Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes,   ISBN:9781557864512

Customer Rating: 

This is the best textbook I have encountered for learning demographic methodology, i.e. the mathematical methods used when analyzing demographic variables (mortality, fertility, migration).

Initially I used Hinde's book Demographic Methods, but I had great difficulty understanding his explanations, so I decided to find another, hopefully better, book.

I am glad I decided to look elsewhere because this book is just what I was looking for:
> the symbols are easier to understand than Hinde's
> there are examples for each method or technique
> it is more mathematical which makes it easier to see the logic and also makes it more practical
> the words used to describe the concepts are also better than in Hinde's book

I am not going to say that this book explains demographic methods in an easy way, as a subject Demographic Methods is not easy to learn, especially if you don't have a strong background in calculus.
The best I can do as a reviewer is to compare this book with others like it.

The mathematical pre-requisite for this book is any first-year calculus course, you should know what these are:
differentials, derivatives, integrals, logarithms. I especially encourage you to revise the use of integrals, the authors covers both continuous and discreet distributions.
But that said, I think you could manage to understand the formulas even if you don't know calculus very well, he explains them in words too and shows you how to do the calculations through examples.

To me the two best things about the book is that he uses so many examples and that he explains the concepts so clearly, for me this was priceless because that is what I struggled with in Hinde's book.
For example I first read about person-years and Lexis charts in Hinde, but even after I read through the chapters 5-6 times I still did not having a good understanding of them.
When I read Preston's book I understood everything the first time I read it.

I should mention that there are no exercises at all in this book.

Customer Rating: 

Great book. I have used it during my Master's program and now I am using it in a PhD program in Demography. One strong point is that the book presents the intuition behind the formulas.