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Naomi Klein The publication of "The Shock Doctrine" increased Klein's prominence, with "The New Yorker" judging her "the most visible and influential figure on the American left—what Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky were thirty years ago." On February 24, 2009, the book was awarded the inaugural Warwick Prize for Writing from the University of Warwick in England. The prize carried a cash award of £50,000. Klein's fourth book, "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate" was published in September 2014. The book puts forth the argument that the hegemony of neoliberal market fundamentalism is blocking any serious reforms to halt climate change and protect the environment. Questioned about Klein's claim that capitalism and controlling climate change were incompatible, Benoit Blarel, manager of the Environment and Natural Resources global practice at the World Bank, said that the write-off of fossil fuels necessary to control climate change "will have a huge impact all over" and that the World Bank was "starting work on this". The book won the 2014 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and was a shortlisted nominee for the 2015 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Klein's fifth book, "No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need" was published in June 2017. It has also been published Internationally with the alternative subtitle "Defeating the New Shock Politics" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
Naomi Klein Released in June 2018 as paperback and e-book, "The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists" covers what San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz refers to as the post-Hurricane Maria unmasked colonialism leading to inequality and "creating a fierce humanitarian crisis."<ref name="Haymarket Books/The Battle for Paradise official page"></ref> In April 2019, Simon & Schuster announced they would be publishing Klein's seventh book, "On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal", which was published on September 17, 2019. "On Fire" is a collection of essays focusing on climate change and the urgent actions needed to preserve the world. Klein relates her meeting with Greta Thunberg in the opening essay in which she discusses the entrance of young people into those speaking out for climate awareness and change. She supports the Green New Deal throughout the book and in the final essay she discusses the 2020 U.S. election stating: "The stakes of the election are almost unbearably high. It’s why I wrote the book and decided to put it out now and why I’ll be doing whatever I can to help push people toward supporting a candidate with the most ambitious Green New Deal platform—so that they win the primaries and then the general." Klein has written on issues such as the Iraq War | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
Naomi Klein In a September 2004 article for "Harper's Magazine", she argues that, contrary to popular belief, the Bush administration did have a clear plan for post-invasion Iraq, which was to build a completely unconstrained free market economy. She describes plans to allow foreigners to extract wealth from Iraq and the methods used to achieve those goals. The film "War, Inc." (2008) was partially inspired by her article, "Baghdad Year Zero." Klein's August 2004 "Bring Najaf to New York", published in "The Nation", argued that Muqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army "represents the overwhelmingly mainstream sentiment in Iraq." She went on to say "Yes, if elected Sadr would try to turn Iraq into a theocracy like Iran, but for now his demands are for direct elections and an end to foreign occupation". Marc Cooper, a former "Nation" columnist, attacked the assertion that Al Sadr represented mainstream Iraqi sentiment and that American forces had brought the fight to the holy city of Najaf. Cooper wrote that "Klein should know better. All enemies of the U.S. occupation she opposes are not her friends. Or ours. Or those of the Iraqi people. I don’t think that Mullah Al Sadr, in any case, is much desirous of support issuing from secular Jewish feminist-socialists." Klein signed a 2004 petition entitled, “We would vote for Hugo Chávez | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
Naomi Klein ” In 2007, she described Venezuela under the Chávez government as a country where "citizens had renewed their faith in the power of democracy to improve their lives," and described Venezuela as a place sheltered by Chávez's policies from the economic shocks produced by capitalism. Rather, according to Klein, Chávez protected his country from financial crisis by building “a zone of relative economic calm and predictability.” According to reviewer Todd Gitlin, who described the overall argument of Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine" (2007) as "more right than wrong," Klein is "a romantic," who expected that the Chávez government would produce a bright future in which worker-controlled co-operatives would run the economy. "The Shock Doctrine" was consistent with her prior thinking about globalization, and in that book she describes Chávez' policies as an example of public control of some sectors of the economy as protecting poor people from harm caused by globalization. After the collapse of the Venezuelan economy and alleged erosion of its democratic institutions under Chávez' successor Nicolás Maduro, Klein and other people who had supported Chávez were criticized by writers such as James Kirchick and Mark Milke. In March 2008, Klein was the keynote speaker at the first national conference of the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
Naomi Klein In January 2009, during the Gaza War, Klein supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, arguing that "the best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa." In summer 2009, on the occasion of the publication of the Hebrew translation of her book "The Shock Doctrine", Klein visited Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, combining the promotion of her book and the BDS campaign. In an interview to the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" she emphasized that it is important to her "not to boycott Israelis but rather to boycott the normalization of Israel and the conflict." In a speech in Ramallah on June 27, she apologized to the Palestinians for not joining the BDS campaign earlier. Her remarks, particularly that "[Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free card" were characterized by Noam Schimmel, an op-ed columnist in "The Jerusalem Post", as "violent" and "unethical", and as the "most perverse of aspersions on Jews, an age-old stereotype of Jews as intrinsically evil and malicious." Klein was also a spokesperson for the protest against the spotlight on Tel Aviv at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, a spotlight that Klein said was a very selective and misleading portrait of Israel. Since 2009, Klein's attention has turned to environmentalism, with particular focus on climate change, the subject of her book "This Changes Everything" (2014) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
Naomi Klein According to her website, the book and its accompanying film (released in 2015) will be about "how the climate crisis can spur economic and political transformation." She sits on the board of directors of campaign group 350.org and took part in their "Do the Math" tour in 2013, encouraging a divestment movement. She has encouraged the Occupy movement to join forces with the environmental movement, saying the financial crisis and the climate crisis have the same root—unrestrained corporate greed. She gave a speech at Occupy Wall Street where she described the world as "upside down", where we act as if "there is no end to what is actually finite—fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions," and as if there are "limits to what is actually bountiful—the financial resources to build the kind of society we need." She has been a particularly vocal critic of the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta, describing it in a TED talk as a form of "terrestrial skinning." On September 2, 2011, she attended the demonstration against the Keystone XL pipeline outside the White House and was arrested. Klein celebrated Obama's decision to postpone a decision on the Keystone pipeline until 2013 pending an environmental review as a victory for the environmental movement. She attended the Copenhagen Climate Summit of 2009. She put the blame for the failure of Copenhagen on President Barack Obama, and described her own country, Canada, as a "climate criminal | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
Naomi Klein " She presented the Angry Mermaid Award (a satirical award designed to recognise the corporations who have best sabotaged the climate negotiations) to Monsanto. Writing in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, she warned that the climate crisis constitutes a massive opportunity for disaster capitalists and corporations seeking to profit from crisis. But equally, the climate crisis "can be a historic moment to usher in the next great wave of progressive change," or a so-called "People's Shock." On November 9, 2016, following the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, Klein called for an international campaign to impose economic sanctions on the United States if his administration refuses to abide by the terms of the Paris Agreement. Klein contributes to "The Nation", "In These Times", "The Globe and Mail", "This Magazine", "Harper's Magazine", and "The Guardian", and is a senior contributor for "The Intercept". She is a former Miliband Fellow and lectured at the London School of Economics on the anti-globalization movement. Her appointment as the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick began in October 2018 and runs for 3 years. The position is funded by foundations, endowments and individuals. Klein ranked 11th in an internet poll of the top global intellectuals of 2005, a list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals compiled by the "Prospect" magazine in conjunction with "Foreign Policy" magazine | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
