Noncompliance in Patients essays

Noncompliance in Patients essays The advances in medical science now allow people to live longer than ever before. With the treatments and medications available people who used to only live a few months with chronic illness are now living for years and within those years having active lives. It is an amazing breakthrough and one that promises to keep moving forward however, with those advances come some issues. One of the things that health professionals are dealing with is the problem with non compliant patients with regard to taking medications as directed. Non compliant patients are that way for many reasons. Sometimes they are non compliant because they start to feel a little better and believe they no longer need the medication. This can be a common issue among the mentally ill and is a significant issue with diagnosed schizophrenics. Other times patients may be non compliant because the medications they are supposed to take have side effects that they do not want to deal with. Whether the medication causes ext reme fatigue, nausea, dizziness or other physical manifestations many patients believe the side effects are not worth the potential benefits of the medication and stop taking the medication. In other instances noncompliance may come from a misguided decision by the patient to try and hasten their own death so they will not be a burden on their family and in still other cases noncompliance may just be forgetfulness or lack of maturity and responsibility on the part of the patient. Whatever reason there is for a patients noncompliance it is important for the health care professionals to work with the patient and if needed intervene so that the medication will be properly administered to the patient. This is not only for the safety and well being of the patient but in cases such as Tuberculosis it also becomes a public safety factor. In looking at the issue of non compliant patients one can examine the drug AdvancePCS which is a drug commonly prescri...

Kwanzan Cherry Tree Profile and Care Instructions

Kwanzan Cherry Tree Profile and Care Instructions Kwanzan Cherry has double-pink, beautiful flowers and is usually purchased and planted for this reason. The upright-spreading form, reaching 15 to 25 feet tall, is quite attractive in many locations including near a patio or as a specimen away from lawn grass competition. The tree is glorious in flower and has been planted along with Yoshino Cherry in Washington, D.C. and Macon, Georgia for their annual Cherry Blossom Festivals. This cherry provides a strong contrast to lighter-colored cherry blossoms, like Yoshino cherry, by showing a pink flower later in April and May. It becomes a larger part of the cherry show as spring introduces flowering later in the Northeastern U.S. Specifics Scientific Name: Prunus serrulata ‘Kwanzan’Pronunciation: PROO-nus sair-yoo-LAY-tuhCommon Name: Kwanzan CherryFamily: RosaceaeUSDA Hardiness Zones: 5B through 9AOrigin: Not native to North AmericaUses: Bonsai; container or above-ground planter; near a deck or patio; trainable as a standard; specimen; residential street tree; Cultivars Some cultivars might be locally available including: ‘Amanogawa’(‘Erecta’): Semi-double, light pink, fragrant flowers, narrow columnar habit, about 20 feet tall;‘Shirotae’(‘Mt. Fuji’, ‘Kojima’): Flowers double to semi-double, white, ruffled, about 2.5 inches across; ‘Shogetsu’ - tree 15 feet tall, broad and flat-topped, flowers double, pale pink, the center may be white, can be two inches across;‘Ukon’: Young foliage bronze, flowers pale yellow, semi-double. Description Height: 15 to 25 feetSpread: 15 to 25 feetCrown Uniformity: Symmetrical canopy with a regular (or smooth) outline and individuals have more or less identical crown formsCrown Shape: Upright; vase shapeCrown Density: ModerateGrowth Rate: MediumTexture: Medium Trunk and Branches The bark is thin and easily damaged from mechanical impact; the tree grows mostly upright and will not droop; showy trunk; should be grown with a single leader. Pruning Requirement: Needs little pruning to develop a strong structureBreakage: ResistantCurrent Year Twig Color: BrownCurrent Year Twig Thickness: Medium Foliage Leaf Arrangement: AlternateLeaf Type: SimpleLeaf Margin: SerrateLeaf Shape: Lanceolate; ovateLeaf Venation: Banchidodrome; pinnateLeaf Type and Persistence: DeciduousLeaf Blade Length: 4 to 8 inches; 2 to 4 inchesLeaf Color: GreenFall Color: Copper; orange; yellowFall Characteristic: Showy Culture Light Requirement: Tree grows in full sunSoil Tolerances: Clay; loam; sand; acidic; occasionally wet; alkaline; well-drainedDrought Tolerance: ModerateAerosol Salt Tolerance: ModerateSoil Salt Tolerance: Poor In Depth Neither stress-tolerant or highly drought-tolerant, Kwanzan Cherry should be located on a site with loose soil and plenty of moisture. Not for an urban parking lot or exposed street tree planting where borers and other problems normally attack. It has some tolerance to salt  and tolerates clay if well drained. Kwanzan cherry has good yellow fall color, does not bear fruit, but is somewhat troubled with pests. These pests include aphids which distort new growth, deposits of honeydew, and sooty mold. Bark borers can attack flowering cherries, and scale insects of several types infest cherries. Spider mites can cause yellowing or stippling of leaves and tent caterpillars make large webbed nests in trees then eat the foliage. Kwanzan Cherry prefers full sun, is intolerant of poor drainage, and is easily transplanted. However, the useful life of the species is limited to about 15 to 25 years for Kwanzan when on a good site. Still, the tree is a joy during this short period and should be planted.

Smart Car Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Smart Car - Case Study Example smart car; Should Mercedes rethink its ambitions in the small-car segment and what are the chances that the "smart" car will be a commercial success and ,finally, can the "smart" car sustain a competitive advantage in the competitive microcar market The paper would end with strategy based marketing recommendations to make MCC's strategic process of strategic choice and analysis with in organizations in relation to its competition. The paper also takes a theoretical look at strategy making within the marketing function in the smart car before making the above referred recommendations. Swiss watch making is recognized by one brand name: Swatch. Swatch made it possible for the Swiss watch industry to emerge out of a bankruptcy threatening recession in the 1970s, when over-confident manufacturers stuck to old technology ignoring the impact of new quartz technology which had allowed cheap, accurate watches from the Far East to capture the market. Swatch has traversed substantial distance since its formation in 1983, when the two Swiss largest watchmakers, ASUAG and SSIH, realized that under the onslaught of the new technology they were facing liquidation. Some of the prestigious brands such as Longines, Omega and Tissot, owned by these two watch makers, became ideal targets for foreign acquisition. The two companies panicked and decided to join hands and invited Nicolas Hayek, CEO of the business consulting firm Hayek Engineering, to organize the strengthening exercise. Hayek brought about one of the most amazing turn arounds in business health through his two pronge d strategy in the face of fierce criticism. He amalgamated the two companies to form SMH (the company changed its name to Swatch in 1998); the Hayek Pool - Hayek himself and partners from Swiss industry - took over the majority of the shares, and Hayek became CEO. Then he radically altered the production lines and marketing. The now well known plastic Swatch watch was launched in the Swiss market in 1983, with 12 models with a price range narrowly defined between 39 and 50 francs. The basic product design was simplified from over 90 components to just 51 components, and remarkably all components could be welded together by robots on a single assembly line - the first on Swiss watch manufacturing landscape. This reduced skilled labour cost to almost naught as a proportion whereas in contrast in traditional Swiss watch making, the same cost used to account for as much as 10 % or more of cost of finished product. This made Swatch highly competitive in world markets. To add simplificati on and rationalization of production was the marketing ingenuity of Hayek. Hayek has ensured that strategic marketing plays an

