Customer Reviews:
An incredible treasury of history, trivia, and humor!.......1997-12-14
I was completely blown away by this book. Full of pictures, police reports, orphanage files, psychiatric analyses, and of course, never before seen photos of Jake, Elwood, the Band, Sister Mary Stigmata, et al.
It's also packed with lots of details and trivia. For example, do you know the model of the Cadillac Elwood traded for a microphone? What was Carrie Fisher's character's real name? What are Jake and Elwood's middle names? Which band member was Amish? Lots of important things like that.
This is a must-find for all die hard fans of the Blues Brothers.
Customer Reviews:
A backstage guide to SNL.......1999-08-30
A long, long time ago Saturday Night Live was simply Saturday Night. John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Chevy Chase were among the cast-members. Elliot Gould, Richard Pryor, and Paul Simon were all guest stars.
This book chronicles the first 2 seasons of SNL. It features interviews, scripts, pictures, and other miscellaneous information about the show that gave us all a reason to stay home on Saturday nights.
Book Description
Whether you're a solo artist, songwriter, or part of a band seeking to create a career in the music business, there comes the need to figure out more than where the next gig will be. There are many legal and business details to understand before you sign a contract with a record label or publishing company. This useful and easy-to-follow guide provides a clear path for moving your career forward and gaining control over your future in this business. You'll learn the steps you should take in any music genre to turn your professional music career into a legitimate and profitable business. Through a realistic, straightforward, plain-English approach, this book acts as the perfect guide to get your career moving in the right direction from start to finish - saving you time, headaches and money!
Customer Reviews:
A MUST read.......2007-01-09
Anyone serious about a career in the music business MUST read this book. Even though it is 596 pages, I read it cover to cover in less than a week! This has got to be the most comprehensive guide to the music business ever written. Everything from entertainment law, to launching your career, to pitching your songs, to digital rights and everything in between is covered. There are even chapters on wills, trusts, and estates. An excellent read!
Buy this book to prevent getting ripped off.......2006-05-16
Often when a new band gets offered a contract, they will get slightly ripped off by the record label. But after reading this book, you should have a wide enough understanding of legal terms to avoid getting your balls busted, so to speak. While this book explains everything in a simple way, also read "101 Music Business Contracts" for further legal help.
eye opener for musicians.......2005-08-07
If you are an aspiring musician and have been offered a contract with a label, consider reading this book first. Moore offers in plain language a sober analysis of how the music business works. He discusses issues that many amateur musicians might be unaware of.
Plus, a contract offered to a new, hitherto unsigned band is often badly skewed in favour of the label. The band has very little leverage and it's not a level playing field.
Moore also discusses the typical cut from the royalties. Taken by the label for the cost of promotions. Like mailing free CDs of the band's music to radio stations and reviewers. Unwary musicians often don't realise how much of their already minimal royalties can get eaten up this way.
Book Description
The Pirate Isles brings Games Masters and Players to the high seas of the Conan world. Conan made his name as a naval reaver and a buccaneer, and this book will give players the scope to take to the waves on their own. Whether it be the life of a pirate or a daring explorer, the Pirate Isles will add an entirely new dimension to campaigns and adventures in the world of Hyboria.
Customer Reviews:
Great resource for the game, to be-, or to be preyed upon by the pirates.......2005-07-04
This is a sourcebook for Mongoose Publishing's Conan: Role Playing Game. It is written to give source material, game rules and character options for enriching the pirates who plague the seas of the Hyborian world. There are distinct (and usually competitive) groups of pirates, as well as lone ships, and each of the possibilities are delved into in this book.
