Best Educational Software

A free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere: this is the goal of the Khan Academy, a passion project that grew from an ex-engineer and hedge funder's online tutoring sessions with his niece, who was struggling with algebra, into a worldwide phenomenon. "Since its founding in 2006, Sal Khan's project-the Khan academy-has revolutionized our thinking on the potential and promise of unfettered, open-access online education. In his new book The One World Schoolhouse, Khan presents his vision and blueprint for how online technology can, and should, play an integral role in educating communities across the globe, closing the opportunity gap and providing high-quality education for all. "I discovered Sal Khan and Khan Academy like most other people - by using these incredible tools with my own kids. Sal Khan's vision and energy for how technology could fundamentally transform education is contagious. "The world dreams of education reform, and Sal Khan is delivering. "Sal Khan is changing what we believe is possible in education. "When you read this book, you will understand how the dignity of each student is addressed by education's visionary, Sal Khan. "Sal Khan has developed the best and most cost-efficient way to use technology to bring high quality education, creativity and innovation to all countries, including the poorest.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Salman Khan is one of those people. I used to believe that math was something people could either do or they couldn't."
"I also know there are a lot of children being taken out of regular class timr for special needs who miss what the others are being taught and never have a chance to catch up."
"As parents of an 11yr old boy and 12 yr old girl, the future of their education and the mind blowing costs are deeply troubling, time consuming preoccupations for us. Sal Khan's book says it doesn't have to be this way...that if we can move forward from the inertia of what is, toward the possibility of what can be.....self paced learning with deeply connected ideas and concepts, an educational foundation for all with 100% proficiency....we may have a future generation of real thinkers producing creative solutions and satisfying lives. As a women well educated by an elite prep school and private college, I remember all too well, though 30+yrs ago, how to work the system, get my A, high GPA, and diploma."
"I don't think that the quick and dirty approach will work for every subject-some subjects are visually rich, (think "Planet Earth") and some subjects don't lend themselves to being taught with simple little drawings. Of course it did not help the learning process that I was a target for Jeff Warpel who sat in the back of the class and had the ability to spit about 15 feet by forcing saliva at high pressure between the space in his two front teeth. He could hit anyone at will in the back of the neck. Since I was a "behavior problem" I was in the front row where Mrs. Henning could keep an eye on me."

Augmented Reality (AR) blurs the boundary between the physical and digital worlds. Dr. Helen Papagiannis is recognized as a world leading expert in the field of Augmented Reality (AR).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"A tour de force analysis of the latest augmented reality technologies, projects, and innovators."
"Augmented Reality is one of the most popular topics in the tech world right now."
"Thanks for the great insight to the future of AR when we will all have 2020!"
"Dr. Papagiannis delineates the origin/creation story of AR and its path onto our smartphones with detailed use cases, inflection points, innovations and presents an array of current and future uses in storytelling (books, films, art), healthcare, design, travel, translation, enterprise and education, "Augmented Human" is the perfect title, as the book comprises chapters that reflect how AR can amplify humans' abilities and senses, including sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and it provides examples of products and offerings that are creating this "new wave of reality", as expressed by Dr. Papagiannis. "Augmented Reality" is an entertaining and informative book well suited to persons just interested in Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality, artists and filmmakers, designers and architects, students and industry mavens."
"Simultaneously, "Augmented Human" is also an informative and eye-opening read for newbies who want a crash course in AR's evolution, where the tech stands currently, and where things are headed. Upon finishing the book, however, I left with the impression that as we move forward in forging AR and spatial computing into existence, it will be increasingly important for us to be asking the right questions about how the medium should evolve - in addition to trying to find the right answers."
"Besides being a joy to go through a range of technologies presented, it also gets really deep into what makes a valuable and exciting AR experience in terms of how stories should be told - arguably the most important part of the book."
"Fantastic view into how evolving technologies are effectively giving us super powers."

COVERS ALL EXAM TOPICS, INCLUDING HOW TO: Two practice exams Video training PDF of the book. He is the director of education for Project Seminars, Inc., and the bestselling author of PMP Project Management Professional Study Guide, Third Edition and CAPM/PMP Project Management Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Second Edition .
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I will agree that this book may be wordy at times and goes beyond the objective of simply passing the CTT+ exam, although I would be ashamed to call myself a Certified Technical Trainer while never being introduced to some of the topics contained in this book such as the ADDIE methodology and Kirkpatrick evaluations."
"Very helpful but would also recommend trying an online test simulator as the questions in the book are nothing like the test itself."
"Since I need to create a recorded practicum that covers many areas, and this book lays out those areas, I think it will be a good asset. I reviewed it, along with a number of other resources the morning I had scheduled my video shoot, and that review was useful."
"Great test preparation book for the CTT+ exam."
"Boring book with unnecessary information on a simple a concept while missing it's main points."
"The approach of the book is very intuitive and slowly it covers every aspect of the media, learning environment, language and many other."
"I got thrown off by the format of this book."
"This book, for this test, in my opinion, will not prepare you."
Best Business Software