HS610 week 6 Conf Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

HS610 week 6 Conf - Essay Example This strategy works in close collaboration with the framework for national responses otherwise referred to as the NRF. NIMS is charged with providing templates for incident management whereas NRF is responsible for the provision of structures along with mechanisms utilized by the developers of incident management policies at the national level (FEMA, 2011). By utilizing the strategies laid out by NIMS, the nations tend to benefit by scaling down their activities while improving on their scalability. Its other benefits include the enhancement of cooperation along with interoperability among rescue workers, preparedness for any hazards that may affect the workers and the efficient coordination of resources through various organizations. Finally, it benefits the rescue workers efforts by enabling the integration of their best practices to continuously improve on their efforts. The strategies laid out under NIMS are mainly based on the existing balances between standardization along with flexibility (Walsh, Christen, Lord & Miller, 2011). The core components of this strategy are preparedness, communicating and the management of information along with resources and issuing of commands while managing the response activities. It also involves managing and maintaining ongoing the operations aimed at saving lives and property while reducing the harm that may be caused on the environment (Kamen, 2005). On the other hand, the emergency management approaches of the Whole Community are philosophical means through which the residents, practitioners in the emergency management field and their communal along with organization leaders work in collaboration with the government agencies in managing emergencies (FEMA, 2011). This is mainly done for the purpose of ensuring that they comprehend and assess their communities needs while determining the best ways for organizing an

