The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets: Management Science, Spreadsheet Engineering, and Modeling Craft (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Kenneth R. Baker (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Successful business modeling is much more than a technical discipline; it’s an art. And as in most professional disciplines, you can tell the experts apart from the novices by the creativity they bring to the craft. Now with Steve Powell and Ken Baker’s The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, you can master the technical knowledge as well as those essential craft skills needed to develop real expertise in business modeling.

You’ll learn:

• Effective methods for designing, building, and testing models, and for performing model-based analyses;
• Non-technical, craft skills that expert modelers commonly employ, such as abstracting a situation, debugging a model, and translating model results into managerial insights; and
• Standard statistical and management science techniques used in business today, such as data analysis, simulation, and optimization.

From the Back Cover

Develop state-of-the-art modeling skills

Successful business modeling is much more than a technical discipline; it’s an art. And as in most professional disciplines, you can tell the experts apart from the novices by the creativity they bring to the craft. Now with Steve Powell and Ken Baker’s The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets, you can master the technical knowledge as well as those essential craft skills needed to develop real expertise in business modeling.

You’ll learn:

• Effective methods for designing, building, and testing models, and for performing model-based analyses;
• Non-technical, craft skills that expert modelers commonly employ, such as abstracting a situation, debugging a model, and translating model results into managerial insights; and
• Standard statistical and management science techniques used in business today, such as data analysis, simulation, and optimization.

Get the tools of the trade!

The CD-ROM packaged wit h t his text features all of the spreadsheets referred to in the text, as well as three software tools of special importance to business analysts:

• Premium Solver
• Crystal Ball
• Sensitivity Toolkit (featuring four sensitivity tools)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (August 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471209376
• ISBN-13: 978-0471209379
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #681,407 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Obsolete software, April 25, 2007

By	bob (Ohio) - See all my reviews

A once useful entree to the spreadsheet modeling literature, this book is now obsolete. The version listed here is copyrighted 2004 but comes with a CD containing release 2000.2 of Crystal Ball which Decisioneering is no longer event supporting. This old version of the software as well as the Advanced Solver add-in has compatibility problems with Windows XP -not to mention Vista, and Wiley does not stand behind the product. Once I loaded the advanced solver, the solver feature no longer produced optimal solutions.

Extremely disappointing to buy a $90 textbook with obsolete software that causes Excel to malfunction and cannot be updated. Impossible to consider this as a class text book. If the publishers will not keep the product current it should be withdrawn from the market, and reputable vendors should at least WARN buyers, if they choose to continue to market and sell this once useful product.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars nice use of a spreadsheet, April 10, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Powell takes the interesting approach of showing how to model a solution to a problem, and using a spreadsheet as the engine within which to embed the solution. Who would have thought in the 70s, when the first computer spreadsheets arose, that one day they could be applied to this?

Much of the book revolves around the issues of modelling. How to extract this from a problem. Here, this is as in many other texts. But we then see how a spreadsheet can be built up, with the equations that relate a group of input cells to write a value in an output cell, being those that model the solution.

To a computer programmer, this use of a spreadsheet might seem a little confining. After all, shouldn't you write code in some general purpose language like C++ or Java, to do this? But the number of programmers who can do this well is fairly small. Whereas spreadsheets have a far broader audience, even in terms of who is able to program them. That is the audience Powell writes for.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Modelling book, January 11, 2009

By	IVFarmboy "desertrat" (CA United States) - See all my reviews

I did not care about the software, I use Riskamp (very decently priced software), so I cant judge it by that. I think it is wrong to judge the book by the software anyways but whatever. This book is GREAT and that is from a Project modeler. The authors break it into parts and make it interesting reading. I always continue reading on the areas of my work and I have 20 years experience but that is how you keep fresh. As an independent consultant you dont have a lot of co-workers you can bounce new ideas off so you need to continue to read and learn to obtain new ideas. That is what made this country great by the way, no one accepting the status quo - God I hope we can get back to that...

Well if you are going into the field or are a Modeler than this book will be well worth the time to read.