Mr. Darlage has drawn inspiration from the source material of Howard's stories and I assume those of the later pastiche writers. There are more options for feats available; wierd & fell beasts of the seas which could plague a ship; an innovative system to simply yet thoroughly create ports or towns for pirates to frequent, raid or spy on; plenty of ideas to make adventures from, and even new spells and magical items which sorcerers plying the seas could employ. The overall system is made to be quick rather than tedious, as Darlage notes the stories never dwell on calms when ships are stranded without winds to stir the sails. Rather, the stories skip the down time, and concentrate on combat and plot twists which are common, and the book suggests how to employ both. Depending on which type of pirate group you're considering, different types of ships are listed (though without detailed deckplans, the book has isometric sketches to show what they'd look like) and game stats for such vessels; as well as types of captains, officers, or crews (descriptions and NPC templates). If you want, weather systems (tables) are offered, as well as chases & combat sequences, since naval warfare is rather different from on land, this is a great part of the book.
A good purchase if you're even considering adding these scurvy dogs to your game, aaargh. :)
Hope this review helps.
Amazon.com
"There is terror in numbers," writes Darrell Huff in How to Lie with Statistics. And nowhere does this terror translate to blind acceptance of authority more than in the slippery world of averages, correlations, graphs, and trends. Huff sought to break through "the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind" with this slim volume, first published in 1954. The book remains relevant as a wake-up call for people unaccustomed to examining the endless flow of numbers pouring from Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and everywhere else someone has an axe to grind, a point to prove, or a product to sell. "The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify," warns Huff.
Although many of the examples used in the book are charmingly dated, the cautions are timeless. Statistics are rife with opportunities for misuse, from "gee-whiz graphs" that add nonexistent drama to trends, to "results" detached from their method and meaning, to statistics' ultimate bugaboo--faulty cause-and-effect reasoning. Huff's tone is tolerant and amused, but no-nonsense. Like a lecturing father, he expects you to learn something useful from the book, and start applying it every day. Never be a sucker again, he cries!
Even if you can't find a source of demonstrable bias, allow yourself some degree of skepticism about the results as long as there is a possibility of bias somewhere. There always is.
Read How to Lie with Statistics. Whether you encounter statistics at work, at school, or in advertising, you'll remember its simple lessons. Don't be terrorized by numbers, Huff implores. "The fact is that, despite its mathematical base, statistics is as much an art as it is a science." --Therese Littleton
Customer Reviews:
Old format.......2007-09-30
Old format and examples that have not been changed through countless reprints. Good general book for an intro. stats. class.
Still a good read!.......2007-07-23
This book is an easy read...you can get through it in one sitting. However, the first few chapters were not as clear and concise as the later ones. I would have liked to see more explanation of the 'numbers' that the author described as problematic than what was offered in the book. The possibilities of lying with statistics is just as well presented and more informative in 'How to Lie with Charts'.
Fast, Simple, Thorough.......2007-07-19
Great overview, with good examples, a little outdated with numbers. Makes you into a critical-thinking, statistically-literate citizen. I read it in a couple of days and I'm going to use parts of the book for my high school students. Best I've read!
Should have read it long time ago ..........2007-05-07
An excellent eye-opener book, I should have read it long time ago.
Timeless Classic.......2007-05-06
I used this book 20+ years ago in a college statistics course and have kept it on my shelf since. The content is as relevant now as then and I just purchased ten copies to share with a number of my colleagues. If you are looking for a sometimes-cheeky, but always-interesting, view of how to make the facts fit the story, this is your book!
Book Description
If you're using a computer to generate charts for meetings and reports, you don't have to be taught how to lie-you're already doing it. You probably don't know your charts are unreliable, and neither does your audience. So you're getting away with it-until a manager or a sales prospect or an investor makes a bad decision based on the information that you were so helpful to provide. The main focus of How to Lie with Charts is on the principles of persuasive-and undistorted-visual communication. It's about careful thinking and clear expression. So don't blame the computers. People are running the show.
