Slashdot Mirror
Turning Numbers into Knowledge
An overview: TNIK is one of those rare books that is simple in its presentation and quietly leaves a deep understanding of its topic. Chapters read like common-sense and jibe with everyday experience in a satisfying way. Koomey is a masterful analyst who has distilled his years of experience into a well-thought-out, well-written book on the "art of problem solving." Koomey's tone is conversational and succeeds in making a potentially dry topic interesting and relevant through genuine insight, clear prose, and real-world examples.
TNIK is divided into 5 sections containing a total of 38 chapters. The chapters are easily digested. The book can be read equally well straight-through or in bites here and there as interests warrant -- in fact, Koomey uses icons in page margins to cross-reference chapters encouraging the reader to jump around if a thread seems particularly interesting.
See table of contents at bottom for more information on content -- the chapters are small enough that the ToC provides an excellent summary of the territory covered in the book. Also, here are some sample chapters online.
Why Recommend a Book about Problem Solving on Slashdot:
While I consider myself more of an analyst than a programmer, I've written a fair amount of code in support of data analysis (mostly perl and sql). I've benefitted invaluably from books recommended on Slashdot that I wouldn't have known to pick up or notice otherwise. I thought this book might be similarly useful to others who were interested in improving their problem solving skills and/or analytical approach. This book is the The Practice of Programming of the practice of problem solving.
What I Enjoyed About the Book:
I have read TNIK twice and used it as a reference on many occasions. Reading it has helped me retool my approach to analysis in a broad way (getting more organized, becoming more cynical about "official" analysis, questioning my own analysis more deeply, and developing different analytical scenarios all come to mind), pointed me to other excellent references, and most importantly, always helped me with whatever problem I'm currently working on. I tend to pull it off the shelf when I'm starting a big project and it has been an easy way to gain inspiration.
Other Good Stuff:
There is an outstanding "Further Reading" section which is essentially an annotated bibliography of recommended books organized by topic. There are many, many excellent books in this section and each listing contains a short description by Koomey as to why he recommends them.
Each chapter begins and ends with a quote relevant to the chapter topic and lots of humorous comic strips (Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, New Yorker, etc.) relevant to the chapter throughout the text serve as comic relief.
A Note on the Publisher:
This book is published by Analytics Press in Oakland CA. Individual copies are available through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com. Ordering options here.
Conclusion:
This book is on par with Edward Tufte's influential Graphical Explanations (which amazingly hasn't been reviewed on this site yet!) The beauty of the book is in its elegant coverage of so many topics in such a short space. This book is a road map to great analysis and it behooves anyone interesting in improving their skills to take advantage of it, and judging by the amount of bad analysis created on a daily basis, it deserves a spot on many bookshelves! Other reviews are here.
Table Of Contents:
- Part I: Things to Know
- Beginner's Mind
- Don't be Intimidated
- Information, Intention, and Action
- Peer Review and Scientific Discovery
Part II: Be Prepared
- Explore Your Ideology
- Get Organized
- Establish a Filing System
- Build a Toolbox
- Put Facts at Your Fingertips
- Value your Time
Part III: Assess their Analysis
- The Power of Critical Thinking
- Numbers Aren't Everything
- All Numbers Are Not Created Equal
- Question Authority
- How Guesses Become Facts
- Don't Believe Everything You Read
- Go Back to the Questions
- Reading Tables and Graphs
- Distinguish Facts from Values
- The Uncertainty Principle and the Mass Media
Part IV: Create Your Analysis
- Reflect
- Get Unstuck
- Inquire
- Be a Detective
- Create Consistent Comparisons
- Tell a Good Story
- Dig into the Numbers
- Make a Model
- Reuse Old Envelopes
- Use Forecasts with Care
- Hear All Sides
Part V: Show your Stuff
- Know Your Audience
- Document, Document, Document
- Let the Tables and Graphs Do the Work
- Create Compelling Graphs and Figures
- Create Good Tables
- Use Numbers Effectively in Oral Presentations
- Use the Internet
Conclusion: Creating the Future
Further Reading
Notes
Index
You can purchase Turning Numbers into Knowledge from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
There is just no way I can stay awake this holiday weekend!
What an insightful comment. And it shows a remarkable lack of empathy for those of us who may be a little behind you in their geek development. Put it this way. I'm in sales. For an IT company. And I thought it would be helpful to learn more about the subject. So I'm teaching myself from the O'Reilly books. Something like this for a person like me, who doesn't come from a numbers-based, analytical environment, helps me approach matters and can give me valuable pointers. I for one will be buying it. So please, try and be a little less elitist with your posts. Some of us want to get to a decent level and don't need thoughtless and insulting posts like this. Especially anonymously. Here endeth today's sermon on behalf of newbie geeks.
"This is your life - and it's ending one minute at a time" - Narrator, Fight Club
Where?
After reading the review I didn't know what the book was 'about', sure it sounded interesting, interesting enough to take a look at the web site.
This book appears to present methods of managing and analysing data so that you can 'solve' the problem without getting bogged down.
I would recommend giving this book a look over for the following reasons.
I do a great deal of analysis work and a lot of the concepts in the TOC sound familiar.
The logical approach the book appears to present should help you fine tune your analysis and hopefully identify some areas where you've been slipping.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Anyone reading 'Dianetics' need not apply... ;)
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
forgive me, but while Im reading the preface/overview of the book, I cant help but think of the radio interview/commercials on gra:vice city, where the guy is selling books/tapes with titles like "think, hold that thought, complete," and "learn, start, doing" ("where I explain the mysteries of starting!"). The book does seem interesting - I'm going to check it out at bn today. thanks for pointing it out
Bottom line: you may be kick-ass at this kind of thinking, these kinds of approaches to problems, but there are plenty of geeks out there who suck at it. You know, for a geek, your bozo filter seems to be malfunctioning - you should be able to filter this stuff out and dump it from the cache more easily than this!
"Content's a bitch."
I am sure that Many of you kown of this book: "Handbook of applied cryptography" well I found out lately that it is available at http://www.lockless.com/cryptography.html in pdf. There are many other texts available on this web site This might be more for the nerds like /. is supposed to be.
Put it this way. I'm in sales.
;)
Reminds me of the time I admitted to owning a Packard Bell computer here on Slashdot.
Now wait for the tide....
...Slashdot readers interested in improving the quality of their critical thinking skills...
:)
Actually, it's the Slashdot posters who need to improve their thinking skills.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
every time I see a book that's supposed to make you think better,act smarter, etc- I wonder...
does the book really do that? it seems they always get positive reviews(wish I could think of other examples)...
it sort of leads me to believe that this is sort of like the emperor's new clothing.... you have the choice of saying
"this book didn't make me smarter/it didn't work because I'm too dumb"
or
"I am now enlightened. look how clever I am. if you can't understand this book, you must be too stupid to help."
Don't know how true that is with this reviewer, but I tend to take these things with a grain of salt. just a thought....
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
here on /. we have a nearly pateneted method (remember now, we like our patents, not theirs) for problem solving. it might not contain the uber genius problem solving skills that went into many internet startup companies in the late 90's, but we like it. it goes a little like this:
1) start off with some really pointless statement.
2) add another unrelated and even more pointless statement.
3) ???
4) Profit!!!
we're still waiting the first real-world implementation of our problem solving skills, but rumor has it that the next Sims game will include the plan many times over.
Book might be great, but you couldn't tell it from the review, which reads like a marketing blurb.