Population Change And Resource Cousumption Essay Example for Free

Population Change And Resource Cousumption Essay Introduction The Islands of the Caribbean has for centuries been enticing to travelers and a major tourist destination. The islands are very famous and popular for their stretches of beaches with soft sand and the easy life that the island offers. The islands are located at the south east region of North America towards the Eastern side of Central America. The Caribbean consists of over 7, 000 islands. The islands are a chain that is 2, 500 miles long and over 160 miles wide. These islands have enclosed the Caribbean Sea. The islands support a very exceptional diversity of ecosystem. These however have been endangered by water pollution, human encroachment as well as deforestation, McGranahan, G., S. Lewin, (1999). The map below shows the islands of the Caribbean. The Caribbean Population change The population in the Caribbean has been growing tremendously. It is approximated that the population has increased by 85% for the years between 1970 and 2001.This is approximately an increase from 285 million people to around 528million people. Over this same period, the annual population growth rate has fallen from 2.5% to 1.5%. This is largely attributed to urbanization, factors to do with social development and improved programs of birth control, Leakey, Richard and Roger Lewin, (1996). The majority of the population in the Caribbean is more concentrated along the coastline where the land terrain is gently sloping. Consequently the high population, along the Caribbean coastline can result to high pollution of the water supply by the facilities for sanitation which more often than not will be located close to the water sources. The figure below shows the population size in the Caribbean islands by country. Pos Country Population 1 Â  Cuba 11,382,820 2 Â  Dominican Republic 9,183,984 3 Â  Haiti 8,528,000 Â  Puerto Rico (United States) 3,955,000 4 Â  Jamaica 2,651,000 5 Â  Trinidad and Tobago 1,305,000 Guadeloupe (France) 448,000 Martinique (France) 396,000 6 Â  Bahamas 323,000 7 Â  Barbados 279,000 Â  Netherlands Antilles (Netherlands) 183,000 8 Â  Saint Lucia 161,000 9 Â  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 119,000 Â  United States Virgin Islands (United States) 112,000 10 Â  Grenada 103,000 Â  Aruba (Netherlands) 99,000 11 Â  Antigua and Barbuda 81,000 12 Â  Dominica 79,000 Â  Cayman Islands (United Kingdom) 48,000 Â  Bermuda (United Kingdom) 64,000 13 Â  Saint Kitts and Nevis 43,000 Â  Turks and Caicos Islands (United Kingdom) 26,000 Â  British Virgin Islands (United Kingdom) 22,000 Â  Anguilla (United Kingdom) 12,000 Â  Montserrat (United Kingdom) 4,000 Source UNEP, (2000): Access to water in the Caribbean Water access in the Caribbean is insufficient. This is more so in the rural areas and among the poor population. By the year 2004, it was approximated that at least 9% of the Caribbean population or 50m million people had inadequate access to the supply of water, Shiklomanov, (2000). In addition it was also approximated that 132 million people translating to 23% of the population had inadequate access to sanitation. The accessibility of water supply still remains unpredictable to date considering the financial constraints of the local and central government in the Caribbean and the inadequate finances in the service providers sector. The Caribbean islands have over the years greatly caused water pollution due to poor sanitation. Â  For instance, in the Caribbean, only an approximate 50% of the population can be able to access the sewer system. This is quite alarming; with emphasis on the fact that even the existing sewer systems are not at most instances functioning properly.26 percent of the Caribbean population uses other different sanitation forms like septic tanks and variety of latrine types. The lack of fresh water in the Caribbean can be attributed to the problems of inadequate resources in the forms of finance and human capital. However, demographic and physical factors also contribute in that; there is a shortage of a base for natural resources and limitation of surface areas, Hopfenberg, Russell and Pimentel, David, (2001). For instance, there is limited space for fresh water, arable land, and convectional sources of energy and mineral resources. The Caribbean is also vulnerable to natural disasters, which compromise the availability of the water recourses within the islands. Types of Caribbean water use In the Caribbean, water is used both for domestic purposes and economic use. The water is used especially in the farming of bananas and cotton among other crops. The use of water per capita in the Caribbean varies from one country to another. It is also different in the various urban areas, rural areas. It also varies depending on the numbers of people with public taps, house connection or even where there lacks an improved water source. It is estimated that in average the water use in the urban areas is approximately 240liters per capita every day. This level of water use is as high as the water use in the United States. It is also two times higher than water use in Central Chile. The Quality of Water The quality of water in the Caribbean is poor even to those people that can access it. This is clearly indicated by the intermittent water supply within the countries in the Caribbean. There is also very low pressure of the water and in fact, the drinking water is of low quality. M. Wackernagel, M., Manfreda C., and Deumling D., (2002). However, there is some difference on water qualities some of the countries and cities, some of the cities and countries have good quality water and a consistent supply and are on par with the water quality and supply in the developed countries. Inspire of the high amounts of rainfall received in the Caribbean islands, the availability of fresh water is quite a big problem. The island commonly goes through severe shortages of fresh water. This is especially so because of the limited storage capacity for storing water to be used during the dry periods. Â  It is not possible to construct large water reservoirs since the land resource is scarce. More over, the heavy down pours accompanied by very steep topography, soil that is easily eroded, river channels that are short, all can contribute to heavy siltation of the water reservoirs reducing the capacity of water storage even further. In the Caribbean, people often depend on ground water though only limited quantities of this important resource is available. The fact that the islands in the Caribbean are surrounded by salty water makes fresh water unavailable even from underground sources. Water problems and the potential solutions in the Caribbean The lack of access to quality safe water The problem of water safety in the Caribbean can be solved. This can be done through the desalination of the sea water that surrounds the island so that there is a constant supply of quality and fresh water. However, this would call for the use of high technology which is very costly and expensive. The technology may not be available in the Caribbean but it would be a good solution to the water shortage in this area. In the recent past however, the Caribbean has improved in terms of water access, for