Customer Reviews:
An utterly invaluable educational and self-teaching tool that is absolutely vital to staying abreast of the information age........2007-04-14
Business, technology, and web development expert Gerald Everett Jones presents an updated second edition of How to Lie with Charts, a must-read for everyone in the information age. How to Lie with Charts is a folksy-toned, fun-to-read guide to how graphs, charts, tables, and other means of presenting statistical data can be effectively used to mislead. How to Lie with Charts is therefore inordinately valuable to anyone trying to make sense of news stories, business presentations, research data, or any other gathering of information presented in visual form, as it opens the reader's eyes to tips, tricks, and techniques commonly used to give false impressions. An utterly invaluable educational and self-teaching tool that is absolutely vital to staying abreast of the information age.
Don't let charts trick you!.......2006-11-10
"How to Lie with Charts" is a must read for presenters, students and decision makers. Many tricks of the data display trade are revealed. Both how to lie with charts, and how to spot lying charts are demonstrated. This book rewards readers with clearly described methods applicable to the next presentation. Avoiding complex mathematical arguments, readers become chart literate. Fun to read and well-illustrated, "How to Lie with Charts", can save you from being misled and allow you to make your points tellingly.
Product Description
A brief, breezy, illustrated volume which is the best-selling statistics book of all time.
Book Description
If you deal with charts, you cannot afford to miss this book. Learn all the tricks to creating charts and graphs that enhance or emphasize your message in presentations. With lots of "before and after" illustrations and many examples using different software products, this book will enable you to make the most out of your charts.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting!.......2005-06-12
When is the last time you sat in a meeting and wondered if the PowerPoint charts you were being shown really represented the truth? In fact, most of us just accept visual data as true. We don't question it at all. It's almost like the people who believe anything in print, because, after all, it is in print - especially in the newspaper!
This book is less about how to use charts to lie and more about how to arm yourself so that others can't lie to you. It is filled with humorous, yet all-too-real-life examples of how each of the most commonly used charts and graphs (bar, line, pie, etc.) can \and has been used to deceive people - to lead them to conclusions that just aren't supported by the data.
Jones also gives easy-to-follow guidelines for choosing the right graphic representation for the right data - so that you can persuade - powerfully, accurately and quickly! This book is a quick read and a ready reference. Managers and executives need to understand this information to make better decisions. Those responsible for creating the visuals used for presentations will want it to ensure the best possible representation of their data.
Very basic, very inconsistent.......2005-01-27
This book could have value for some students, or anyone just beginning to create (or interpret) charts of quantitative information. Its friendly tone stresses the basics, like decent grammar, clear labeling, and thoughtful use of color. It also emphasizes the kinds of charts commonly created by PC desktop tools.
Lots of things get in the book's way, though. It dates from 1995, so lots of its advice about computer specifics (especially color) is dated. Although (fig. 10.4) he suggests underlining as a way to emphasize text, it was never a very good idea and has been given new meaning by conventions for hypertext links. Also, this edition is a black and white reprint of a book that seems originally to have been printed in color. That doesn't have to be a problem, but many of the original colors were replaced by annoying stipples or uneven screens, and one photo (11.2) makes no sense at all in black and white.
The worst problem is that the book often fails to follow its own good advice. Fig 3.14 uses cute 3D-ish cylinders as the bars in a bar chart, leaving the reader wondering just which part of the rounded end was meant to be the bar's end. Fig 7.8 is a supposedly good example tainted by the perspective distortion that Jones notes elsewhere. The "linked bar" of Fig. 7.10 is deceptive in that the bars themselves appear to cover some span of time, when they really represent instantaneous values.
Good advice, and there is a fair bit, often doesn't go far enough. P.105, for example, mentions log and log-log axes. Admittedly, the basic math is beyond this book's level (as shown by the blooper on p.140). Still, it wouldn't have been so hard to suggest using log scales for compound-interest or common growth curves, or to give a few examples where log-log scales would turn curves into straight lines with more meaning. Fig 7.17 shows two-sided bars (not usually recommended), without noting that they may be useful when the sum of the two sides has meaning. He discourages the use of "bubble" charts (p.128), even though that notation is common for chemists' phase diagrams or for placing different products along price and performance axes. He doesn't even mention the main value of "stacked" bars (fig 7.13), in showing the total of the stacked amounts. His "donut" chart (fig 2.10) is all but illegible, even though the same notation can be very useful for annotating one loop in many different ways.
