The 40 programs in this book fall into four categories: (1) Financial, (2) Management Decision, (3) Statistics, and (4) Mathematics and Science. Most of the programs came from an earlier book by Poole & Borchers, Some Common BASIC Programs (1977).

What is different about the programs in this book? They were written to be compatible with as many dialects of the BASIC programming language as possible, including: Applesoft BASIC, Atari BASIC, Commodore BASIC, CBASIC, Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) BASIC Plus, Radio Shack TRS-80 BASIC, Texas Instruments BASIC, and Wang Laboratories BASIC.

There is a good write-up accompanying each of the programs, along with helpful references, to give readers a solid foundation in the subject matter addressed by each program. There are also practice problems and answers that will push readers beyond understanding toward mastery of programming skills.

The chief weakness of the programs in this book is their narrow focus on number crunching. There are no data files to work with. Therefore, the reader will not gain any experience with file I/O from the examples in this book. ( )