Naomi Klein She was involved in 2010 G-20 Toronto summit protests, condemning police force and brutality. She spoke to a rally seeking the release of protesters in front of police headquarters on June 28, 2010. On October 6, 2011, she visited Occupy Wall Street and gave a speech declaring the protest movement "the most important thing in the world". On November 10, 2011, she participated in a panel discussion about the future of Occupy Wall Street with four other panelists, including Michael Moore, William Greider, and Rinku Sen, in which she stressed the crucial nature of the evolving movement. Klein also made an appearance in the British radio show "Desert Island Discs" on BBC Radio 4 in 2017. In November 2017, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 announced that Klein had been appointed to their Advisory Panel. In November 2019, along with other public figures, Klein signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general election. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22068 |
No Logo No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies is a book by the Canadian author Naomi Klein. First published by Knopf Canada and Picador in December 1999, shortly after the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference protests in Seattle had generated media attention around such issues, it became one of the most influential books about the alter-globalization movement and an international bestseller. The book focuses on branding and often makes connections with the anti-globalization movement. Throughout the four parts ("No Space", "No Choice", "No Jobs", and "No Logo"), Klein writes about issues such as sweatshops in the Americas and Asia, culture jamming, corporate censorship, and Reclaim the Streets. She pays special attention to the deeds and misdeeds of Nike, The Gap, McDonald's, Shell, and Microsoft – and of their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies. Many of the ideas in Klein's book derive from the influence of the Situationists, an art/political group founded in the late 1950s. However, while globalization appears frequently as a recurring theme, Klein rarely addresses the topic of globalization itself, and when she does, it is usually indirectly. She goes on to discuss globalization in much greater detail in her book, "Fences and Windows" (2002). The book comprises four sections: "No Space", "No Choice", "No Jobs", and "No Logo". The first three deal with the negative effects of brand-oriented corporate activity, while the fourth discusses various methods people have taken in order to fight back | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22113 |
No Logo The book begins by tracing the history of brands. Klein argues that there has been a shift in the usage of branding and gives examples of this shift to "anti-brand" branding. Early examples of brands were often used to put a recognizable face on factory-produced products. These slowly gave way to the idea of selling lifestyles. According to Klein, in response to an economic crash in the 1980s (due to the Latin American debt crisis, Black Monday (1987), the savings and loan crisis, and the Japanese asset price bubble), corporations began to seriously rethink their approach to marketing and to target the youth demographic, as opposed to the baby boomers, who had previously been considered a much more valuable segment. The book discusses how brand names such as Nike or Pepsi expanded beyond the mere products which bore their names, and how these names and logos began to appear everywhere. As this happened, the brands' obsession with the youth market drove them to further associate themselves with whatever the youth considered "cool". Along the way, the brands attempted to associate their names with everything from movie stars and athletes to grassroots social movements. Klein argues that large multinational corporations consider the marketing of a brand name to be more important than the actual manufacture of products; this theme recurs in the book, and Klein suggests that it helps explain the shift to production in Third World countries in such industries as clothing, footwear, and computer hardware | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22113 |
No Logo This section also looks at ways in which brands have "muscled" their presence into the school system, and how in doing so, they have pipelined advertisements into the schools and used their position to gather information about the students. Klein argues that this is part of a trend toward targeting younger and younger consumers. In the second section, Klein discusses how brands use their size and clout to limit the number of choices available to the public – whether through market dominance (e.g., Wal-Mart) or through aggressive invasion of a region (e.g., Starbucks). Klein argues that each company's goal is to become the dominant force in its respective field. Meanwhile, other corporations, such as Sony or Disney, simply open their own chains of stores, preventing the competition from even putting their products on the shelves. This section also discusses the way that corporations merge with one another in order to add to their ubiquity and provide greater control over their image. ABC News, for instance, is allegedly under pressure not to air any stories that are overly critical of Disney, its parent company. Other chains, such as Wal-Mart, often threaten to pull various products off their shelves, forcing manufacturers and publishers to comply with their demands. This might mean driving down manufacturing costs or changing the artwork or content of products like magazines or albums so they better fit with Wal-Mart's image of family friendliness | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22113 |
No Logo Also discussed is the way that corporations abuse copyright laws in order to silence anyone who might attempt to criticize their brand. In this section, the book takes a darker tone and looks at the way in which manufacturing jobs move from local factories to foreign countries, and particularly to places known as export processing zones. Such zones often have no labor laws, leading to dire working conditions. The book then shifts back to North America, where the lack of manufacturing jobs has led to an influx of work in the service sector, where most of the jobs are for minimum wage and offer no benefits. The term "McJob" is introduced, defined as a job with poor compensation that does not keep pace with inflation, inflexible or undesirable hours, little chance of advancement, and high levels of stress. Meanwhile, the public is being sold the perception that these jobs are temporary employment for students and recent graduates, and therefore need not offer living wages or benefits. All of this is set against a backdrop of massive profits and wealth being produced within the corporate sector. The result is a new generation of employees who have come to resent the success of the companies they work for. This resentment, along with rising unemployment, labour abuses abroad, disregard for the environment, and the ever-increasing presence of advertising breeds a new disdain for corporations. The final section of the book discusses various movements that have sprung up during the 1990s | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22113 |
No Logo These include "Adbusters" magazine and the culture-jamming movement, as well as Reclaim the Streets and the McLibel trial. Less radical protests are also discussed, such as the various movements aimed at putting an end to sweatshop labour. Klein concludes by contrasting consumerism and citizenship, opting for the latter. "When I started this book," she writes, "I honestly didn't know whether I was covering marginal atomized scenes of resistance or the birth of a potentially broad-based movement. But as time went on, what I clearly saw was a movement forming before my eyes." After the book's release, Klein was heavily criticized by the news magazine "The Economist", leading to a broadcast debate with Klein and the magazine's writers, dubbed "vs. Pro Logo". The 2004 book "The Rebel Sell" (published as "Nation of Rebels" in the United States) specifically criticized "No Logo", stating that turning the improving quality of life in the working class into a fundamentally anti-market ideology is shallow. In this book, Klein criticized Nike so severely that Nike published a point-by-point response. In 2000, "No Logo" was short-listed for the "Guardian" First Book Award in 2000. In 2001, the book won the following awards: Several imprints of "No Logo" exist, including a hardcover first edition, a subsequent hardcover edition, and a paperback. A 10th anniversary edition was published by Fourth Estate that includes a new introduction by the author | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22113 |
No Logo Translations from the original English into several other languages have also been published. The subtitle, "Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies", was dropped in some later editions. Naomi Klein explains her ideas in the 40-minute video "– Brands, Globalization & Resistance" (2003), directed by Sut Jhally. Members of the English rock group Radiohead have stated that the book influenced them particularly during the making of their fourth and fifth albums, "Kid A" (2000) and "Amnesiac" (2001), respectively. (The albums were recorded over the same sessions.) The band recommended the book to fans on their website and considered calling the album "Kid A" "No Logo" for a time. Argentine artist Indio Solari wrote a song for his first solo album named "Nike es la cultura" ("Nike is the culture"), in which he says, "You shout No Logo! Or you doesn't shout No Logo! Or you shout No!" in reference to this book. Dhani Harrison, son of George Harrison and front-man of English electronic/alternative rock group Thenewno2, has stated that "No Logo" had a large influence on their release, "You Are Here" (2008). Argentine-American rock singer Kevin Johansen wrote a song, "Logo", inspired by Klein's book. A copy of "No Logo" is even used in the official video for the song. Rapper MC Lars's album "This Gigantic Robot Kills" contains a track entitled "No Logo", a satirical analysis of anti-government youth, partially inspired by the book. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=22113 |
