where specific applications are demonstrated and extended. The real strength of this book is that it is written by a fine educator who develops understanding in a systematic and effective fashion. With some work on the reader's part this book provides rewarding results.

The biggest problem that I see with learning VBA is not trying to figure out topics such as object hierarchy, syntax, or "if" statements (there are plenty of excellent VBA guides for that!) No, figuring out what to do with all of the "stuff" you just learned is the bigger challenge.

That is where Mr. Albright's book really stands out. While the first few chapters do provide some basic treatment of VBA, it's the other half of this book that really shines! Here you will find 16 full-blown programs that cover everything from industrial applications (process blending, product mix, production scheduling, etc.) to financial analysis programs (stock trading, portfolio optimization, etc) and much more.

In these 16 chapters is where you will learn to use all that "stuff." And not only use it, but get creative with it. Mr. Albright has done a brilliant job at not only walking through the code step-by-step, but also imparting to the reader the all important "why component." After spending some time with this book, you will undoubtedly be a better technical, and equally important, creative programmer.

I started reading this book because I was interested in creating decision support systems for Microsoft Excel. Because of time constraints, i did not get to read the whole book. However, the first 6 or 7 chapters of this book have helped me grasp the basics of VBA perfectly. I have saved a great many hours (spent previously doing repetitive mind-numbing tasks in excel) by writing a few simple lines of code (and remember, I have very little programming experience). I hope to learn even more by reading the whole book, but trust me, this book is worth its price, just for the first few chapters

I looked through some 5 rated books on the subject before and after buying this book. Honestly, this is just simply THE BEST. It introduces to the reader basically all the concepts you need to learn to start writing VBA code for excel. It is just excellent, because there is both theory and very practical examples. You do not need to know anything about programming to start this book. Only thanks to this book (the other books that I tried to read where just useless for me) currently I am writing VBA codes in excel, which allowed to decrease routine works with excel at work from several hours to a matter of several minutes. It is really fascinating.
If you do not know much about VBA programming in Excel. This is the book to get.
Reference books such as Excel 2002 VBA: Programmers Reference are not useful, because they are references, they do not really teach unless you know what you are looking for.
Before buying this book I tried Advanced modelling in finance using Excel and VBA. No comparison.

This book provides the necessary knowledge for building advanced systems for quantitative analysis in Excel.
It covers all relevant aspects of programming with VBA which are necessary for building a decision support system and introduces the concepts by examples often found in the book "Practical Management Science" from Winston and Albright. From a didactic point of view the structure is very good because the first examples are easy to understand while the later ones are quite sophisticated. All in all it is an excellent textbook for teaching graduate MBA students who are interested in programming and have a good background in management science.

This book is excellent for the person who simply wants to expand their ability to use Excel without becoming a VBA expert. Most books on VBA seem to be written for computer professionals who, for example, seem to want to know about every data type that can be handled before learning anything else. Most of us would rather just learn how to do the things we need to do. This book uses this much more useful route (for ordinary folks)and tells us how to do the basic kind of stuff that we need to do (and that isn't at all obvious how to do): Key topics are accessing data in a range of a worksheet, outputting data to a range, writing a function, etc. etc. It only tells you what you need to know and it explains it all clearly. I had banged my head against a wall before finding this book and it answered all my questions and dissipated all my frustrations. I've recommended it to many of my friends.

Absolutely agree with Mr.Weiqin Xie. I took this book from corporative library with intention to get help for my first degree completion project in Industrial management, where I really needed to increase my productivity in processing a lot of data,
and just can't bring it back extending my holding over and over again. I have already ordered it and waiting for delivery. I not only successfully completed the project but started to develop useful utilities in my job and decision support application for my investments needs and all of this owing to just few first chapters.

Many Excel VBA books are a bunch of clever examples that you won't be able to apply to anything. This is the only book I have found with good examples about how to move around a spreadsheet using VBA. For some reason this is left out of most books.

I bought the book to get up to speed with VBA and I found the pace of the book good with some excellent examples which I found reasonably easy to understand. Good sections to test your knowledge at the end of each chptr "well advised to do these it really helped me". Only missed out on 5 stars as some areas we lightly covered.

I looked through some 5 rated books on the subject before and after buying this book. Honestly, this is just simply THE BEST. It introduces to the reader basically all the concepts you need to learn to start writing VBA code for excel. It is just excellent, because there is both theory and very practical examples. You do not need to know anything about programming to start this book. Only thanks to this book (the other books that I tried to read where just useless for me) currently I am writing VBA codes in excel, which allowed to decrease routine works with excel at work from several hours to a matter of several minutes. It is really fascinating.
If you do not know much about VBA programming in Excel. This is the book to get.
Reference books such as Excel 2002 VBA: Programmers Reference are not useful, because they are references, they do not really teach unless you know what you are looking for.
I tried before buying this book Advanced modelling in finance using Excel and VBA. No comparison.
I am trying to find books written in the same style as this book on Access VBA programming, no success so far unfortunately.