• Resources
• Bookshop
• Support
• Tips & Articles
  • Tips
  • Business Functions
  • Excel
• Forum

I thought it might be useful to add the books that directly relate to our subject area and that we endorse. There are links to the Amazon bookshop if you want to examine them further / John

Title	Author	Description	Amazon Link
Financial Math
Handbook of Global Fixed Income Calculations	Dragomir Krgin	The most comprehensive book on fixed income mathematics. Bond calculation regimes from all over the world are described here and there is lots of detail. Perhaps a bit more of an encyclopaedia than a guide, this book is essential if bond calcs are your area. We used it extensively in testing our work on Daycount.
Options, Futures and Other Derivative Securities	John C Hull	Not for the fainthearted, this is a little book with a big punch. It's a classic academics book with no reticence for diving into the math. If Hull says it, it's it.
Mastering Financial Calculations	Robert Steiner	A useful overview of financial calculations, athough not as authoritative as some of the other books here. Its range is broad however, a useful jack of all trades.
Principles of Corporate Finance	Brealey and Myers	15 years or so at the top, this is still your first and last book on finance. It doesn't have some of the rocket science math of a couple of the other books here, but it does cover all the foundations of modern finance theory. Hard to see how you could not get this one if finance is your area.
Fixed Income Mathematics	Frank Fabozzi	Fixed Income math is more important than you think (DCF is really a kind of fixed income math) so if you want to avoid the pitfalls of the amateur discounter its best to learn from the professionals. A book in the same series as Krgin's, this is a well-rounded treatment of fixed income instruments, beyond just bonds.
Money Market and Bond Calculations	Marcia Stigum and Franklin L Robinson	Along with Krgin and Fabozzi, another good book on the financial math of bonds and other instruments. This book, the original edition of which was published over 20 years ago, was revised in 1996 and has a authorative textbook, standard feel about it. Another must-have, I'm afraid.
Excel - VBA
Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA	John Walkenbach	The best book on Excel VBA, bar none. The others don't really come close. If you use VBA, you need it.
Cryptography
Applied Cryptography	Bruce Schneier	There are other more modern treatises out there, but this is the book that could be credited with bringing cryptography to the masses. And, sad that I am, I find it a captivating subject. With its roots in the classics to its the present day of mathematics that even computers can't solve, this books tells a bit of a story whilst it covers all the bases in cryprography. A great first book, it will be all many of us ever need.
General Math
Handbook of Mathematical Functions	Milton Abramowitz and Irene Stegun	Now in its 9th edition, it still is a 1970 book that was first published in 1964. It must be good. What I find astonishing is however a book like this was produced in the typesetting of the day. It's 1000 pages of telephone book size maths. A bit of a classic.
Handbook of Mathematical Formulas and Integrals	Alan Jeffrey	Surely it should be 'formulae'? Oh well, this is a really a very useful book. The standard integrals solve real world problems (believe me!) and you can be sure a few of the simple ones found their way into Business Functions.
Date Arithmetic
Astronomical Algorithms	Jean Meeus	You just have to take your hat off to people like Meeus who produce works like this one. An amateur Belgian astronomer, Meeus has catalogued many of the date algorithms which intrigue us all. From determining the Date of Easter, through the Jewish and Moslem calendars to the Phases of the Moon, there's much to dip into here.
Web Stuff
Javascript: The Definitive Guide	David Flanagan	It is what it says. The nearest thing to a manual for Javascript I found. Does a great job of documenting the slightly wierd JS object model. Knocks spots off the other Javascript books I tried.
PHP and MySQL - Web Development	Luke Welling and Laura Thomson	Sometimes you should be wary of books that combine two technologies - they are often not very good at either. On the other hand, sometimes you need something that does the whole thing just to get you started, and MySQL and PHP live together so happily they are almost the same language. I didn't try all the PHP books out there, but this book was an excellent introduction to some fairly advanced stuff. Took you all the way from how SQL works to your first PHP script and how to build a forum. Very good.
MySQL Reference Manual	Monty Widenius et al	The MySQL guys are worth supporting in any shape or form so it's worth buying the 'official' guide to MySQL for that reason alone. It's well written and thorough, as you would expect, and you really do need a good book for MySQL, because it's not quite like other SQL databases - you need to know the workarounds. Great to see such a marvellous idea prosper - good on you MySQL!
Webmaster in a Nutshell	Stephen Spainhour and Robert Eckstein	Remarkable how they fit so much in a little book. From Javascript, PHP through to HTTP, CGI, CSS and Apache. Always have it on hand.
Cascading Style Sheets - Designing for the Web	Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos	Hard to find an authoratitive CSS book. Its a very hard subject because browsers still are pretty grumpy at handling aspects of CSS. This book had a couple of critics I noticed, but I bought the other CSS books and they are not as good. These W3C guys really understand CSS and are on a mission. It was the CSS book for me.