The Evaluator's Cookbook


Book Description

The Cookbook contains 21 attractive and participatory evaluation exercises for use with children, young people and families/community groups. Attractively and clearly presented, the exercises are very easy to use and come with suggestions for use and instructions on how to create the equipment needed.




Public Program Evaluation


Book Description

First Published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.




From Analysis to Evaluation


Book Description

In this new book from the author of e-Learning on a Shoestring and Better than Bullet Points, Jane Bozarth has gathered a wealth of tools from leading training practitioners. Anyone—from the interested manager to the experienced training professional—can depend on this book when designing or delivering training. This single book contains all the valuable tools of the trade: worksheets for assessing training needs and writing goals and objectives; checklists for organizing the venue; and tools for analysis and structuring content. This remarkable resource also includes instant evaluation and measurement surveys, which can be customized freely from the companion website. In addition, Bozarth includes a wealth of invaluable advice for trainers at all levels on how to make effective use of props, staying energized, marketing training programs, and other things they don't tell you in train-the-trainer courses.




The Library Assessment Cookbook


Book Description

Assessment examines how library services and resources impact and are perceived by users, and guides strategic planning discussions and development of future acquisitions and services. Assessment is fundamental to positioning your library within your organization and effectively demonstrating how it furthers your institution's goals. And it can be more of an art than a science, using the qualitative and quantitative data available to you to show your library's alignment with the needs and mission of your organization.




The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook


Book Description

Everybody has one in their collection. You know—one of those old, spiral- or plastic-tooth-bound cookbooks sold to support a high school marching band, a church, or the local chapter of the Junior League. These recipe collections reflect, with unimpeachable authenticity, the dishes that define communities: chicken and dumplings, macaroni and cheese, chess pie. When the Southern Foodways Alliance began curating a cookbook, it was to these spiral-bound, sauce-splattered pages that they turned for their model. Including more than 170 tested recipes, this cookbook is a true reflection of southern foodways and the people, regardless of residence or birthplace, who claim this food as their own. Traditional and adapted, fancy and unapologetically plain, these recipes are powerful expressions of collective identity. There is something from—and something for—everyone. The recipes and the stories that accompany them came from academics, writers, catfish farmers, ham curers, attorneys, toqued chefs, and people who just like to cook—spiritual Southerners of myriad ethnicities, origins, and culinary skill levels. Edited by Sara Roahen and John T. Edge, written, collaboratively, by Sheri Castle, Timothy C. Davis, April McGreger, Angie Mosier, and Fred Sauceman, the book is divided into chapters that represent the region’s iconic foods: Gravy, Garden Goods, Roots, Greens, Rice, Grist, Yardbird, Pig, The Hook, The Hunt, Put Up, and Cane. Therein you’ll find recipes for pimento cheese, country ham with redeye gravy, tomato pie, oyster stew, gumbo z’herbes, and apple stack cake. You’ll learn traditional ways of preserving green beans, and you’ll come to love refried black-eyed peas. Are you hungry yet?




Interactive Evaluation Practice


Book Description

You′re about to start your first evaluation project. Where do you begin? Or you′re a practicing evaluator faced with a challenging situation. How do you proceed? How do you handle the interactive components and processes inherent in evaluation practice? Use Interactive Evaluation Practice to bridge the gap between the theory of evaluation and its practice. Taking an applied approach, this book provides readers with specific interactive skills needed in different evaluation settings and contexts. The authors illustrate multiple options for developing skills and choosing strategies, systematically highlighting the evaluator′s three roles as decision maker, actor, and reflective practitioner. Case studies and interactive examples stimulate thinking about how to apply interactive skills across a variety of evaluation situations. "From beginning to end, this book is an indispensable resource for those responsible for the evaluation process. In essence, here′s a chance to learn from masters about acquiring mastery. What could be more useful?" Michael Quinn Patton, Author of Utilization-Focused Evaluation "At long last, a book that explicitly addresses the importance of interpersonal dynamics in evaluation practice!" Hallie Preskill, Executive Director, Strategic Learning and Evaluation Center, FSG "As an evaluator who frequently interacts with a variety of stakeholders and who provides graduate-level evaluation training, I find Interactive Evaluation Practice to be an exceptional addition to the evaluation literature and a useful guide to interacting with various stakeholder groups." Chris L. S. Coryn, Western Michigan University




LTDI Evaluation Cookbook


Book Description




Essentials of Utilization-Focused Evaluation


Book Description

"Provides both an overall framework and concrete advice for how to conduct useful evaluations that actually get used." - preface.