Probability distribution In probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is a mathematical function that provides the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes in an experiment. In more technical terms, the probability distribution is a description of a random phenomenon in terms of the probabilities of events. For instance, if the random variable is used to denote the outcome of a coin toss ("the experiment"), then the probability distribution of would take the value 0.5 for , and 0.5 for (assuming the coin is fair). Examples of random phenomena can include the results of an experiment or survey. A probability distribution is specified in terms of an underlying sample space, which is the set of all possible outcomes of the random phenomenon being observed. The sample space may be the set of real numbers or a set of vectors, or it may be a list of non-numerical values; for example, the sample space of a coin flip would be . Probability distributions are generally divided into two classes. A discrete probability distribution (applicable to the scenarios where the set of possible outcomes is discrete, such as a coin toss or a roll of dice) can be encoded by a discrete list of the probabilities of the outcomes, known as a probability mass function. On the other hand, a continuous probability distribution (applicable to the scenarios where the set of possible outcomes can take on values in a continuous range (e.g | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution real numbers), such as the temperature on a given day) is typically described by probability density functions (with the probability of any individual outcome actually being 0). The normal distribution is a commonly encountered continuous probability distribution. More complex experiments, such as those involving stochastic processes defined in continuous time, may demand the use of more general probability measures. A probability distribution whose sample space is one-dimensional (for example real numbers, list of labels, ordered labels or binary) is called univariate, while a distribution whose sample space is a vector space of dimension 2 or more is called multivariate. A univariate distribution gives the probabilities of a single random variable taking on various alternative values; a multivariate distribution (a joint probability distribution) gives the probabilities of a random vector – a list of two or more random variables – taking on various combinations of values. Important and commonly encountered univariate probability distributions include the binomial distribution, the hypergeometric distribution, and the normal distribution. The multivariate normal distribution is a commonly encountered multivariate distribution. To define probability distributions for the simplest cases, it is necessary to distinguish between discrete and continuous random variables | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution In the discrete case, it is sufficient to specify a probability mass function formula_1 assigning a probability to each possible outcome: for example, when throwing a fair die, each of the six values 1 to 6 has the probability 1/6. The probability of an event is then defined to be the sum of the probabilities of the outcomes that satisfy the event; for example, the probability of the event "the dice rolls an even value" is In contrast, when a random variable takes values from a continuum then typically, any individual outcome has probability zero and only events that include infinitely many outcomes, such as intervals, can have positive probability. For example, the probability that a given object weighs "exactly" 500 g is zero, because the probability of measuring exactly 500 g tends to zero as the accuracy of our measuring instruments increases. Nevertheless, in quality control one might demand that the probability of a "500 g" package containing between 490 g and 510 g should be no less than 98%, and this demand is less sensitive to the accuracy of measurement instruments. Continuous probability distributions can be described in several ways. The probability density function describes the infinitesimal probability of any given value, and the probability that the outcome lies in a given interval can be computed by integrating the probability density function over that interval | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution The probability that the possible values lie in some fixed interval can be related to the way sums converge to an integral; therefore, continuous probability is based on the definition of an integral. The cumulative distribution function describes the probability that the random variable is no larger than a given value; the probability that the outcome lies in a given interval can be computed by taking the difference between the values of the cumulative distribution function at the endpoints of the interval. The cumulative distribution function is the antiderivative of the probability density function provided that the latter function exists. The cumulative distribution function is the area under the probability density function from minus infinity formula_3 to formula_4 as described by the picture to the right. Because a probability distribution "P" on the real line is determined by the probability of a scalar random variable "X" being in a half-open interval <nowiki>(</nowiki>−∞, "x"<nowiki>]</nowiki>, the probability distribution is completely characterized by its cumulative distribution function: A discrete probability distribution is a probability distribution that can take on a countable number of values. For the probabilities to add up to 1, they have to decline to zero fast enough. For example, if formula_10 for "n" = 1, 2, ..., the sum of probabilities would be 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... = 1 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution Well-known discrete probability distributions used in statistical modeling include the Poisson distribution, the Bernoulli distribution, the binomial distribution, the geometric distribution, and the negative binomial distribution. Additionally, the discrete uniform distribution is commonly used in computer programs that make equal-probability random selections between a number of choices. When a sample (a set of observations) is drawn from a larger population, the sample points have an empirical distribution that is discrete and that provides information about the population distribution. A measurable function formula_11 between a probability space formula_12 and a measurable space formula_13 is called a discrete random variable provided that its image is a countable set. In this case measurability of formula_5 means that the pre-images of singleton sets are measurable, i.e., formula_15 for all formula_16. The latter requirement induces a probability mass function formula_17 via formula_18. Since the pre-images of disjoint sets are disjoint, This recovers the definition given above. Equivalently to the above, a discrete random variable can be defined as a random variable whose cumulative distribution function (cdf) increases only by jump discontinuities—that is, its cdf increases only where it "jumps" to a higher value, and is constant between those jumps. Note however that the points where the cdf jumps may form a dense set of the real numbers | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution The points where jumps occur are precisely the values which the random variable may take. Consequently, a discrete probability distribution is often represented as a generalized probability density function involving Dirac delta functions, which substantially unifies the treatment of continuous and discrete distributions. This is especially useful when dealing with probability distributions involving both a continuous and a discrete part. For a discrete random variable "X", let "u", "u", ... be the values it can take with non-zero probability. Denote These are disjoint sets, and for such sets It follows that the probability that "X" takes any value except for "u", "u", ... is zero, and thus one can write "X" as except on a set of probability zero, where formula_23 is the indicator function of "A". This may serve as an alternative definition of discrete random variables. A continuous probability distribution is a probability distribution with a cumulative distribution function that is absolutely continuous. Equivalently, it is a probability distribution on the real numbers that is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure. Such distributions can be represented by their probability density functions. If the distribution of "X" is continuous, then "X" is called a continuous random variable. There are many examples of continuous probability distributions: normal, uniform, chi-squared, and others | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution Formally, if "X" is a continuous random variable, then it has a probability density function "ƒ"("x"), and therefore its probability of falling into a given interval, say , is given by the integral In particular, the probability for "X" to take any single value "a" (that is ) is zero, because an integral with coinciding upper and lower limits is always equal to zero. Note on terminology: some authors use the term "continuous distribution" to denote distributions whose cumulative distribution functions are continuous, rather than absolutely continuous. These distributions are the ones formula_25 such that formula_26 for all formula_27. This definition includes the (absolutely) continuous distributions