Explore the machine learning landscape, particularly neural nets Use scikit-learn to track an example machine-learning project end-to-end Explore several training models, including support vector machines, decision trees, random forests, and ensemble methods Use the TensorFlow library to build and train neural nets Dive into neural net architectures, including convolutional nets, recurrent nets, and deep reinforcement learning Learn techniques for training and scaling deep neural nets Apply practical code examples without acquiring excessive machine learning theory or algorithm details. He was also a founder and CTO of Wifirst from 2002 to 2012, a leading Wireless ISP in France, and a founder and CTO of Polyconseil in 2001, the firm that now manages the electric car sharing service Autolib'.Before this he worked as an engineer in a variety of domains: finance (JP Morgan and Société Générale), defense (Canada's DOD), and healthcare (blood transfusion).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Even though I come from a strong theoretical background, I have to say one must do hands on tinkering to be able to solve one's own problem successfully. There are pieces of information hard to find somewhere else, and I have spent hundreds to thousands to attend workshops. I was hoping Keras, a high level api that enables fast experiments, is covered."
"I got this book for the deep learning portion (about half of the overall book length), and was shocked at the clarity of the conceptual explanations and code implementations."
"I'm only giving it four stars because despite the content itself being great, the print does have some issues like missing diagrams (see attached pictures)."
"The choice to start with Scikit-Learn was interesting, but makes sense on some level while he's introducing the more basic machine learning concepts. Simple machine learning techniques like logistic regression, data conditioning, dealing with training, validation, test set. Straightforward setup instructions, pretty intelligible explanation of the basic concepts (variables, placeholders, layers, etc.). The example code is quite good, and the notebooks are quite complete and seem to work well, with maybe a few tweaks and additional setup for some. Even just having a section on reinforcement learning is very rare in a book of this style, and Geron's samples and explanations are really solid."
"As with most technical books, it depends on where in the learning curve you are."
Best Personal Finance Software

With QuickBooks 2016: The Missing Manual (which covers the Windows version of QuickBooks), you’re in control: you get step-by-step instructions on how and when to use specific features, along with basic bookkeeping and accounting advice to guide you through the learning process. Spend less time on bookkeeping. Use QuickBooks’ Search and Find features, as well as the Vendor, Customer, Inventory, and Employee Centers. Bonnie Biafore is a Project Management Professional (PMP) with more than 20 year's experience helping clients, large and small, make project management excellence part of their business strategies.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I've been able to find everything I have had a question on regarding QuickBooks quickly and easily."
"Every time that I look for a key word I got a lot of entries, but few procedures and how-to topics."
"My wife LOVES this book."
"Nice reference when you really want to get maximum value from QB."
"easy to find what you are looking for."
"!st time QuickBooks user?"
"Book answers all my questions."
Best Office Software

Spreadsheet himself Whether you are just starting out or an Excel novice, the Excel 2016 Bible is your comprehensive, go-to guide for all your Excel 2016 needs. From learning to incorporate templates and implementing formulas to creating pivot tables and analyzing dataand so much morethis authoritative guide will be a trusted reference you'll refer to again and again. Create an Excel workbook Work with formulas and functions Make charts and incorporate graphics Visualize data using conditional formatting Use advanced Excel features Customize your Excel user interface Make the most of add-ins in your spreadsheets.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Great book with all the tips and details."
"All you need to know about Excel."
"Good book ti have."
"AMAZING BOOK!"
"If you have been using Excel for years ...this is the book ...If you have never used Excel ... this is the book ...the explanations are just right ..."
"Being someone that already knows excel at a medium to advanced level this book really helped solidify my skills I just skipped a few chapters."
"Great reference book for beginners all the way up to the masters."
"In order to understand the whole formula I had to skip several hundred pages forward in the book to find an explanations to those parts."
Best Mathematical & Statistical

An Introduction to Statistical Learning provides an accessible overview of the field of statistical learning, an essential toolset for making sense of the vast and complex data sets that have emerged in fields ranging from biology to finance to marketing to astrophysics in the past twenty years. … ISL contains 12 very valuable R labs that show how to use many of the statistical learning methods with the R package ISLR … .” (David Olive, Technometrics, Vol. “Written by four experts of the field, this book offers an excellent entry to statistical learning to a broad audience, including those without strong background in mathematics. … the book also demonstrates how to apply these methods using various R packages by providing detailed worked examples using interesting real data applications.” (Klaus Nordhausen, International Statistical Review, Vol. “The book is structured in ten chapters covering tools for modeling and mining of complex real life data sets. … The style is suitable for undergraduates and researchers … and the understanding of concepts is facilitated by the exercises, both practical and theoretical, which accompany every chapter.” (Irina Ioana Mohorianu, zbMATH, Vol. "The book excels in providing the theoretical and mathematical basis for machine learning, and now at long last, a practical view with the inclusion of R programming examples.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"This is a wonderful book written by luminaries in the field."
"The book provides the right amount of theory and practice, unlike the earlier (venerable and, by now, stable) text authored (partly) by the last two authors of this one (Elements of Statistical Learning), which was/is a little heavy on the theoretical side (at least for practitioners without a strong mathematical background). It is, however, an excellent introduction to Learning due to the ability of the authors to strike a perfect balance between theory and practice. ISL is an excellent choice for a two-semester advanced undergraduate (or early graduate) course, practitioners trained in classical statistics who want to enter the Learning space, and seasoned Machine Learners. ____________________________________________. UPDATE (12/17/2013): Two of the authors (Hastie & Tibshirani) are offering a 10-week free online course (StatLearning: Statistical Learning) based on this book found at Stanford University's Web site (Starting Jan. 21, 2014)."
"Overall: I did not like both the content and quality of the book. The book is very heavy for the size, because the paper is thick and glossy."
"Better to just buy an actual statistics book and learn the formulas so you understand what you are doing."
"This is a very good textbook that introduces one to the world of data science and predictive modeling."
"Hands down one of the best intro books to data science/machine learning out there."
"I came to this book after a few other more technical and comprehensive books on machine learning and still find this book a useful and interesting read."
"Comparable to Mitchell's "Machine Learning" only more up to date and includes hands-on labs (using R... well, better than nothing... had they used something like numpy/python, 5-stars!)."