instance it is estimated that water access has increased from 33% of the people in the year 1970 to an approximate 85% in the year 2000.This then implies that almost seventy seven million people are still lacking the supply of water in their houses. Lack of Access to Sanitation Sanitation is very important to any healthy population; a proper sanitation system should be put in place to ensure that the waste from the Caribbean island is disposed appropriately. Since most of the people live along the coastline, the sewer systems should be located away from these areas to prevent or even stop polluting the surrounding water sources, Kurlansky, M. (1992). Â  For example, a large portion of the population uses septic tanks and latrines, the rest of the people do not have safe access to sanitation. Some of the people in the Caribbean use underground water resources and this can be contaminated by poor sanitation facilities. Failure to treat sanitation waste In the Caribbean, only the sewage and waste of at least 14% of the homes gets treatment from the local plants. The rest of the waste finds its way down to rivers, oceans, lakes and the aquifers at located underground. This is a health hazard and risks the aquatic life within the region. It has the potential to damage the ecological system. To curb this problem, all the sewage and related waste should be treated with the available sanitary plants. More of such facilities should be put up to immediately stop the waste from draining to the water bodies. This way the available water sources will be clean and free of contamination. Service provision The authority of provision of sanitation and clean water rests in the hands of either the national or regional companies or the municipalities. Consequently, the municipalities that are larger have established municipal or even inter-municipal utilities for the public use, Ron N., (2006). The finances from these utilities are kept separately from the larger finances of the cities. This has caused misunderstandings and mismanagement of the public facilities. The system should be streamlined so that there is no confusion in the provision of the utilities and that efficiency and effectiveness is maintained. It should be cleared up on the roles and responsibilities of the various authorities that mange and regulate these essential utilities. Ground water Lack of water reservoirs in the Caribbean call for the use of under ground water sources. These sources do not have enough water supply but they help to put the water problems at manageable levels. However, the ground water is threatened by pollution and over exploitation, Kurlansky, M. (1992). The available aquifers have been over used or polluted by the agricultural activities and mining. The under ground water sources should be taken care of and at all cost not be polluted. The aquifers are of utmost importance in the Caribbean and the government and other non-governmental organizations should come to the aid of these resources. Population control The population in the Caribbean is over concentrated within the costal areas. The resources within this coastal region are over stretched and very vulnerable to pollution and over use. Â  Efforts should be done to see that the population is evenly distributed or that the facilities and especially sanitation in the over populated areas increased. By over stretching the facilities to beyond the possible limits, the Caribbean is putting the future of its population’s health at a risk, Rogozinski, J (1999). Conclusion The Caribbean is a fascinating series of island with a lot of economic activities especially tourism. The islands however are faced with a population problem and the scarcity of quality and clean water sources. Most of the available sources like the underground aquifers are over used or even polluted. The sanitation facilities within this region are very wanting and a lot has to be done to keep water problems at a distance in these very attractive islands, Shiklomanov, (2000). Â  References Rogozinski, J (1999): A Brief History of the Caribbean, New York Kurlansky, M. (1992): A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny, Addison-Wesley Publishing Ron N., (2006): The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet, Picador, New York Wackernagel, M., Manfreda C., and Deumling D., (2002): Ecological Footprint of Nations Hopfenberg, Russell and Pimentel, David, (2001): Human Population Numbers as a Function of Water Supply, Environment, Development and Sustainability Shiklomanov, (2000): Appraisal and Assessment of World Water Resources, Water International UNEP, (2000): Global Environmental Outlook, Earth scan Publications, London, UK Leakey, Richard and Roger Lewin, (1996): The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind, Anchor, McGranahan, G., S. Lewin, (1999): Environmental Change and Human Health in the Caribbean, Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

College Admissions Essay: My Summer in Europe :: College Admissions Essays

My summer in Europe    I spent six weeks in Florence, studying renaissance art and art history. After this, I traveled across Europe for three weeks and experienced the many beautiful countries and cultures that exist on this continent.    Studying renaissance art in Florence, the place of it's birth, was literally a moving experience. To see works that I thought only existed in books and also to live in the same city that housed the masters, was amazing. I took a drawing class as well in Florence. This proved to be a challenging and beneficial class. Drawing street scenes, landscapes, figures, or anything for that matter, is always a challenge. However to do this in a city where there are masterpieces lining churches and museums all around you, made the action a bit more challenging. It was a wonderful and astounding resource to be able to refer to a Michelangelo sculpture or a Botticelli painting. The museums in Florence proved to be my most favorite pastime and the greatest tool for any artist. The Uffizi and Pitti Palace house some of the most famous and also not so famous (but just as wonderful) works.    Living in Florence for six weeks was such a wonderful learning experience. Each day was an adventure. By buying food and asking for directions, I slowly learned enough Italian to get by. Sadly, I found that like many places in Europe, Florence has also become Americanized. English was just as prevalent as Italian. Honestly, it was convenient to know that my waiter would be able to converse with me in English. Yet, at the same time, I felt a little guilty in knowing that through tourism, Italy has lost a small part of its culture and history.    After my stay in Florence, I had the chance to see more of Europe. I went to Salzburg, Prague, Lucerne, the Italian and French Riviera, and Paris. Three weeks of trains, hostels, new places and people proved to be an exciting and tiring time! I saw the Alps, the Mediterranean, the historic neighborhoods of Prague, and then Paris. Each day I woke up with excitement, ready to go and explore the new place we were in. And each night I fell asleep, and dreamt of what tomorrow would bring. It was a beautiful and simple three weeks. My only job was just to experience and see all that I could of a place.