defined above, but it also includes singular distributions, which are neither absolutely continuous nor discrete nor a mixture of those, and do not have a density. An example is given by the Cantor distribution. In the measure-theoretic formalization of probability theory, a random variable is defined as a measurable function formula_5 from a probability space formula_29 to a measurable space formula_30. Given that probabilities of events of the form formula_31 satisfy Kolmogorov's probability axioms, the probability distribution of "X" is the pushforward measure formula_32 of formula_5 , which is a probability measure on formula_30 satisfying formula_35. Most algorithms are based on a pseudorandom number generator that produces numbers "X" that are uniformly distributed in the half-open interval [0,1) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution These random variates "X" are then transformed via some algorithm to create a new random variate having the required probability distribution. With this source of uniform pseudo-randomness, realizations of any random variable can be generated. For example, suppose formula_36 has a uniform distribution between 0 and 1. To construct a random Bernoulli variable for some formula_37, we define <math>{\displaystyle X ={\begin{cases}1,&{\mbox{if }}U so that <math>\textrm{P}(X=1) = \textrm{P}(U This random variable X has a Bernoulli distribution with parameter formula_1. Note that this is a transformation of discrete random variable. For a distribution function formula_39 of a continuous random variable, a continuous random variable must be constructed. formula_40, an inverse function of formula_39, relates to the uniform variable formula_36: formula_43 For example, suppose a random variable that has an exponential distribution formula_44 must be constructed. formula_45 so formula_46 and if formula_36 has a formula_48 distribution, then the random variable formula_5 is defined by formula_50. This has an exponential distribution of formula_51. A frequent problem in statistical simulations (the Monte Carlo method) is the generation of pseudo-random numbers that are distributed in a given way. The concept of the probability distribution and the random variables which they describe underlies the mathematical discipline of probability theory, and the science of statistics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Probability distribution There is spread or variability in almost any value that can be measured in a population (e.g. height of people, durability of a metal, sales growth, traffic flow, etc.); almost all measurements are made with some intrinsic error; in physics many processes are described probabilistically, from the kinetic properties of gases to the quantum mechanical description of fundamental particles. For these and many other reasons, simple numbers are often inadequate for describing a quantity, while probability distributions are often more appropriate. The following is a list of some of the most common probability distributions, grouped by the type of process that they are related to. For a more complete list, see list of probability distributions, which groups by the nature of the outcome being considered (discrete, continuous, multivariate, etc.) All of the univariate distributions below are singly peaked; that is, it is assumed that the values cluster around a single point. In practice, actually observed quantities may cluster around multiple values. Such quantities can be modeled using a mixture distribution. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=23543 |
Privatization Privatisation (or privatization in American English) can mean different things including moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when a heavily regulated private company or industry becomes less regulated. Government functions and services may also be privatised (which may also be known as "franchising" or "out-sourcing"); in this case, private entities are tasked with the implementation of government programs or performance of government services that had previously been the purview of state-run agencies. Some examples include revenue collection, law enforcement, water supply, and prison management. Another definition is the purchase of all outstanding shares of a publicly traded company by private investors, or the sale of a state-owned enterprise or municipally owned corporation to private investors. In the case of a for-profit company, the shares are then no longer traded at a stock exchange, as the company became private through private equity; in the case the partial or full sale of a state-owned enterprise or municipally owned corporation to private owners shares may be traded in the public market for the first time, or for the first time since an enterprise's previous nationalization. The second such type of privatization is the demutualization of a mutual organization, cooperative, or public-private partnership in order to form a joint-stock company | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization "The Economist" magazine introduced the term "privatisation" (alternatively "privatisation" or "reprivatisation" after the German ) during the 1930s when it covered Nazi Germany's economic policy. It is not clear if the magazine coincidentally invented the word in English or if the term is a loanword from the same expression in German, where it has been in use since the 19th century. The word privatization may mean different things depending on the context in which it is used. It can mean moving something from the public sphere into the private sphere, but it may also be used to describe something that was always private, but heavily regulated, which becomes less regulated through a process of deregulation. The term may also be used descriptively for something that has always been private, but could be public in other jurisdictions. There are also private entities that may perform public functions. These entities could also be described as privatized. may mean the government sells state-owned businesses to private interests, but it may also be discussed in the context of the privatization of services or government functions, where private entities are tasked with the implementation of government programs or performance of government services. Gillian E | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization Metzger has written that: "Private entities [in the US] provide a vast array of social services for the government; administer core aspects of government programs; and perform tasks that appear quintessentially governmental, such as promulgating standards or regulating third-party activities." Metzger mentions an expansion of privatization that includes health and welfare programs, public education, and prisons. The history of privatization dates from Ancient Greece, when governments contracted out almost everything to the private sector. In the Roman Republic private individuals and companies performed the majority of services including tax collection (tax farming), army supplies (military contractors), religious sacrifices and construction. However, the Roman Empire also created state-owned enterprises—for example, much of the grain was eventually produced on estates owned by the Emperor. David Parker and David S. Saal suggest that the cost of bureaucracy was one of the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Perhaps one of the first ideological movements towards privatization came during China's golden age of the Han Dynasty. Taoism came into prominence for the first time at a state level, and it advocated the laissez-faire principle of Wu wei (無為), literally meaning "do nothing". The rulers were counseled by the Taoist clergy that a strong ruler was virtually invisible. During the Renaissance, most of Europe was still by and large following the feudal economic model | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization By contrast, the Ming dynasty in China began once more to practice privatization, especially with regards to their manufacturing industries. This was a reversal of the earlier Song dynasty policies, which had themselves overturned earlier policies in favor of more rigorous state control. In Britain, the privatization of common lands is referred to as enclosure (in Scotland as the Lowland Clearances and the Highland Clearances). Significant privatizations of this nature occurred from 1760 to 1820, preceding the industrial revolution in that country. The first mass privatization of state property occurred in Nazi Germany between 1933–1937: "It is a fact that the government of the National Socialist Party sold off public ownership in several state-owned firms in the middle of the 1930s. The firms belonged to a wide range of sectors: steel, mining, banking, local public utilities, shipyard, ship-lines, railways, etc. In addition to this, delivery of some public services produced by public administrations prior to the 1930s, especially social services and services related to work, was transferred to the private sector, mainly to several organizations within the Nazi Party." Great Britain privatized its steel industry in the 1950s, and the West German government embarked on large-scale privatization, including sale of the majority stake in Volkswagen to small investors in public share offerings in 1961 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization However, it was in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States that privatization gained worldwide momentum. Notable privatization attempts in the UK included privatization of Britoil (1982), Amersham International PLC (1982), British Telecom (1984), Sealink ferries (1984), British Petroleum (gradually privatized between 1979 and 1987), British Aerospace (1985 to 1987), British Gas (1986), Rolls-Royce (1987), Rover Group (formerly British Leyland, 1988), British Steel Corporation (1988), and the regional water authorities (mostly in 1989). After 1979, council house tenants in the UK were given the right to buy their homes (at a heavily discounted rate). One million purchased their