This book is intended for analysts who wish to construct stochastic financial models, and anyone else interested in learning how to use Crystal Ball. Instructors with a practical bent may also find it useful as a supplement for courses in finance, management science, or industrial engineering.

The first six chapters of this book cover the features of Crystal Ball and OptQuest. Several examples are used to illustrate how these programs can be used to enhance deterministic Excel models for stochastic financial analysis and planning. The remaining seven chapters provide more detailed examples of how Crystal Ball and OptQuest can be used in financial risk analysis of investments in securities, derivatives, and real options.

I think you’ll find that it offers a fast, enjoyable way to discover the ins and outs of Microsoft Excel programming. Even if you don’t have the foggiest idea of what programming is all about, this book can help you make Excel jump through hoops in no time (well, it will take some time).

Unlike most programming books, this one is written in plain English, and even normal people can understand it. Even better, it’s filled with information of the “just the facts, ma’am” variety — and not the drivel you might need once every third lifetime.

I am going to show you how to customize almost every aspect of Windows Vista. By the time you are finished with this book, your Windows Vista will look and feel as if Microsoft designed it just for you.

Performance is a major component of your Windows Vista experience. Windows Vista demands more out of your hardware than ever before. After all, when you add many new features, various types of automation, and a slick 3D user interface, you are going to need something more powerful than a computer that barely runs Windows XP. However, you also do not need to go out and buy a completely new computer. In this book, I show you how to fine-tune the settings and features in Windows Vista to make it run faster on hardware that is not exactly the cutting edge anymore.

Written by a team of Oracle insiders, this authoritative book provides you with the most current coverage of the Oracle data warehousing platform as well as the full suite of business intelligence tools. You’ll learn how to leverage Oracle features and how those features can be used to provide solutions to a variety of needs and demands. Plus, you’ll get valuable tips and insight based on the authors’ real-world experiences and their own implementations.

This handy guide helps you analyze the information you work with in your job to make better decisions. From grabbing external data to working with PivotCharts, database functions, and regression analysis, it shows you step by step how Excel can turn raw data into intelligible information.

Using Excel for data analysis is what this book is all about. This book assumes that you want to use Excel to learn new stuff, discover new secrets, and gain new insights into the information that you’re already working with in Excel — or the information stored electronically in some other format, such as in your accounting system.

This book isn’t meant to be read cover to cover like a Dan Brown page-turner. Rather, it’s organized into tiny, no-sweat descriptions of how to do the things that must be done. Hop around and read the chapters that interest you.

By data mining the Web, we refer to the application of data mining methodologies, techniques, and models to the variety of data forms, structures, and usage patterns that comprise the World Wide Web. As the subtitle indicates, we are interested in uncovering patterns and trends in the content, structure, and use of the Web.

A good definition of data mining is that in Principles of Data Mining by David Hand, Heikki Mannila, and Padhraic Smyth (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001): “Data mining is the analysis of (often large) observational data sets to find unsuspected relationships and to summarize the data in novelways that are both understandable and useful to the data owner.” Data Mining the Web: Uncovering Patterns in Web Content, Structure, and Usage demonstrates how to apply data mining methods and models toWeb-based data forms.

This book covers elementary concepts in creating and manipulating 2D and 3D graphical objects, covering topics from classic graphics algorithms to perspective drawings and hidden-line elimination.

Completely revised and updated throughout, the second edition of this highly popular textbook contains a host of ready-to-run-programs and worked examples, illuminating general principles and geometric techniques. Ideal for classroom use or self-study, it provides a perfect foundation for programming computer graphics using Java.

Over the past few years, Java has evolved into more powerful programming environments. The most notable development related to computer graphics is its support for 3D graphics. Many application examples illustrated in this book could be readily implemented using Java 3D without any understanding of the internal working of the implementation, which we consider undesirable for computer science students. We therefore believe that this textbook continues to serve as an indispensable introduction to the foundation of computer graphics, on which many application program interfaces (APIs) and graphics libraries could be developed, and more importantly, how they are developed.

In this book, we introduce you to the wonders of the Linux operating system, originally created as a labor of love by Linus Torvalds in the early 1990s. Our goal is to initiate you into the rapidly growing ranks of Linux users and enthusiasts busily rewriting the rules for the operating system marketplace.

In this book, we keep the amount of technobabble to a minimum and stick with plain English as much as possible. Besides plain talk about Linux installation, boot up, configuration, and software, we include many examples, plus lots of detailed instructions to help you set up and use your very own Linux machine with a minimum of stress or confusion.

Software Testing presents one of the first comprehensive guides to testing activities, ranging from test planning through test completion for every phase of software under development, and software under revision. Real life case studies are provided to enhance understanding as well as a companion website with tools and examples.

Software Testing: Testing Across the Entire Lifecycle provides the fundamental concepts and approaches to software testing. The topic is important for two reasons. First, according to US Government surveys there has been an estimated $59.5B in business losses since 2000 due to poor quality software. Second, based on the authors’ inability to find experienced software testers to address some of the estimated $22.2B testing opportunity, the current pool of experienced software testers is already gainfully employed.

This book is aimed at spreadsheet users who already have some familiarity with previous versions of Microsoft Excel and who want an overview of the modifications and new features being introduced with Microsoft Office 2007. The book is also intended to be a practical guide to anyone wishing to update their Excel skills and progress to the more advanced features of this essential spreadsheet application.

Many experienced users may initially find Excel 2007 rather disorientating. But Excel 2007: Beyond the Manual will introduce those who are already familiar with Excel basics to more advanced features, like consolidation, what-if analysis, PivotTables, sorting and filtering, and some commonly used functions.