Data mining

This is an accounting calculation, followed by the application of a threshold. However, predicting the profitability of a new customer would be data mining. Dividing the customers off company according to their profitability. Yes, this is a data mining task because it requires data analysis to determine who the costumers are that brings more business to the company. Computing the total sales of the company. No, this is not a data mining task because there Is not analysis involve, this information can be pull out of any booking program. Sorting a student database based on student ID numbers.No, this Is not a data milling activity because sorting by ID numbers doesn't Involved any data mining task. This is a simple database query Predicting the future stock price of a company using historical records. Yes. We would attempt to create a model that can predict the continuous value of the stock price. This is an example of the area of data mining known as predictive modeling. We could use regression for this modeling, although researchers in many fields have developed a wide variety of techniques for predicting time series. Monitoring the heart rate of a patient for abnormalities. Yes.We would build a model of the normal behavior of heart rate and raise an alarm when an unusual heart behavior occurred. This would involve the area of data mining known as anomaly detection. This could also be considered as a classification problem If we had examples of both normal and abnormal heart behavior. For each of the following, identify the relevant data mining task(s): The Boston Celtic would like to approximate how many points their next opponent will score against them. A military intelligence officer is interested in learning about the captives proportions of Sunnis and Shies in a particular strategic region. A NORA defense computer must decide immediately whether a blip on the radar is a flick of geese or an incoming nuclear missile. A political strategist is seeking the b est groups to canvass for donations in particular county. A homeland security official would like to determine whether a certain sequence of financial and residence moves implies a tendency to terrorist acts. A Wall Street analyst has been asked to find out the expected change in stock price for a set of companies with similar price/earnings ratios.Question 3 For each of the following meetings, explain which phase in the CRISP-DIM process is represented: Managers want to know by next week whether deployment will take place. Therefore, analysts meet to discuss how useful and accurate their model is. This is the Evaluation phase in the CRISP-DIM process. In the evaluation phase the data mining analysts determine if the model and technique used meets business objectives established in the first phase. The data mining project manager meets with data warehousing manager to discuss how the data will be collected. This is theData Understanding phase in the CRISP-DIM process. The data wareh ouse is identified as a resource during the Business Understanding phase; however the actual data collection takes place during the Data Understanding Phase. In this phase data is collected and accessed from the resources listed and identified in the Business Understanding phase. The data mining consultant meets with the vice president for marketing, who says that he would like to move forward with customer relationship management. The main objective of business is to review during the Business Understanding Phase.So, therefore after the meeting it seems the data mining consultant gained success in convincing UP of marketing to provide approval for performing data mining on the customer relationship management system. The data mining project manager meets with the production line supervisor to discuss implementation of changes and improvements. The discussion of implementation of changes and improvements in the project whether specific improvements or process changes are required to ensure that all important aspects of the business are accounted is performed under the Evaluation Phase.The meeting held with business objective to collect and cleanse the data to ensure the quality of data. The analysts meet to discuss whether the neural network or decision tree model should be applied Question 4 [10 points] Describe the possible negative effects of proceeding directly to mine data that has not been preprocessed. Before data mining algorithms can be used, a target data set must be assembled. As data mining can only uncover patterns actually present in the data, the target data set must be large enough to contain these patterns while imagining concise enough to be mined within an acceptable time limit.A common source for data is a data mart or data warehouse. Pre-processing is essential to analyze the multivariate data sets before data mining. The target set is then cleaned. Data. Question 5 [1 5 points] Which of the three methods for handling missing values do you prefer? Which method is the most conservative and probably the safest, meaning that it fabricates the least amount of data? What are some drawbacks to this method? Methods for replacing missing field values with: User defined constants Means or modesRandom draws from the distribution of the variable Question 6 Describe the differences between the training set, test set, and validation set. The training set is used to build the model. This contains a set of data that has fricasseed target and predictor variables. Typically a hold-out dataset or test set is used to evaluate how well the model does with data outside the training set. The test set contains the fricasseed results data but they are not used when the test set data is run through the model until the end, when the fricasseed data are compared against the model results.The model is adjusted to minimize error on the test set. Another hold-out dataset or validation set is used to evaluate the adjusted model in step #2 where, a gain, the validation set data is run against the adjusted model and results compared to the unused fricasseed data. The training set (seen data) to build the model (determine its parameters) and the test set (unseen data) to measure its performance (holding the parameters constant). Sometimes, we also need a validation set to tune the model (e. G. , for pruning a decision tree). The validation set can't be used for testing (as it's not unseen). Data mining This is an accounting calculation, followed by the application of a threshold. However, predicting the profitability of a new customer would be data mining. Dividing the customers off company according to their profitability. Yes, this is a data mining task because it requires data analysis to determine who the costumers are that brings more business to the company. Computing the total sales of the company. No, this is not a data mining task because there Is not analysis involve, this information can be pull out of any booking program. Sorting a student database based on student ID numbers.No, this Is not a data milling activity because sorting by ID numbers doesn't Involved any data mining task. This is a simple database query Predicting the future stock price of a company using historical records. Yes. We would attempt to create a model that can predict the continuous value of the stock price. This is an example of the area of data mining known as predictive modeling. We could use regression for this modeling, although researchers in many fields have developed a wide variety of techniques for predicting time series. Monitoring the heart rate of a patient for abnormalities. Yes.We would build a model of the normal behavior of heart rate and raise an alarm when an unusual heart behavior occurred. This would involve the area of data mining known as anomaly detection. This could also be considered as a classification problem If we had examples of both normal and abnormal heart behavior. For each of the following, identify the relevant data mining task(s): The Boston Celtic would like to approximate how many points their next opponent will score against them. A military intelligence officer is interested in learning about the captives proportions of Sunnis and Shies in a particular strategic region. A NORA defense computer must decide immediately whether a blip on the radar is a flick of geese or an incoming nuclear missile. A political strategist is seeking the b est groups to canvass for donations in particular county. A homeland security official would like to determine whether a certain sequence of financial and residence moves implies a tendency to terrorist acts. A Wall Street analyst has been asked to find out the expected change in stock price for a set of companies with similar price/earnings ratios.Question 3 For each of the following meetings, explain which phase in the CRISP-DIM process is represented: Managers want to know by next week whether deployment will take place. Therefore, analysts meet to discuss how useful and accurate their model is. This is the Evaluation phase in the CRISP-DIM process. In the evaluation phase the data mining analysts determine if the model and technique used meets business objectives established in the first phase. The data mining project manager meets with data warehousing manager to discuss how the data will be collected. This is theData Understanding phase in the CRISP-DIM process. The data wareh ouse is identified as a resource during the Business Understanding phase; however the actual data collection takes place during the Data Understanding Phase. In this phase data is collected and accessed from the resources listed and identified in the Business Understanding phase. The data mining consultant meets with the vice president for marketing, who says that he would like to move forward with customer relationship management. The main objective of business is to review during the Business Understanding Phase.So, therefore after the meeting it seems the data mining consultant gained success in convincing UP of marketing to provide approval for performing data mining on the customer relationship management system. The data mining project manager meets with the production line supervisor to discuss implementation of changes and improvements. The discussion of implementation of changes and improvements in the project whether specific improvements or process changes are required to ensure that all important aspects of the business are accounted is performed under the Evaluation Phase.The meeting held with business objective to collect and cleanse the data to ensure the quality of data. The analysts meet to discuss whether the neural network or decision tree model should be applied Question 4 [10 points] Describe the possible negative effects of proceeding directly to mine data that has not been preprocessed. Before data mining algorithms can be used, a target data set must be assembled. As data mining can only uncover patterns actually present in the data, the target data set must be large enough to contain these patterns while imagining concise enough to be mined within an acceptable time limit.A common source for data is a data mart or data warehouse. Pre-processing is essential to analyze the multivariate data sets before data mining. The target set is then cleaned. Data. Question 5 [1 5 points] Which of the three methods for handling missing values do you prefer? Which method is the most conservative and probably the safest, meaning that it fabricates the least amount of data? What are some drawbacks to this method? Methods for replacing missing field values with: User defined constants Means or modesRandom draws from the distribution of the variable Question 6 Describe the differences between the training set, test set, and validation set. The training set is used to build the model. This contains a set of data that has fricasseed target and predictor variables. Typically a hold-out dataset or test set is used to evaluate how well the model does with data outside the training set. The test set contains the fricasseed results data but they are not used when the test set data is run through the model until the end, when the fricasseed data are compared against the model results.The model is adjusted to minimize error on the test set. Another hold-out dataset or validation set is used to evaluate the adjusted model in step #2 where, a gain, the validation set data is run against the adjusted model and results compared to the unused fricasseed data. The training set (seen data) to build the model (determine its parameters) and the test set (unseen data) to measure its performance (holding the parameters constant). Sometimes, we also need a validation set to tune the model (e. G. , for pruning a decision tree). The validation set can't be used for testing (as it's not unseen). Data Mining Determine the benefits of data mining to the businesses when employing 1. Predictive analytics to understand the behavior of customers Predictive analytics is business intelligence technology that produces a predictive score for each customer or other organizational element. Assigning these predictive scores is the job of a predictive model, which has, in turn been trained over your data, learning from the experience of your organization. Predictive analytics optimizes marketing campaigns and website behavior to increase customer responses, conversions and clicks, and to decrease churn. Each customer's predictive score informs actions to be taken with that customer. 