Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!siemens!flake
From: flake@scr.siemens.com (Gary William Flake)
Subject: Re: NN and Time Series Prediction Thesis
Message-ID: <D484x3.7qB@scr.siemens.com>
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Organization: Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton NJ
References: <173488AF3S86.RVANRAAM@bcsc02.gov.bc.ca> <3i5rtp$cri@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 1995 01:46:15 GMT
Lines: 39

In article <3i5rtp$cri@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>,
Kelvin W. Fedrick <fedrick@anchor.cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
>In article <173488AF3S86.RVANRAAM@bcsc02.gov.bc.ca>,
> <RVANRAAM@bcsc02.gov.bc.ca> wrote:
>>The following are various Dissertations available from UMI
>>Clearinghouse: 800-521-0600 or FAX 313-665-7075
>>in Ann Arbor MI 48106.  For dissertations get extension
>>3781.  Price $57.50 paper copy, $69.50 hard copy. A lot
>>of money for an individual unless you know that thesis is
>>the one you really want.  Has anyone read any of these to
>>know if any are "Really great" for predicting time series ?
>
>Boy this is quite expensive (is this per paper?) and the list you gave
>doesn't even tell who the author is or what school he goes to. In my
>experience the authors of NN dissertations and papers are quite often
>all too happy to send electronic copies of their work to people who
>are interested for free. I could be wrong but this sounds somewhat fishy.
>
>-kelvin

It's true, but it is also a scam.  UMI has a near monopoly on thesis
archiving.  Moreover, the quality of the books is far below what you
can do at a convenience store copy machine.  They took over a year to
print my dissertation.  When I finally got it I was shocked that none
of the superscript or subscript characters in any of the equations
were readible.  I sent it back about 4 months ago.  The new copies
still haven't arrived.

Be warned that any thesis that you purchase from them will be
reproduced from microfilm copies, which is why the print quality
is so poor.

Also, if you want a dissertation ask the author.  Most of them are
perfectly happy to send you postscript files which will give you
perfect reproduction, of course.

-- 
Gary W. Flake,  flake@scr.siemens.com,  Phone: 609-734-3676,  Fax: 609-734-6565
Siemens Corporate Research,  755 College Road East,  Princeton, NJ  08540,  USA