Well, you get the idea. There is some good here, but lots that's not so good, including (p.200) reading your slides to your audience! I really can't recommend this one.
//wiredweird
Talk about yer irony........2003-02-12
The writing is fairly engaging and the topic is covered fairly well, but the graphics are just awful!
In fact, the gray-scale images are so poorly reproduced that it detracts from the message the author promotes. And, in many instances, the graphs are so mottled that you have to guess as to what is being shown. Unless, of course, the book's poor image quality is part of the lesson. In which case it's a brillant ploy to get the point across.
Reasonable book - really lousy pictures!
Want to Learn How to Recognize a Deceptive Presentation?.......2002-08-18
Are you tired of watching managements', employees' or politicians' deceptive presentation with graphs? Do you want to call their bluff? "How to Lie with Charts" is your secret weapon. This book along side with Darrell Huff's "How to Lie with Statistics" gives you all the amunition you need to cut through those presentations that create optical illusions.
The author explains all of the various charts available, their characteristics and how people alter their graphic works of art to influence the audience to buy into whatever the presentor wishes.
Not only does the author talk about the graphs but he explores the area of our subconcious and how this strongly influence our positive or negative perception of a chart.
The book goes into great detail and is quite humorous. The only cirticism that I have about this book is located in chapter 10. The author talks about the importance of color and how it influences the audience but he explains all of this in black and white. If you are going to encourge people to use color presentations and graphs, stop being such a tight wad and use color in your own book. Explaining tones, shades, etc., in fuzzy gray color doesn't do the job. Practice what you preach. Use color to explain color.
Excellent resource for algebra, precalc and computers.......2002-05-13
This is a very funny book, but it's also quite informative. There are discussions of each kind of graph (or "chart") that you are likely to make, particularly if you use the spreadsheet software Excel. What types of graphs are appropriate for what types of data? When should you use a pie chart? How can you emphasize one piece of data in a chart, to make it stand out from others? This book answers these questions, and more. For algebra students learning to graph things on graph paper or on the computer, this may be interesting, or even more so for the teacher, who can use some of the funnier examples as a way to spice up the subject and keep students interested.
Besides discussions of the charts themselves, the author discusses how to write and display captions, how to put charts into slides, how to make an effective slide, how to change fonts and background colors to make your chart stand out, and more.
Reading this book will also help you to discern when other people have fooled with their charts to distort them. Local newspapers, news magazines, etc. are often guilty of playing with the scale of charts, stretching things, leaving labels off of axes, and so on - you'll be able to spot these manipulations better.
I teach a college freshman course in "Quantitative Applications Software" using MS Excel; I already have a lecture I usually call "How to lie with charts and graphs" and this book will help me add more details to that lecture, which teaches students that not every graph that CAN be made, SHOULD be made. With a good graph, you should always be able to start a sentence with "This graph shows that..." and complete it with some kind of comparison.
I have but one complaint about this book: it was clearly intended to be in a smaller format; each page of writing and illustrations takes up less than half the full-size page of the book. This could have been a trade paperback, and have cost less than it does as a larger book, without losing anything except 3" of empty margin all the way around. I plan to write to the publisher, telling them I really don't like that sort of inflation. However, you may find those margins handy for scribbling notes in; uses of this book are many, so you may need the space.
Average customer rating:
|
How to Lie with Statistics
Manufacturer: Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000CIY0M |
Average customer rating:
|
How to Lie with Statistics
Darrell Huff
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Applied
| Mathematics
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
| Biomathematics
| Computer Mathematics
| Differential Equations
| Engineering
| Game Theory
| General
| Graph Theory
| Linear Programming
| Probability & Statistics
| Vector Analysis
ASIN: 0140213007 |
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