1. Associations discovery in products sold to customers The way in which companies interact with their customers has changed dramatically over the past few years. A customer's continuing business is no longer guaranteed. As a result, companies have found that they need to understand their customers better, and to quickly respond to their wants and needs. In addition, the time frame in which these responses need to be made has been shrinking. It is no longer possible to wait until the signs of customer dissatisfaction are obvious before action must be taken. To succeed, companies must be proactive and anticipate what a customer desires. For an example in the old days, the storekeepers would simply keep track of all of their customers in their heads, and would know what to do when a customer walked into the store. Today’ store associates face a much more complex situation, more customers, more products, more competitors, and less time to react means that understanding your customers is now much harder to do. A number of forces are working together to increase the complexity of customer relationships, such as compressed marketing cycles, increased marketing costs, and a stream of new product offers. There are many kinds of models, such as linear formulas and business rules. And, for each kind of model, there are all the weights or rules or other mechanics that determine precisely how the predictors are combined. In fact, there are so many choices, it is literally impossible for a person to try them all and find the best one. Predictive analytics is data mining technology that uses the company’s customer data to automatically build a predictive model specialized for the business. This process learns from the organization's collective experience by leveraging the existing logs of customer purchases, behavior and demographics. The wisdom gained is encoded as the predictive model itself. Predictive modeling software has computer science at its core, undertaking a mixture of number crunching, trial, and error. 2. Web mining to discover business intelligence from Web customers The fast business growth has made both business community and customers face a new situation. Due to intense competition on the one hand and the customer's option to prefer from a number of alternatives, the business community has realized the essential of intelligent marketing strategies and relationship management. Web servers record and accumulate data about user relations whenever requirements for resources are received. Analy zing the Web access logs can help understand the user behavior and the web structure. From the business and applications point of view, knowledge obtained from the web usage patterns could be directly applied to efficiently manage activities correlated to e-business, e-services and e-education. Accurate web usage information could help to attract new customers, retain current customers, improve cross marketing/sales, effectiveness of promotional campaigns, tracking leaving customers etc. The usage information can be exploited to improve the performance of Web servers by developing proper perfecting and caching strategies so as to decrease the server response time. User profiles could be built by combining users? navigation paths with other data features, such as page viewing time, hyperlink structure, and page content†, according to Sonal Tiwari. 3. Clustering to find related customer information Clustering is a typical unsupervised learning technique for grouping similar data points. A clustering algorithm assigns a large number of data points to a smaller number of groups such that data points in the same group share the same properties while, in different groups, they are dissimilar. Clustering has many applications, including part family formation for group technology, image segmentation, information retrieval, web pages grouping, market segmentation, and scientific and engineering analysis. Many clustering methods have been proposed and they can be broadly classified into four categories such as partitioning methods, hierarchical methods, density-based methods and grid-based methods. Customer clustering is the most important data mining methodologies used in marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). Customer clustering would use customer-purchase transaction data to track buying behavior and create strategic business initiatives. Companies want to keep high-profit, high-value, and low-risk customers. This cluster typically represents the 10 to 20 percent of customers who create 50 to 80 percent of a company's profits. A company would not want to lose these customers, and the strategic initiative for the segment is obviously retention. A low-profit, high-value, and low-risk customer segment is also an attractive one, and the obvious goal here would be to increase profitability for this segment. Cross-selling (selling new products) and up-selling (selling more of what customers currently buy) to this segment are the marketing initiatives of choice. Assess the reliability of the data mining algorithms. Decide if they can be trusted and predict the errors they are likely to produce. Most methods for validating a data-mining model do not answer business questions directly, but provide the metrics that can be used to guide a business or development decision. There is no comprehensive rule that can tell you when a model is good enough, or when you have enough data. Accuracy is a measure of how well the model correlates an outcome with the attributes in the data that has been provided. There are various measures of accuracy, but all measures of accuracy are dependent on the data that is used. In reality, values might be missing or approximate, or the data might have been changed by multiple processes. Particularly in the phase of exploration and development, you might decide to accept a certain amount of error in the data, especially if the data is fairly uniform in its characteristics. For example, a model that predicts sales for a particular store based on past sales can be strongly correlated and very accurate, even if that store consistently used the wrong accounting method. Therefore, measurements of accuracy must be balanced by assessments of reliability. Reliability assesses the way that a data-mining model performs on different data sets. A data-mining model is reliable if it generates the same type of predictions or finds the same general kinds of patterns egardless of the test data that is supplied. For example, the model that you would use to generate for the store that used the wrong accounting method would not generalize well to other stores, and therefore would not be reliable. Analyze privacy concerns raised by the collection of personal data for mining purposes. 1. Choose and describe three (3) concerns raised by consumers. Recent surveys on privacy show a great concern about the use of personal data for purposes other than the one for which data has been collected. The handling of misinformation can cause serious and long-term damage, so individuals should be able challenge the correctness of data about themselves, such as personal records. The last concern is granulated access to personal information, such as personal information about someone’s health when applying for a job. 2. Decide if each of these concerns is valid and explain your decision for each. These concerns are valid, the first concerned mentioned caused an extreme case to occurred in 1989, collecting over $16 million USD by selling the driver-license data from 19. million Californian residents, the Department of Motor Vehicles in California revised its data selling policy after Robert Brado used their services to obtain the address of actress Rebecca Schaeffer and later killed her in her apartment. While it is very unlikely that KDDM tools will reveal directly precise confidential data, the exploratory Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDDM), tools may correlate or dis close confidential, sensitive facts about individuals resulting in a significant reduction of possibilities. The second concern is valid due to incident happening in Washington; Cablevision fired an employee James Russell Wiggings, on the basis of information obtained from Equifax, Atlanta, about Wiggings' conviction for cocaine possession; the information was actually about James Ray Wiggings, and the case ended up in court. This illustrates a serious issue in defining property of the data containing personal records. The third issue is For example, employers are obliged to perform a background check when hiring a worker but it is widely accepted that information about diet and exercise habits should not affect hiring decisions. . Describe how each concern is being allayed. KDDM revitalizes some issues and possess new threats to privacy. Some of these can be directly attributed to the fact that this powerful technique may enable the correlation of separate data sets in other to significantly reduce the possible values of private information. Other can be more attributed to the interpretati on, application and actions taken from the inferences obtain with the tools. While this raises concerns, there is a body of knowledge in the field of statistical databases that could potentially be extended and adapted to develop new techniques to balance the rights to privacy and the needs for knowledge and analysis of large volumes of information. Some of these new privacy protection methods are emerging as the application of KDD tools moves to more controversial datasets. Provide at least three (3) examples where businesses have used predictive analysis to gain a competitive advantage and evaluate the effectiveness of each business’s strategy. The first advantage analysis helps when it comes to validity of a product by making a distinction between the positioning of a product and its ability to satisfy customer requirements. Another important attributes include ease of use, innovation, how well the product integrates with other technologies that customers need. The second advantage is the technology provides to customers. Even if a product is well designed, it must be able to help businesses achieve their business goals. Goals range from gaining insight about customers in order to be more competitive, to using the technology to increase revenue. A key attribute that is measured in this dimension is how well the product supports companies in meeting their objectives. The third advantage is the strength of the company’s strategy. It is not enough to simply have a good vision; a company must also have a well-designed road map that can support this vision. Vision attributes also include more tactical aspects of the company’s strategy such as a technology platform that can scale, well-articulated messaging, and positioning. A key component of this dimension is clarity: it must be clear what business problem the company is solving for which customer.ReferencesAlexander, D. (2012). Data Mining. Retrieved from: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/~anorman/BUS.FOR/course.mat/Alex/#8Josh, K. (2012). Analysis of Data Mining Algorithms. Retrieved from: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~desikan/research/dataminingoverview.html Exforsys. (2006). Execution for System: Connection between Data Mining and Customer Interaction. Retrieved from: http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/data-mining/the-connection-between-data-mining-and-customer-interaction.html Frand, J. (1996). Data Mining: What is Data Mining? Retrieved from: http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/teacher/technologies/palace/index.htm Pupo, E. (2010). HIMSS News: Privacy and Security Concerns in Data Mining. Retrieved from: http://www.himss.org/ASP/ContentRedirector.asp?type=HIMSSNewsItem&ContentId=73526 Stein, J. (2011). Data Mining: How Companies Now Know Everything About You. Retrieved from: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2058205,00.html#ixzz25MwYNhuh