residences by 1986. Such efforts culminated in 1993 when British Rail was privatized under Thatcher's successor, John Major. British Rail had been formed by prior nationalization of private rail companies. The privatization was controversial, and the its impact is still debated today, as doubling of passenger numbers and investment was balanced by an increase in rail subsidy. in Latin America flourished in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of a Western liberal economic policy. Companies providing public services such as water management, transportation, and telecommunication were rapidly sold off to the private sector. In the 1990s, privatization revenue from 18 Latin American countries totaled 6% of gross domestic product | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization Private investment in infrastructure from 1990 and 2001 reached $360.5 billion, $150 billion more than in the next emerging economy. While economists generally give favorable evaluations of the impact of privatization in Latin America, opinion polls and public protests across the countries suggest that a large segment of the public is dissatisfied with or have negative views of privatization in the region. In the 1990s, the governments in Eastern and Central Europe engaged in extensive privatization of state-owned enterprises in Eastern and Central Europe and Russia, with assistance from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the German Treuhand, and other governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Ongoing privatization of Japan Post relates to that of the national postal service and one of the largest banks in the world. After years of debate, the privatization of Japan Post spearheaded by Junichiro Koizumi finally started in 2007. The privatization process is expected to last until 2017. Japan Post was one of the nation's largest employers, as one-third of Japanese state employees worked for it. It was also said to be the largest holder of personal savings in the world. Criticisms against Japan Post were that it served as a channel of corruption and was inefficient | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization In September 2003, Koizumi's cabinet proposed splitting Japan Post into four separate companies: a bank, an insurance company, a postal service company, and a fourth company to handle the post offices and retail storefronts of the other three. After the Upper House rejected privatization, Koizumi scheduled nationwide elections for September 11, 2005. He declared the election to be a referendum on postal privatization. Koizumi subsequently won the election, gaining the necessary supermajority and a mandate for reform, and in October 2005, the bill was passed to privatize Japan Post in 2007. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone's privatization in 1987 involved the largest share offering in financial history at the time. 15 of the world's 20 largest public share offerings have been privatizations of telecoms. In 1988, the perestroika policy of Mikhail Gorbachev started allowing privatization of the centrally planned economy. Large privatization of the Soviet economy occurred over the next few years as the country dissolved. Other Eastern Bloc countries followed suit after the Revolutions of 1989 introduced non-communist governments. The United Kingdom's largest public share offerings were privatizations of British Telecom and British Gas during the 1980s under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, when many state-run firms were sold off to the private sector. The privatization received very mixed views from the public and the parliament | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization Even former Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan was critical of the policy, likening it to "selling the family silver". There were around 3 million shareholders in Britain when Thatcher took office in 1979, but the subsequent sale of state-run firms saw the number of shareholders double by 1985. By the time of her resignation in 1990, there were more than 10 million shareholders in Britain. The largest public shares offering in France involved France Télécom. Egypt undertook widespread privatization under Hosni Mubarak. Following his overthrow in the 2011 revolution, most of the public began to call for re-nationalization, citing allegations of the privatized firms practicing crony capitalism under the old regime. There are five main methods of privatization: The choice of sale method is influenced by the capital market and the political and firm-specific factors. through the stock market is more likely to be the method used when there is an established capital market capable of absorbing the shares. A market with high liquidity can facilitate the privatization. If the capital markets are insufficiently developed, however, it would be difficult to find enough buyers. The shares may have to be underpriced, and the sales may not raise as much capital as would be justified by the fair value of the company being privatized. Many governments, therefore, elect for listings in more sophisticated markets, for example, Euronext, and the London, New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization Governments in developing countries and transition countries more often resort to direct asset sales to a few investors, partly because those countries do not yet have a stock market with high capital. Voucher privatization occurred mainly in the transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Additionally, privatization from below had made important contribution to economic growth in transition economies. In one study assimilating some of the literature on "privatization" that occurred in Russian and Czech Republic transition economies, the authors identified three methods of privatization: "privatization by sale", "mass privatization", and "mixed privatization". Their calculations showed that "mass privatization" was the most effective method. However, in economies "characterized by shortages" and maintained by the state bureaucracy, wealth was accumulated and concentrated by "gray/black market" operators. Privatizing industries by sale to these individuals did not mean a transition to "effective private sector owners [of former] state assets". Rather than mainly participating in a market economy, these individuals could prefer elevating their personal status or prefer accumulating political power. Instead, outside foreign investment led to the efficient conduct of former state assets in the private sector and market economy | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization Through privatization by direct asset sale or the stock market, bidders compete to offer higher prices, generating more revenue for the state. Voucher privatization, on the other hand, could represent a genuine transfer of assets to the general population, creating a sense of participation and inclusion. A market could be created if the government permits transfer of vouchers among voucher holders. Some privatization transactions can be interpreted as a form of a secured loan and are criticized as a "particularly noxious form of governmental debt". In this interpretation, the upfront payment from the privatization sale corresponds to the principal amount of the loan, while the proceeds from the underlying asset correspond to secured interest payments – the transaction can be considered substantively the same as a secured loan, though it is structured as a sale. This interpretation is particularly argued to apply to recent municipal transactions in the United States, particularly for fixed term, such as the 2008 sale of the proceeds from Chicago parking meters for 75 years. It is argued that this is motivated by "politicians' desires to borrow money surreptitiously", due to legal restrictions on and political resistance to alternative sources of revenue, viz, raising taxes or issuing debt. Literature reviews find that in competitive industries with well-informed consumers, privatization consistently improves efficiency | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization The more competitive the industry, the greater the improvement in output, profitability, and efficiency. Such efficiency gains mean a one-off increase in GDP, but through improved incentives to innovate and reduce costs also tend to raise the rate of economic growth. Although typically there are many costs associated with these efficiency gains, many economists argue that these can be dealt with by appropriate government support through redistribution and perhaps retraining. Yet, some empirical literature suggests that privatization could also have very modest effects on efficiency and quite regressive distributive impact. In the first attempt at a social welfare analysis of the British privatization program under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major during the 1980s and 1990s, Massimo Florio points to the absence of any productivity shock resulting strictly from ownership change. Instead, the impact on the previously nationalized companies of the UK productivity leap under the Conservatives varied in different industries. In some cases, it occurred prior to privatization, and in other cases, it occurred upon privatization or several years afterward. A study by the European Commission found that the UK rail network (which was privatized from 1994–97) was most improved out of all the 27 EU nations from 1997–2012. The report examined a range of 14 different factors and the UK came top in four of the factors, second and third in another two and fourth in three, coming top overall | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization Privatizations in Russia and Latin America were accompanied by large-scale corruption during the sale of the state-owned companies. Those with political connections unfairly gained large wealth, which has discredited privatization in these regions. While media have widely reported the grand corruption that accompanied those sales, studies have argued that in addition to increased operating efficiency, daily petty corruption is, or would be, larger without privatization, and that corruption is more prevalent in non-privatized sectors. