VincentYu comments on LessWrong Help Desk - free paper downloads and more (2014) - Less Wrong

30 Post author: jsalvatier 16 January 2014 05:51AM

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Comment author: gwern 23 July 2015 06:22:01PM *  1 point [-]

Probability and Statistics for Business Decisions, Robert Schlaifer 1959. Surprisingly expensive used, and unfortunately for such a foundational text in Bayesian decision theory, doesn't seem to be available online. If you can't get a digital copy, does anyone know of a good service or group which would produce a high-quality digital copy given a print edition?

Comment author: VincentYu 24 July 2015 10:37:13AM *  5 points [-]

Page-by-page .djvu scans are available here (found via this search; edit: it seems to appear sporadically in the search results). Full sequence of download links is <http://202.116.13.3/ebook%5C24/24000522/ptiff/00000{001..744}.djvu>

I wrote the following just before finding the scan of the book. I'll post it anyway.

I've used 1DollarScan for about 50 books, including math/stat textbooks, and the quality is consistently good (unless you need accurate color reproduction) even with the cheapest option (i.e., $1 per 100 pages), but you'll need to do your own post-processing to:

  • Lossily compress further and binarize B/W text; expect about 400 KB/page from 1DollarScan.
  • Perform OCR; 1DollarScan's OCR option is expensive and performs okay at best.
  • Straighten pages; pages are often offset slightly from the vertical.
  • Add metadata (e.g., page numbering, section bookmarks).

I use Adobe Acrobat with ABBYY FineReader for these. FineReader's OCR is more accurate than Acrobat's, but Acrobat performs okay by itself. Acrobat's trial can be indefinitely reactivated every month in a Windows VM by reverting to a pre-activation snapshot, whereas FineReader has to be bought or torrented, as its trial is overly restrictive. I don't know of any good options on Linux.

BTW, there's a used copy on Half.com for $39. Not sure if you saw that.

Comment author: gwern 24 July 2015 05:26:53PM *  0 points [-]

Page-by-page .djvu scans are available here (found via this search; edit: it seems to appear sporadically in the search results). Full sequence of download links is <http://202.116.13.3/ebook%5C24/24000522/ptiff/00000{001..744}.djvu>

Huh. Weird. I did not see that IP-server, I don't think, and I'm surprised that such a thing exists. I also don't see it in your linked search! Seems to be... maybe some sort of scan prepared by a Chinese university library, going by http://202.116.13.3/detail.asp?id=120 ("Library of JI'NAN University") ?

Easy enough to get, combine, and add the metadata:

$ for i in {001..744}; do wget "<http://202.116.13.3/ebook%5C24/24000522/ptiff/00000>"$i".djvu"; done
$ djvm -c 1959-schlaifer-probabilitystatisticsbusinessdecisions.djvu 000*.djvu
$ djvused 1959-schlaifer-probabilitystatisticsbusinessdecisions.djvu
set-meta
Title Probability and Statistics for Business Decisions: An Introduction to Managerial Economics Under Uncertainty
Author Robert Schlaifer
Publisher McGraw-Hill Book Company
Subject statistics
Keywords decision theory, subjective Bayesianism, value of information
URL <http://202.116.13.3/fulltext.asp?id=120>
Creator Library of JI'NAN University
CreationDate 1959
.
save
^Z

Browsing, it looks nice. Only 21MB, and the OCR looks good. Thanks!

BTW, there's a used copy on Half.com for $39. Not sure if you saw that.

I think there was a cheaper one on Amazon, but in any case, that was only if I couldn't find a digital copy.

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