Keith McCormick's profile

Just enough of a grounding to help you decide if Six Sigma is for you, May 3, 2008

I started reading this book because I was assigned to a Data Mining project in an organization where Six Sigma is popular. I recommend this book to anyone that just wants a simple answer to the question: "What is Six Sigma?". Or if you are new to data analysis, in general, you could read this as a warm up before attending training, but don't expect one book (or at least this book) to teach everything about statistics and six sigma. I liked the explanation of the history and what `black belts' learn and do.

The style is a little too informal for my tastes. It is basically 300 pages of bullet statements, but that is in keeping with the idea behind the series. Also, although … Read more

Specialists should consider it, Practitioners should look elsewhere, May 3, 2008

I will recommend this to one or two colleagues, but it will not be something I will recommend to clients.

The first thing you notice about this book is its very academic style. It has numbered paragraphs like 2.0, and 7.3.1.12. It been used a graduate text, presumably for mathematicians and computer scientists. I think it would be good for that purpose. It could work quite well for statisticians that are interested in the details of data mining algorithms. It is in a series in Machine Perception and Artificial Intelligence. Other titles include "Fundamentals of Robotics", and "Bridging the Gap Between Graph Edit Distance and Kernel Machines", so don't confuse this book wit… Read more

One of the best explanations of Decision Trees to be found, March 29, 2008

There is a lot to like about this book, but it has some unfortunate flaws. Note that it is part of a Data Mining trilogy. The other two books are: Data Mining Methods and Models and Data Mining the Web: Uncovering Patterns in Web Content, Structure, and Usage.

My initial reaction was more negative as I feel strongly about the issues that this book addresses poorly. However, I find myself turning to this book again and again. I would endorse it highly, but with a caution or two. The ver… Read more