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that extralegal and unofficial activities are more prevalent in countries that privatized less. A 2009 study published in "The Lancet" medical journal initially claimed to have found that as many as a million working men died as a result of economic shocks associated with mass privatization in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe during the 1990s, although a further study revealed that there were errors in their method and "correlations reported in the original article are simply not robust." Historian Walter Scheidel, a specialist in ancient history, posits that economic inequality and wealth concentration in the top percentile "had been made possible by the transfer of state assets to private owners." In Latin America, there is a discrepancy between the economic efficiency of privatization and the political/social ramifications that occur | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization On the one hand, economic indicators, including firm profitability, productivity, and growth, project positive microeconomic results. On the other hand, however, these results have largely been met with a negative criticism and citizen coalitions. This neoliberal criticism highlights the ongoing conflict between varying visions of economic development. Karl Polanyi emphasizes the societal concerns of self-regulating markets through a concept known as a "double movement". In essence, whenever societies move towards increasingly unrestrained, free-market rule, a natural and inevitable societal correction emerges to undermine the contradictions of capitalism. This was the case in the 2000 Cochabamba protests. in Latin America has invariably experienced increasing push-back from the public. Some suggest that implementing a less efficient but more politically mindful approach could be more sustainable. In India, a survey by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) —Utilization of Free Medical Services by Children Belonging to the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) in Private Hospitals in New Delhi, 2011-12: A Rapid Appraisal—indicates under-utilization of the free beds available for EWS category in private hospitals in Delhi, though they were allotted land at subsidized rates. In Australia a "People's Inquiry into Privatisation" (2016/17) found that the impact of privatisation on communities was negative. The report from the inquiry "Taking Back Control" https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization net/cpsu/pages/1573/attachments/original/1508714447/Taking_Back_Control_FINAL.pdf?1508714447 made a range of recommendations to provide accountability and transparency in the process. The report highlighted privatisation in healthcare, aged care, child care, social services, government departments, electricity, prisons and vocational education featuring the voices of workers, community members and academics. Arguments for and against the controversial subject of privatization are presented here. Studies show that private market factors can more efficiently deliver many goods or service than governments due to free market competition. Over time, this tends to lead to lower prices, improved quality, more choices, less corruption, less red tape, and/or quicker delivery. Many proponents do not argue that everything should be privatized. According to them, market failures and natural monopolies could be problematic. However, anarcho-capitalists prefer that every function of the state be privatized, including defense and dispute resolution. Proponents of privatization make the following arguments: Opponents of certain privatizations believe that certain public goods and services should remain primarily in the hands of government in order to ensure that everyone in society has access to them (such as law enforcement, basic health care, and basic education). There is a positive externality when the government provides society at large with public goods and services such as defense and disease control | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization Some national constitutions in effect define their governments' "core businesses" as being the provision of such things as justice, tranquility, defense, and general welfare. These governments' direct provision of security, stability, and safety, is intended to be done for the common good (in the public interest) with a long-term (for posterity) perspective. As for natural monopolies, opponents of privatization claim that they aren't subject to fair competition, and better administrated by the state. Although private companies will provide a similar good or service alongside the government, opponents of privatization are careful about completely transferring the provision of public goods, services and assets into private hands for the following reasons: In economic theory, privatization has been studied in the field of contract theory. When contracts are complete, institutions such as (private or public) property are difficult to explain, since every desired incentive structure can be achieved with sufficiently complex contractual arrangements, regardless of the institutional structure (all that matters is who are the decision makers and what is their available information). In contrast, when contracts are incomplete, institutions matter. A leading application of the incomplete contract paradigm in the context of privatization is the model by Hart, Shleifer, and Vishny (1997) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Privatization In their model, a manager can make investments to increase quality (but they may also increase costs) and investments to decrease costs (but they may also reduce quality). It turns out that it depends on the particular situation whether private ownership or public ownership is desirable. The Hart-Shleifer-Vishny model has been further developed in various directions, e.g. to allow for mixed public-private ownership and endogenous assignments of the investment tasks. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24661 |
Prime time The prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television programming. It is used by the major television networks to broadcast their season's nightly programming. The term "prime time" is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example (in the United States), from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time) or 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (Central and Mountain Time). In India and some Middle Eastern countries, prime time consists of the programmes that are aired on TV between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. local time. In Bangladeshi Television Channels, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is known as Prime Time. Several National Broadcasters like Maasranga Television, Gazi TV, Channel 9, Channel i broadcast their prime-time shows from 20:00 to 23:00 after their Primetime news at 19:00. During Eid Season, most of the TV Stations broadcast their especially produced shows and World Television Premiers starting from 15:00 to midnight. In Ramadan, the broadcasters also air special Religious and Cooking shows starting from 14:00 to 20:00 affecting the primetime hours. Besides, After blameways, Late Night Talkshows are also aired from 01:00 to 04:00 with Ramadan being exception. Religious shows are also broadcast simultaneously from 01:00 along with Talkshows and News Analysis | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time In Chinese television, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is known as Golden Time Also Known "Party time",(Traditional Chinese: 黄金時間; Simplified Chinese: 黄金时间; Pinyin: Huángjīn shíjiān). The term also influenced a nickname of a strip of holidays in known as Golden Week. usually takes place from 19:00 until 22:00. After that, programs classified as "PG" (Parental Guidance) are allowed to be broadcast. Frontline dramas appear during this time slot in Cantonese, as well as movies in English. In India, prime time occurs between 20:00 and 22:30. Usually, programmes during prime time are domestic dramas, talent shows and reality shows. usually takes place from 18:00 to 23:00 WIB, preceded by a daily newscast at 17:00 (although some channels broadcast their daily evening newscasts earlier, usually at 16:00 or 16:30 but the practice ended in 2018, except for TVRI). After prime time, programs classified as Adult, as well as cigarette commercials, are allowed to be broadcast. Like another Muslim-majority country, there is also a 'midnight prime time' during sahur time in a month of Ramadan. It takes place from 02:00 (or 02:30 in some channels) and ends at the Fajr prayer call, varies between 04:30 and 05:00. The time slot is usually filled with comedy and religious programming. In Iraq, prime time runs from 20:00 to 23:00. The main news programs are broadcast at 20:00 and the highest-rated television program airs at 21:00. In Japanese television, prime time runs from 19:00 to 23:00 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time Especially, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is also known as . The term also influenced a nickname of a strip of holidays in Japan known as Golden Week. Malaysian prime time starts with the main news from 20:00 to 20:30 (now 20:00 to 21:00) and ends either at 23:00 or 1:00, or possibly later. Usually, programmes during prime time are domestic dramas, foreign drama series (mostly American), films and entertainment programmes. Programmes classified as 18 are not allowed to be broadcast before 10:00 p.m. but on RTM, most programmes on this slot are rated U (U means "Umum" in Malay and literally General Viewing or General Audiences in English) throughout the whole day. However, programmes broadcast after 23:00 are still considered prime time. As of 2019, NTV7's prime time continues until 12:00 a.m. Programmes during prime time