The World Is Flat

Thomas Friedman in his recent book ‘The world is flat’ discusses a short history of globalisation in the twenty-first century. His discovering journey took him around the world to investigate the new concept in transnational business. He views himself as Columbus-like, but in a new modern word, in which he is searching for the sources of today’s wealth. Only to come to a rhetorical conclusion that the world is â€Å"flat† not round! His book, ‘The world is flat’ has been a subject to much criticism. His work was highly criticizes by Aronica and Ramdoo, (2006) in their book ‘The World is Flat? A Critical Analysis of Thomas Friedman’s New York Times Bestseller’. They point to the fact that Friedman does not use a single table or data footnote in his book. Friedman makes arguments by assertion, based on not documented facts, but makes his assumption based on stories from his journey around the world, visiting few places, and selected CEOs he visits on his journey.(Aronica & Ramdoo, 2006) Friedman in a research for his book visits India, where Nandan, the CEO of Infosys explains to him that; â€Å"the playing field is being leveled† causing Friedman to conclude that the world is flat. (Friedman, 2006 p.7) Friedman refers to a â€Å"flat world† in a metaphorical sense. He reiterates over and over again that â€Å"The world is flat†. In which he means that reducing barriers in trade and political and technical advances have made it possible to do business, instantly with any other businesses around the world, without the need to emigrate. It has allowed for parts of the world, which had previously been disconnected, like India and China, to compete in the world market. And that we are now connecting all the knowledge and expertise, using computers, email, fibre-optic networks and so on. Friedman argues that there are ten major forces that flattened the world, and describes each of the following â€Å"flatteners†. The fall of the Berlin Wall; or the work flow software; uploading; outsoursing; offshoring; insourcing; in-forming; and lastly he talks about steroids. Next Friedman delve into what he describes that the forces of flatness have resulted in â€Å"the triple convergence,† three additional components that acted on the flatteners to create a new, flatter global playing field. Friedman also states that â€Å"technology has made the world flat by removing geographical, hierarchical and other boundaries to trade†. In a flat world, Friedman writes, â€Å"you can innovate without having to emigrate. Yet, there are still many people in rural areas that have been left out and neglected of this global integration. People are migrating from rural areas to the big cities in search of jobs all the time, and this is what Friedman calls a ‘flat world’? Richard Florida,(2005) in his article ‘The World is spiky’ argues that â€Å"the globalisation has changed the playing field but it has not leveled it.†, Richard talks about â€Å"uneven distribution of the world’s population, light emissions, focusing on ‘peaks’ as of the cities that drive the world economy, and ‘valleys’ – places with little connection to the global economy.† Both authors seems to be right, but they both missing the point, using misleading metaphors. The paradox of these two metaphors is that the flattening of the world is creating a new prospect for even greater spikiness. Some would argue that it does not matter whether the world is spiky or flat. What does matter is where you live. Now, people have to compete and work harder than ever before. People in American are losing their jobs because someone on the other side of the world can do it faster and for less money. Technology makes it all more possible today to bring the world closer and make it more interconnected and interdependent.(Friedman, 2006) However, technological innovation by itself will never flatten the world, instead it tends to create inequalities by being inaccessible to less fortunate. Leamer (2007) in his critical review demonstrate that the technological revolution, economic integration and interaction increase the openness of trade and promote the production and transmission of information and knowledge in general. However, it is possible that increasing economic integration can lead to spatial agglomeration of economic activity rather than to a geographically ‘flatten pattern†. Process of globalization may as well wipe out space and distance between countries, then again, some will argue that in a global economy, competitive advantages are often heavily localized, arising from concentrations of highly specialised skills, knowledge and institutions. Friedman argues, that the world is getting flatter, incomes though, are not. Distribution of incomes within countries and between countries is growing greater. Nevertheless, all these arguments show that the world is not flat, never was and is not likely going to be in the near future. In second chapter, Friedman describes than Netscape went public and how Internet and World Wide Web came along and enabled more people to communicate and interact with more people anywhere on the planet, causing the Earth to flatten even more. In 2007 Foreign Policy magazine article, Pankaj Ghemawa, argued that ninety percent of the world’s web traffic, investments and phone calls are local, suggesting that Friedman has overstated the significance of the trends he describes. (Ghemawat, P. 2007). Friedman talks about ‘outsourcing’ of manufacturing and other processes to a foreign country to take advantage of less-costly labour. Outsourcing may indeed be good for the multinational corporations to stay competitive and survive, however, Arnica and Ramdoo (2006) in their book argue that, Friedman discuss in a favor of global corporations moving their operations overseas to exploit weak governments and cheap labor. Global corporations are not invested in the well-being of American workers and their local communities. Instead they go wherever they can to exploit cheap labor, lax environmental regulations and tax breaks. Stiglitz (2006) in his book points out that, the policy frameworks and laws are manipulated to be best suited for the industrial elites. Moving operations overseas is â€Å"cost cutting† to improve the financial performance of big corporations, without loyalty to one’s country. Their only loyalty is to increased profits and increased salaries of their directors. As a result of outsourcing, Many of American citizens, according to Friedman, are now worried about their careers, because some of the jobs they used to hold are now being performed outside the country for a much lower cost to their former companies. The reason behind the outsourcing is simply the cost. Indian workers can work for far less then American. The question is what will be the outcome of shipping all these jobs overseas? Some will argue that outsourcing less skilled work to emerging economies will raise living standards around the world. Workers in developing nations will get new and higher- paying jobs, and consumers in the U.S will be able to buy products that are cheaper than if they were made at home. Leamer (2007) argues that â€Å"it makes both parties worse off† saying â€Å"we get their wages and they get our culture. Outsourcing is occurring at a breathtaking pace, and as a result America is facing a big challenge because their jobs are at risk. Business services and finance is now at risk of being outsourced. And in the near future accounts, marketing and sales, and even human recourses will be shipped overseas in the name of cost saving. We are not only outsourcing business processes, but also moving process of innovations. Overall, this is good for global economy, but the U.S. workforce will face drastic career changes and pressures on wages subject to competition from foreign labor. Thus, what is good for some might not be good for others. Another example given by Mr. Friedman that stroked me is how Southwest Airlines let you issue your own boarding pass online twenty-four hours before the flight. What if you forget to print out your ticket? This is just a simple demonstration of declining quality of services a customer receives in a flatten world. I would argue that while the flat world has done extremely well for many industries and people around the world, Friedman but does not realized that the more flatten world brings many dark sides of globalisation along with it. The global financial system is more unbalanced, the threats of climate change are stronger and there is more international terrorism. The Friedman is reinforcing a wrong message to its audience for peace, loyalty and prosperity. Thomas Friedman points out that different parts of the world are now more connected because convergence of technology, information systems and telecommunications systems that created a ‘global platform’ is shrinking the world, and enabling each of us to reach around the world faster and cheaper than ever before! Yes, there have been some dramatic changes and transformation in the world economy, and we are now more connected than ever before, however the world is not flat. (Stiglitz, 2006). Stiglitz in his book ‘Making globalization work’ (2006) touches various aspects of globalization that is destroying the developing countries and their aspirations to provide a decent living to their citizens. He talks about egotistic intellectual property laws, the unfair trade mechanisms and many more critical points to complete success of globalization. Mr Friedman appreciates the existence of global poverty but fails to explain its structural and geopolitical causes.

Crime and Drug Use misc0 essays

Crime and Drug Use misc0 essays The link between drug use and crime is not a new one. For more than twenty years, both the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Justice have funded many studies to try to better understand the connection. One such study was done in Baltimore on heroin users. This study found high rates of criminality among users during periods of active drug use, and much lower rates during periods of nonuse (Ball et al. 1983, pp.119-142). A large number of people who abuse drugs come into contact with the criminal justice system when they are sent to jail or to other correctional facilities. The criminal justice system is flooded with substance abusers. The need for expanding drug abuse treatment for this group of people was recognized in the Crime Act of 1994, which for the first time provided substantial resources for federal and state jurisdictions. In this paper, I will argue that using therapeutic communities in prisons will reduce the recidivism rates among people who have been released from prison. I am going to use the general theory of crime, which is based on self-control, to help rationalize using federal tax dollars to fund these therapeutic communities in prisons. I feel that if we teach these prisoners some self-control and alternative lifestyles that we can keep them from reentering the prisons once they get out. I am also going to describe some of todays programs that have proven to be very effective. Gottfredson and Hirschi developed the general theory of crime. It According to their theory, the criminal act and the criminal offender are separate concepts. The criminal act is perceived as opportunity; illegal activities that people engage in when they perceive them to be advantageous. Crimes are committed when they promise rewards with minimum threat of pain or punishment. Crimes that provide easy, short-term gratification are often committed. The number of offenders may remain ...

