Decision Making with Insight (with Insight.xla 2.0 and CD-ROM)

This is a good book for a beginner who wants to be gently introduced to several tools that business people can use to help them make decisions. I assume it is written as a textbook for a class with a teacher who knows the answers to the problems in the book. The audience for the book could be increased if the book included detailed answers to the problems so an individual (not participating in a class) could learn at their own pace. The book is somewhat out of date because the EXCEL version in the book has been replaced by newer versions.

I bought this book in 2003 and have learned a lot from it since then. This is not just a book, but a whole decision support system. For starters, just the software on the CD would more than justify the package price. The accompanying Monte Carlo software XLSim (an Excel add-in) is good enough for real applications - it will make you think twice before buying a premium competitor at a much higher price.According to his website, author and Professor Sam Savage discovered that an Algebraic Curtain separated the bulk of his management students from management science. Prof. Savage has successfully dedicated much effort to removing that curtain. He has extensively used Excel, Monte Carlo, and resampling techniques to that effect. This book is an outstanding example of his work.What is really great about this book is that it teaches you potentially complicated techniques through simple and straightforward examples that you can replicate using only Excel and the software included in the CD.The 8 book chapters cover spreadsheet modeling in general, random variables, Monte Carlo simulation, queuing theory, discrete event simulation, Markov chains, forecasting (exponential smoothing, trends, and seasonality), decision trees, linear programming (including the Excel Solver), stochastic and non-linear optimization - all with clear and simple examples in a single book.The author's writing style is informal, easy to read and sometimes even funny. A great learning (and teaching) resource. Highly recommended.

There's the possibility that this book was right on the mark for what it was created. I however needed it for a class. It didn't help clarify the subject in the least. The material in the book was not very well explained and thus didn't stand on its own. The instructions for the exercises were windows excel 2003 specific, so I had to not only switch from my beloved mac to a pc, but then had to revert back to the 2003 version just so the step-by-step procedures would be relevant. Other than that, I'm sure it was awesome and insightful. All in all though the scope was so narrow I would not recommend this edition.I have also considered my views might be bias, but seemed to share in the idea amongst classmates that not much was gained from this book in regards to the decision support systems class. Perhaps that has more to do with who the class utilized the book rather than the potential of the book itself. For that reason, I changed my rating from 1 star to 2.

I've used many of the concepts in this book to solve real business problems. I highly recommend it to all business or management analysts.

The material and content in the book is good, and can be applied to newer analytic solving software, however, the program that comes with RH book is old and will not work on newer versions of excel. In retrospect, I should have saved $80 and bought a used version with no CD.

The book is insightful and useful, but the software and methods are out-of-date. It is more useful when paired with The Flaw of Averages, by the same author. Overpriced for such an old book.

Great book! Really interesting with many examples. It opened my mind and I could understand very well what was said. Helped me a lot!

There unfortunately was no CD that was supposed to come with the book. This is actually of importance to me because I need it for assignments.

This book makes a lot of statistical concepts, with the most common flaws incurred by using averages, very clear. It is all given in a business context. You don't need to be a statistician to understand it, a perfect complement to the book 'The Flaw of Averages" if you want to go a bit deeper.Without becoming an expert you will understand what is behind model and simulations.

Good book, missed the CD though, it was a used one.