may have longer commercial breaks due to number of viewers. Some domestic prime-time productions may be affected because of certain major sporting events such as FIFA World Cup. However, only FIFA World Cup held in the Americas do not affect the domestic prime-time programmes but only during daytime. In Pakistan, prime time begins between 20:00—22:00 Pakistan Standard Time. During this time majority of the local channels broadcast news and or drama serials, however on state channels it has been observed that they broadcast Khabarnama (New Bulletin) from past many decades | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time In the Philippines, prime-time blocks begin at 18:00 (now 17:50 or 17:00) and run until about 23:00 (or 23:30) on weekdays, and 19:00 to 23:00 on weekends. The weekday prime-time blocks usually consists of local teleseryes (soap operas) and foreign television series. The network's highest-rated programs are usually aired right after the evening newscast at 20:00, while a foreign series usually precedes the late night newscast. On weekends, non-scripted programming such as comedy series, talent shows, reality shows and current affairs shows air in prime time. For the minor networks, prime time consists of American television series on weekdays, with encores of those shows on weekends. originally started earlier at around 19:00, but the evening newscasts were lengthened to 90 minutes and now start at 18:30, instead of the original one-hour newscast that starts at 18:00. In Singapore, prime time begins at 18:00 on Mediacorp Channel 5, 18:30 on Mediacorp Channel 8 and 19:00 on MediaCorp Channel U, Channel NewsAsia, MediaCorp Suria, MediaCorp Vasantham. which are also the main (Free-to-air) television channels in Singapore. On Channel 8, prime time ends at midnight or 0:15 on weekdays, at 0:30 on Saturday nights and at 23:30 on Sunday nights. On Channel 5, prime time ends at 0:00 on weekdays, at 1:30 (or later) on Saturday nights and at 0:30 on Sunday nights | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time On Suria, prime time ends at 22:30 on Monday to Thursday nights, 23:30 on Friday nights, 23:00 on weekends and at 00:30 or 01:00 on eve and actual days of Public Holidays. On Vasantham, prime time ends at 23:00 on Mondays to Thursdays, midnight (or later) on Friday and Saturday nights and at 23:30 on Sunday nights. On Channel NewsAsia, prime time ends at 23:01, immediately after the news headlines, seven days a week and on Channel U, prime time ends at 23:00 seven days a week. Generally, however, prime time is considered to be from 18:00 to 00:00. In South Korea, prime time usually runs from 20:00 to 23:00 during the week, while on Saturdays and Sundays, it runs from 18:00 to 23:00. Family-oriented television shows are broadcast before 22:00, and adult-oriented television shows air after 22:00. In Taiwan, prime time (called "bādiǎn dàng"——in Mandarin Chinese) starts at 20:00 in the evening. Taiwanese drama series played then are called 8 o'clock series and are expected to have high viewer ratings. In Thailand, prime time dramas (ละคร; la-korn) air from 20:30 to 22:30. Most dramas are soap operas. dramas are popular and influential to Thai society. In Vietnam is also known as Golden Time (Tiếng Việt: Giờ vàng), prime time starts at 20:00 in the evening and ends at 23:00. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, prime time starts at 20:00 and finishes at 22:00. It is preceded by a daily newscast ("Dnevnik") at 19:00 and followed by a late night newscast ("Vijesti") at 22:00 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time In Croatia, prime time starts between 20:00 and 20:15. Croatian public broadcaster HRT broadcasts a daily newscast from 19:00 to 20:00. Also, many private broadcasters have daily newscasts either before or after the HTY newscast, at around 20.05, followed by the start of their own prime time. Many broadcasters without daily newscasts start their prime time at 20:00. generally ends between 22:00 and 23:00, followed by the late night edition of the network newscast and adult-oriented programming. In Denmark, prime time starts at 20:00. In Finland, prime time starts at 21:00. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 20:30. In France prime time runs from 21:05 (after the main channels' evening news programmes) until around 22:30. In Georgia, prime time starts between 18:45 and 20:00 and generally ends at midnight. However, on Friday night / Saturday morning prime time usually continues until 1:00. At 20:00 each evening Das Erste (The First), Germany's oldest public television network, airs the country's most-watched news broadcast, the main edition of the "Tagesschau"—which is also simulcast on most of its other specialist and regional channels (The Third). The conclusion of the bulletin 15 minutes later marks the beginning of prime time, as it has since the 1950s. In consequence, most channels also choose to start their prime time at 20:15. In the 1990s, the commercial channel Sat.1 suffered a significant loss of audience share when it tried moving the start of its prime time to 20:00 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time In Greece, prime time runs from 21:00 (usually following the news) to midnight. In Hungary, prime time on weekdays on the two big commercial stations (RTL Klub and TV2) starts at 19:00 with game shows, tabloid and docu-reality programmes. At 21:00, two popular soap operas air: "Barátok közt" and "Jóban Rosszban", which follows at 21:30. American and other series, movies, talk-shows and magazines run until 23:30. The prime-time lineup is preceded by daily news programmes at 18:30. At weekends prime time begins at 19:00, with blockbuster movies and television shows. Before 15 March 2015, the public television station M1 began its prime time with a game show at 18:30, which was followed by the daily news programme "Híradó" at 19:30. After the news, the channel broadcast American and other series, talk shows, magazines, and news programmes until 22:00, after which came the daily news magazine "Este" and the late edition of "Híradó". From 15 March 2015, Duna began broadcasting all of the entertainment programming transferred to it from that date from M1, meaning that prime time on Duna now begins at 18:00, starting with the simulcast of the 18:00 edition of Híradó from the newly re-launched news channel, M1. In Iceland, prime time starts at 19:30. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:00. In Ireland, prime starts at 18:30 and ends at 22:00. In Italy, prime time (called "prima serata") starts between 21:00 and 21:45 (main channels) and ends between 23:30 and 00:30 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time On Friday and Saturday night some shows last until 01:30–02:00. It usually follows news and, on some networks (like Rai 1 and Canale 5), a slot called "access prime time". Shows, movies, and sport events are usually shown during prime time. Much like in Germany, prime time in the Netherlands usually begins at 20:30 in order to not compete with NOS's flagship 20:00 newscast. In Norway, prime time starts at 19:45. On the NRK1 channel it is preceded by the daily newscast "Dagsrevyen" at 19:00. Locally, prime time is called (lit. "best time for broadcasting"). In Poland, prime time starts around 20:00 (sometimes 20:30). On (TVP 1) It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:30, on (TVN) the newscast is aired at 19:00 followed by the newsmagazine Uwaga at 19:50 (weekdays)/19:45 (weekends) and then the soap Na Wspólnej at 20:05 (Monday to Thursday, from Friday to Sunday (at 20:00) various: movies on Friday, show or movies (Winter and Summer) at Saturday, and programme or movies (Winter and Summer) at Sunday), on (Polsat) the news is aired at 18:50, followed by a sitcom Świat według Kiepskich at 19:30. In Russia television prime time is between 19:00 and 23:00 on working days and from 15:00 to 01:00 on holidays. On radio stations there are morning, day and evening prime times. The most common division: morning—6:30 to 10:00; day—~12:00 to 14:00; evening—16:00 to 21:00 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time Public television in Slovakia consists of two channels; on the main channel (Jednotka) prime time starts at 20:10, and on the second one (Dvojka) prime-time programming starts at 20:00. The two biggest private broadcasters set the start of prime-time programming at 20:20 (Markíza) and 20:30 (JOJ). Generally, however, prime time is considered to be from 20:00 to 23:00. In Slovenia, prime time, the period in which the most-watched shows are broadcast, is from 8:00pm to 11:00pm. It is preceded by daily newscasts; Dnevnik RTV SLO (7:00pm–8:00pm) on TV SLO 1, 24ur (6:55pm–8:00pm) on POP TV, Svet na Kanalu A (6:00pm–7:00pm; 7:50pm–8:0pm), and Danes (7:30pm–8:00pm) on Planet TV. In Spain, prime time refers to the time period in which the most-watched shows are broadcast. in Spain starts quite late when compared to most nations as it runs from 22:30 till 01:00. Most news programmes in Spain air at 21:00 for an hour and prime time follows. However, due to fierce competition, especially among the private stations prime time has even been delayed until 23:00. Most channels are delaying prime time in order to protect their top shows from sporting events. In the 1990s, prime time in Spain began at 21:00, moving to 21:30 in the latter half of the 1990s and 22:00 in the early 2000s. Commercial broadcaster laSexta and the second channel from the Public broadcasting La 2 have attempted to shift prime time back to 21:30 in 2006 and Spring 2007, but these attempts have been unsuccessful | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time Fellow public channel La 1 also tried to pull prime time back to 21:00 in early 2015, to no avail. The lateness in the start of prime time in Spain is also due to Spanish culture. Spanish people generally work from 09:00–14:00 and then from 17:00–20:00 as opposed to the standard 09:00–17:00. The popular late-night show "Crónicas marcianas" during the late 1990s–2000 also helped to extend prime