Books about Estimation from Amazon.com

Guesstimation is a book that unlocks the power of approximation--it's popular mathematics rounded to the nearest power of ten! The ability to estimate is an important skill in daily life. More and more leading businesses today use estimation questions in interviews to test applicants' abilities to think on their feet. Guesstimation enables anyone with basic math and science skills to estimate virtually anything--quickly--using plausible assumptions and elementary arithmetic.

Lawrence Weinstein and John Adam present an eclectic array of estimation problems that range from devilishly simple to quite sophisticated and from serious real-world concerns to downright silly ones. How long would it take a running faucet to fill the inverted dome of the Capitol? What is the total length of all the pickles consumed in the US in one year? What are the relative merits of internal-combustion and electric cars, of coal and nuclear energy? The problems are marvelously diverse, yet the skills to solve them are the same. The authors show how easy it is to derive useful ballpark estimates by breaking complex problems into simpler, more manageable ones--and how there can be many paths to the right answer. The book is written in a question-and-answer format with lots of hints along the way. It includes a handy appendix summarizing the few formulas and basic science concepts needed, and its small size and French-fold design make it conveniently portable. Illustrated with humorous pen-and-ink sketches, Guesstimation will delight popular-math enthusiasts and is ideal for the classroom.

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Price: $12.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Often referred to as the "black art" because of its complexity and uncertainty, software estimation is not as hard or mysterious as people think. However, the art of how to create effective cost and schedule estimates has not been very well publicized. While the average software organization can struggle with project costs that run double their original estimates, some of the more sophisticated organizations achieve results with estimation errors as low as 5-10%. These best-in-class organizations use scientific techniques that are not cost-effective, however, making them of limited use to most software development organizations. To address these issues, Software Estimation focuses on the art of software estimation and provides a proven set of procedures and heuristics that software developers, technical leads, and project managers can apply to their projects. Instead of arcane treatises and rigid modeling techniques, award-winning author Steve McConnell gives practical guidance to help organizations achieve basic estimation proficiency and lay the groundwork to continue improving project cost estimates. This book is organized from simple tips to more advanced ideas; it does not avoid the more hairy mathematical estimation approaches, but the non-mathematical reader will find plenty of useful guidelines without getting bogged down in complex formulas..
Price: $15.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $7.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What do cars, toys, people, and jelly beans have in common? They can all be estimated Two friends try out their estimating skills and find out that estimating can have real rewards--especially when there's a contest to enter!

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Price: $2.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A bottom-up approach that enables readers to master and apply the latest techniques in state estimation

This book offers the best mathematical approaches to estimating the state of a general system. The author presents state estimation theory clearly and rigorously, providing the right amount of advanced material, recent research results, and references to enable the reader to apply state estimation techniques confidently across a variety of fields in science and engineering.

While there are other textbooks that treat state estimation, this one offers special features and a unique perspective and pedagogical approach that speed learning:
* Straightforward, bottom-up approach begins with basic concepts and then builds step by step to more advanced topics for a clear understanding of state estimation
* Simple examples and problems that require only paper and pen to solve lead to an intuitive understanding of how theory works in practice
* MATLAB(r)-based source code that corresponds to examples in the book, available on the author's Web site, enables readers to recreate results and experiment with other simulation setups and parameters

Armed with a solid foundation in the basics, readers are presented with a careful treatment of advanced topics, including unscented filtering, high order nonlinear filtering, particle filtering, constrained state estimation, reduced order filtering, robust Kalman filtering, and mixed Kalman/H? filtering.

Problems at the end of each chapter include both written exercises and computer exercises. Written exercises focus on improving the reader's understanding of theory and key concepts, whereas computer exercises help readers apply theory to problems similar to ones they are likely to encounter in industry. A solutions manual is available for instructors.

With its expert blend of theory and practice, coupled with its presentation of recent research results, Optimal State Estimation is strongly recommended for undergraduate and graduate-level courses in optimal control and state estimation theory. It also serves as a reference for engineers and science professionals across a wide array of industries.

A solutions manual is available upon request from the Wiley editorial board..
Price: $83.82 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This encyclopedic, detailed exposition spans all the steps of one-period allocation from the foundations to the most advanced developments.

Multivariate estimation methods are analyzed in depth, including non-parametric, maximum-likelihood under non-normal hypotheses, shrinkage, robust, and very general Bayesian techniques. Evaluation methods such as stochastic dominance, expected utility, value at risk and coherent measures are thoroughly discussed in a unified setting and applied in a variety of contexts, including prospect theory, total return and benchmark allocation.

Portfolio optimization is presented with emphasis on estimation risk, which is tackled by means of Bayesian, resampling and robust optimization techniques.

All the statistical and mathematical tools, such as copulas, location-dispersion ellipsoids, matrix-variate distributions, cone programming, are introduced from the basics. Comprehension is supported by a large number of figures and examples, as well as real trading and asset management case studies.

At symmys.com the reader will find freely downloadable complementary materials: the Exercise Book; a set of thoroughly documented MATLAB^® applications; and the Technical Appendices with all the proofs. More materials and complete reviews can also be found at symmys.com.

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Price: $62.05 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is the first book on the optimal estimation that places its major emphasis on practical applications, treating the subject more from an engineering than a mathematical orientation. Even so, theoretical and mathematical concepts are introduced and developed sufficiently to make the book a self-contained source of instruction for readers without prior knowledge of the basic principles of the field. The work is the product of the technical staff of the The Analytic Sciences Corporation (TASC), an organization whose success has resulted largely from its applications of optimal estimation techniques to a wide variety of real situations involving large-scale systems

Arthur Gelb writes in the Foreword that "It is our intent throughout to provide a simple and interesting picture of the central issues underlying modern estimation theory and practice. Heuristic, rather than theoretically elegant, arguments are used extensively, with emphasis on physical insights and key questions of practical importance."

Numerous illustrative examples, many based on actual applications, have been interspersed throughout the text to lead the student to a concrete understanding of the theoretical material. The inclusion of problems with "built-in" answers at the end of each of the nine chapters further enhances the self-study potential of the text.

After a brief historical prelude, the book introduces the mathematics underlying random process theory and state-space characterization of linear dynamic systems. The theory and practice of optimal estimation is them presented, including filtering, smoothing, and prediction. Both linear and non-linear systems, and continuous- and discrete-time cases, are covered in considerable detail. New results are described concerning the application of covariance analysis to non-linear systems and the connection between observers and optimal estimators. The final chapters treat such practical and often pivotal issues as suboptimal structure, and computer loading considerations.

This book is an outgrowth of a course given by TASC at a number of US Government facilities. Virtually all of the members of the TASC technical staff have, at one time and in one way or another, contributed to the material contained in the work.
Price: $32.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $14.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $7.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Occupancy Estimation and Modeling is the first book to examine the latest methods in analyzing presence/absence data surveys Using four classes of models (single-species, single-season; single-species, multiple season; multiple-species, single-season; and multiple-species, multiple-season), the authors discuss the practical sampling situation, present a likelihood-based model enabling direct estimation of the occupancy-related parameters while allowing for imperfect detectability, and make recommendations for designing studies using these models.

* Provides authoritative insights into the latest in estimation modeling
* Discusses multiple models which lay the groundwork for future study designs
* Addresses critical issues of imperfect detectibility and its effects on estimation
* Explores the role of probability in estimating in detail.
Price: $56.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]