Determining Significant Figures

Determining Significant Figures Every measurement has a degree of uncertainty associated with it. The uncertainty derives from the measuring device and the skill of the person doing the measuring. Lets use volume measurement as an example. Say you are in a chemistry lab and need 7 mL of water. You could take an unmarked coffee cup and add water until you think you have about 7 milliliters. In this case, the majority of the measurement error is associated with the skill of the person doing the measuring. You could use a beaker, marked in 5 mL increments. With the beaker, you could easily obtain a volume between 5 and 10 mL, probably close to 7 mL, give or take 1 mL. If you used a pipette marked with 0.1 mL, you could get a volume between 6.99 and 7.01 mL pretty reliably. It would be untrue to report that you measured 7.000 mL using any of these devices because you didnt measure the volume to the nearest microliter. You would report your measurement using significant figures. These include all of the digits you know for certain plus the last digit, which contains some uncertainty. Significant Figure Rules Non-zero digits are always significant.All zeros between other significant digits are significant.The number of significant figures is determined by starting with the leftmost non-zero digit. The leftmost non-zero digit is sometimes called the most significant digit or the most significant figure. For example, in the number 0.004205, the 4 is the most significant figure. The left-hand 0s are not significant. The zero between the 2 and the 5 is significant.The rightmost digit of a decimal number is the least significant digit or least significant figure. Another way to look at the least significant figure is to consider it to be the rightmost digit when the number is written in scientific notation. Least significant figures are still significant! In the number 0.004205 (which may be written as 4.205 x 10-3), the 5 is the least significant figure. In the number 43.120 (which may be written as 4.3210 x 101), the 0 is the least significant figure.If no decimal point is present, the right most non-zero digit is the least significant figure. In the number 5800, the least significant figure is 8. Uncertainty in Calculations Measured quantities are often used in calculations. The precision of the calculation is limited by the precision of the measurements on which it is based. Addition and SubtractionWhen measured quantities are used in addition or subtraction, the uncertainty is determined by the absolute uncertainty in the least precise measurement (not by the number of significant figures). Sometimes this is considered to be the number of digits after the decimal point.32.01 m5.325 m12 mAdded together, you will get 49.335 m, but the sum should be reported as 49 meters.Multiplication and DivisionWhen experimental quantities are multiplied or divided, the number of significant figures in the result is the same as that in the quantity with the smallest number of significant figures. If, for example, a density calculation is made in which 25.624 grams is divided by 25 mL, the density should be reported as 1.0 g/mL, not as 1.0000 g/mL or 1.000 g/mL. Losing Significant Figures Sometimes significant figures are lost while performing calculations. For example, if you find the mass of a beaker to be 53.110 g, add water to the beaker and find the mass of the beaker plus water to be 53.987 g, the mass of the water is 53.987-53.110 g 0.877 gThe final value only has three significant figures, even though each mass measurement contained 5 significant figures. Rounding and Truncating Numbers There are different methods which may be used to round numbers. The usual method is to round numbers with digits less than 5 down and numbers with digits greater than 5 up (some people round exactly 5 up and some round it down). Example:If you are subtracting 7.799 g - 6.25 g your calculation would yield 1.549 g. This number would be rounded to 1.55 g because the digit 9 is greater than 5. In some instances, numbers are truncated, or cut short, rather than rounded to obtain appropriate significant figures. In the example above, 1.549 g could have been truncated to 1.54 g. Exact Numbers Sometimes numbers used in a calculation are exact rather than approximate. This is true when using defined quantities, including many conversion factors, and when using pure numbers. Pure or defined numbers do not affect the accuracy of a calculation. You may think of them as having an infinite number of significant figures. Pure numbers are easy to spot because they have no units. Defined values or conversion factors, like measured values, may have units. Practice identifying them! Example:You want to calculate the average height of three plants and measure the following heights: 30.1 cm, 25.2 cm, 31.3 cm; with an average height of (30.1 25.2 31.3)/3 86.6/3 28.87 28.9 cm. There are three significant figures in the heights. Even though you are dividing the sum by a single digit, the three significant figures should be retained in the calculation. Accuracy and Precision Accuracy and precision are two separate concepts. The classic illustration distinguishing the two is to consider a target or bullseye. Arrows surrounding a bullseye indicate a high degree of accuracy; arrows very near to each other (possibly nowhere near the bullseye) indicate a high degree of precision. To be accurate, an arrow must be near the target; to be precise successive arrows must be near each other. Consistently hitting the very center of the bullseye indicates both accuracy and precision. Consider a digital scale. If you weigh the same empty beaker repeatedly, the scale will yield values with a high degree of precision (say 135.776 g, 135.775 g, 135.776 g). The actual mass of the beaker may be very different. Scales (and other instruments) need to be calibrated! Instruments typically provide very precise readings, but accuracy requires calibration. Thermometers are notoriously inaccurate, often requiring re-calibration several times over the lifetime of the instrument. Scales also require recalibration, especially if they are moved or mistreated.

Photograhy analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Photograhy analysis - Essay Example One is in Muslim culture, whereas other is about the western Indian culture. The photographer Roberto Cattani took this shot in Shiraz, Iran. This mosque is known as Nasir al Malik mosque is one of the famous mosque. It is the representational image and the theme of the picture is the semblance of life with colors. The picture depicts the idea that ‘life is in colors’ that is also an undeniable fact .The photographer captured this photograph from an eye level in the daylight. This photograph is consisting on the interior of the mosque. The focus of the picture is on the woman, who is seen as praying in the mosque full of colors that represents the relation of the being to the divine as well as affiliation of life with colors. In this image woman is wearing white, long, and well-draped veil from head to toe and offering prayers on the colorful praying rug, as it is one of the ritual of the religion, which demonstrates soulfulness. Along which there is a sequence of colorful patterned red carpets. Right at the back of the women the wall is delight fully ornamented with the beautiful wall art the shows the essence of Muslim architecture. The walls in the surrounding festooned with the skillfully patterned kaleidoscope windows that demonstrates the value and the reflection of colors on life. In the image, the woman lays in the middle if the picture and surrounded by the beautiful pillars and kaleidoscope at uniform distance that illustrates tranquility and uniformity in the picture. The walls, ceilings, pillar consisting on sequenced, repetitive geometrical motifs and shapes (squared / rectangular and ornamental shapes) that maintains the equilibrium in the photograph. This photograph is properly focused on the kaleidoscope and its reflection as well the exuberance of colors in the surrounding. The palate of the picture shows the vibrancy of the sharp colors that is balanced with the tints of browns and the mildness of