Polars Cookbook


Book Description

Leverage Polars, a lightning-fast DataFrame library, to transform your Python-based data science projects with efficient data wrangling and manipulation Key Features Unlock the power of Python Polars for faster and more efficient data analysis workflows Master the fundamentals of Python Polars with step-by-step recipes Discover data manipulation techniques to apply across multiple data problems Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionThe Polars Cookbook is a comprehensive, hands-on guide to Python Polars, one of the first resources dedicated to this powerful data processing library. Written by Yuki Kakegawa, a seasoned data analytics consultant who has worked with industry leaders like Microsoft and Stanford Health Care, this book offers targeted, real-world solutions to data processing, manipulation, and analysis challenges. The book also includes a foreword by Marco Gorelli, a core contributor to Polars, ensuring expert insights into Polars' applications. From installation to advanced data operations, you’ll be guided through data manipulation, advanced querying, and performance optimization techniques. You’ll learn to work with large datasets, conduct sophisticated transformations, leverage powerful features like chaining, and understand its caveats. This book also shows you how to integrate Polars with other Python libraries such as pandas, numpy, and PyArrow, and explore deployment strategies for both on-premises and cloud environments like AWS, BigQuery, GCS, Snowflake, and S3. With use cases spanning data engineering, time series analysis, statistical analysis, and machine learning, Polars Cookbook provides essential techniques for optimizing and securing your workflows. By the end of this book, you'll possess the skills to design scalable, efficient, and reliable data processing solutions with Polars. What you will learn Read from different data sources and write to various files and databases Apply aggregations, window functions, and string manipulations Perform common data tasks such as handling missing values and performing list and array operations Discover how to reshape and tidy your data by pivoting, joining, and concatenating Analyze your time series data in Python Polars Create better workflows with testing and debugging Who this book is for This book is for data analysts, data scientists, and data engineers who want to learn how to use Polars in their workflows. Working knowledge of the Python programming language is required. Experience working with a DataFrame library such as pandas or PySpark will also be helpful.




PySpark Cookbook


Book Description

Combine the power of Apache Spark and Python to build effective big data applications Key Features Perform effective data processing, machine learning, and analytics using PySpark Overcome challenges in developing and deploying Spark solutions using Python Explore recipes for efficiently combining Python and Apache Spark to process data Book Description Apache Spark is an open source framework for efficient cluster computing with a strong interface for data parallelism and fault tolerance. The PySpark Cookbook presents effective and time-saving recipes for leveraging the power of Python and putting it to use in the Spark ecosystem. You’ll start by learning the Apache Spark architecture and how to set up a Python environment for Spark. You’ll then get familiar with the modules available in PySpark and start using them effortlessly. In addition to this, you’ll discover how to abstract data with RDDs and DataFrames, and understand the streaming capabilities of PySpark. You’ll then move on to using ML and MLlib in order to solve any problems related to the machine learning capabilities of PySpark and use GraphFrames to solve graph-processing problems. Finally, you will explore how to deploy your applications to the cloud using the spark-submit command. By the end of this book, you will be able to use the Python API for Apache Spark to solve any problems associated with building data-intensive applications. What you will learn Configure a local instance of PySpark in a virtual environment Install and configure Jupyter in local and multi-node environments Create DataFrames from JSON and a dictionary using pyspark.sql Explore regression and clustering models available in the ML module Use DataFrames to transform data used for modeling Connect to PubNub and perform aggregations on streams Who this book is for The PySpark Cookbook is for you if you are a Python developer looking for hands-on recipes for using the Apache Spark 2.x ecosystem in the best possible way. A thorough understanding of Python (and some familiarity with Spark) will help you get the best out of the book.