PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
October 2018
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a Python program. The book rightly does not go into detail on
Python programming, just shows the reader how to create the
program. Perhaps the ESRI book “Python scripting for Arc-
GIS” would be a good reference.
There are 11 pages on projections/coordinate systems. Even
latitude/longitude for the same location is different depend-
ing on which datum is used. Using the wrong system is many
times the downfall of a beginner user. With all the data avail-
able, it is imperative to know the datum, projection and coordi-
nate system of the dataset.
The “ArcGIS tutorial” books are valuable resources if class
attendance is not possible. While some chapters of this book
may be difficult to use for the complete beginner, it does give
good insight into the various ArcGIS products for the trained
user. I believe the book could be improved by having every
chapter define the problem that is to be solved. This is what
the “Getting to know ArcGIS Pro” book does. It would be fol-
lowed by a short description of the reasons specific datasets
were collected and used. The preface states that this is a com-
plete learning system for GIS, but I believe that it is more suit-
ed for somebody with basic GIS skills who wants to improve
their skillset. ArcGIS Pro is an enormous software, not easy
to learn for somebody with no GIS skills on their own. One
drawback of the book I found was that there is no task index at
the end of the book. Say the user wants to create a choropleth
map; it would be useful to know what page the information is
on instead of searching the various chapters. This, along with
the esoteric nature of some of the material in the book (like the
chapter on kernel density smoothing or k-means clustering),
may in my estimation be a turn-off for a student who has not
taken a practical, hands-on introductory GIS course.