time well into the early hours with the show being watched by a share of 40%, despite finishing at 02:00. Spain might also be unique in that it has a second prime time, running from 14:30–17:00 which coincides with the extended Spanish lunch break. Shows airing in the secondary prime time period on many occasions beat those prime-time shows at night on a daily basis. The second prime time only occurs on weekdays, though and the slot is usually filled with "The Simpsons", news, soap operas and talk shows. In Sweden, prime time starts at 20:00. It is preceded by a daily newscast at 19:30 and local news at 19:50. In the UK, prime time (known as peak time in that country) runs from 17:30 to 23:00. In North America, television networks feed their prime-time programming in two blocks: one for the Eastern and Central time zones, and the other, on a three-hour tape delay, for the Pacific time zone, to their local network affiliates. In Atlantic Canada (including Newfoundland) as well as Alaska and Hawaii, there is no change in the interpretation or usage of "prime time" as the concept is not attached to time zones in any way | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time Affiliates in the Mountain, Alaskan, and Hawaiian zones are either on their own to delay broadcast by an hour or two, or collectively form a small, regional network feed with others in the same time zone. is commonly defined as 8:00–11:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, Such as TBS, HGTV AND ABC FAMILY, and 7:00–10:00 p.m. Central/Mountain. On Sundays, the major broadcast television networks traditionally begin their primetime programming at 7:00 p.m. (Eastern/Pacific, 6:00 p.m. Central/Mountain) instead. Some networks such as Fox, The CW, and MyNetworkTV only broadcast from 8:00–10:00 p.m., a time period known as "common prime". Most networks air primetime programming nightly, but the smaller MyNetworkTV only broadcasts prime-time programs on weekdays since 2009, and The CW only broadcasts on weekdays and Sundays as of 2018, leaving Saturday's schedule to their affiliates. In Canada, CTV and Global both follow the same model as the larger U.S. networks (although both may occasionally air programming in the 7:00 p.m. hour in the event of scheduling conflicts with other U.S. imports), while CBC Television, Citytv and CTV Two only schedule prime-time programs within the common prime period (with the 10:00 p.m. p.m. hour dedicated to syndicated programming on Citytv and CTV Two, and CBC airing its news program "The National"). The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has alternatively defined prime time as ranging from 6 pm to 11 pm to 7 pm to 11 pm | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time Since the early 2000s, the major networks have come to consider Saturday prime time as a graveyard slot, and have largely abandoned scheduling of new scripted programming on that night. The major networks still maintain a prime-time programming schedule on Saturdays; while live sporting events (most commonly college football in the United States and ice hockey in Canada) are generally preferred to fill the time slot, they typically air encores of programs aired earlier in the week, films, non-scripted reality programs, true crime programs produced by their news divisions and, occasionally, burned off episodes of low-rated or cancelled series. can be extended or truncated if coverage of sporting events run past their allotted end time. Since the "Heidi Game" incident in 1968, in which NBC cut away from coverage of a New York Jets/Oakland Raiders football game on the east coast in order to show a movie (and, in the process, causing viewers to miss an unexpected comeback by the Raiders to win the game), the present-day National Football League mandated that all games be broadcast in their entirety in the markets of the teams involved. Due to this rule, game telecasts may sometimes overrun into the 7:00 p.m. ET hour. Fox previously scheduled repeats of its animated series in the 7:00 hour, allowing themselves to simply pre-empt the reruns if a game ran long. This was later replaced by a half-hour-long wrap-up show, "" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time In contrast, CBS does not, as its weekly newsmagazine "60 Minutes" has traditionally aired as close to 7:00 p.m. ET as possible. Even if a game runs past that hour, CBS shows "60 Minutes" in its entirety after the conclusion of coverage, and the rest of the prime-time schedule on the East Coast is shifted to compensate. For example, if game coverage were to end at 7:30 p.m., prime time would end at 11:30 p.m. However, in the rare case where the NFL game runs excessively late (8 p.m. or later), the series scheduled to air at 10 p.m. is preempted, with the West Coast and eastern markets airing only an early afternoon game usually receiving a repeat of the 10 p.m. series instead. In an extreme case, CBS's prime time can be extended past midnight during broadcasts of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. This does not necessarily apply universally; in 2001, after an XFL game went into double overtime, causing a 45-minute delay of a highly promoted episode of "Saturday Night Live", NBC made a decision to cut off all future XFL broadcasts at 11:00 p.m. ET. Since the launch of NBCSN, NBC has occasionally invoked this curfew by moving sports overruns to that channel if necessary. Until the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulated time slots prior to prime time with the now-defunct Prime Time Access Rule in the 1971–1972 season, networks began programming at 7:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific/6:30 p.m. Central and Mountain on weeknights | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time The change helped instigate what is colloquially known as the "rural purge"—a long-term trend away from programs appealing to older and rural audiences in favor of programs catering towards younger, "urban" viewers. As a result, the hour became a lucrative timeslot for syndicated programming in the years that followed, with game and variety shows, as well as other syndicated reruns, becoming popular. The vast majority of prime-time programming in English-speaking North America comes from the United States, with only a limited amount produced in Canada. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission mandates quotas for Canadian content in prime time; these quotas indicate at least half of Canadian prime-time programs must be Canadian in origin, but the majority of this is served by national and local news or localized entertainment gossip shows such as Global's "ET Canada" and CTV's "eTalk". Likewise, the vast majority of Spanish-language programming in North America comes from Mexico. Televisa, a Mexican network, provides the majority of programming to the dominant U.S.-based Spanish broadcaster, Univision. Univision does produce a fairly large amount of unscripted Spanish-language programming, the best known having been the long-running variety show "Sábado Gigante", hosted and created by Chilean national Don Francisco. Univision's distant second-place competitor, Telemundo, produces a much greater share of in-house content, including a long line of telenovelas | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time In Quebec, the largest Francophone area of North America, French-language programming consists of originally produced programs (most of which are produced in Montreal, with a few produced in Quebec City) and a few French-language dubs of English language programs. On all of the Quebec networks, entertainment programming is scheduled only between 8 and 10 p.m., with the 10–11 p.m. hour given over to a network newscast or a nightly talk show. is the daypart (a block of a day's programming schedule) with the most viewers and is generally where television networks and local stations reap much of their advertising revenues. In recent years television advertising expenditure in the US has been highest during prime-time drama shows. The Nielsen ratings system is explicitly designed for the optimum measurement of audience viewership by dayparts with prime time being of most interest. Television viewership is, in general, highest on weekday evenings, as most Americans are at work during the day, asleep during the overnights, and out taking part in social events on weekends; thus, television has its highest audience at times when people are unlikely to be away from home. for radio is called drive time and, in Eastern and Pacific Time, is 6–10 a.m. and 3–7 p.m. and, for Mountain and Central Time, is 5–9 a.m. and 2–6 p.m | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time The difference between peak radio listenership and television viewership times is due to the fact that people listen to their radios most often while driving to and from work (hence the name "drive time"). A survey by Nielsen revealed that viewers watched almost two hours' worth of TV during prime time. In a great part of Latin American countries, prime time (known in most countries as "horario central" or "Central Time") is considered to be from 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. The time slot is usually used for news, telenovelas and television series, and special time slots are used for reality shows, with great popularity, especially in Mexico and Brazil. In Mexico, prime time is known as "horario estelar" ("Stellar Time"). In Brazil, it is called "horário nobre" ("noble time"), which is the time the three most famous telenovelas in the country are shown each weekday and on Saturdays. There are also news programs, reality shows, and sitcoms. In Argentina, prime time is considered to be from 8:00 p.m. until 12:00 a.m.; with the most successful series and telenovelas in the country (such as "Los Roldán" and "Valientes"), and entertainment shows, like CQC (Caiga Quien Caiga). In Chile, prime time is considered to be from 10:30 p.m. until 01:00 a.m.; with the most successful series and telenovelas in the country (such as "Socias" and "Las Vega's"). Investigation entertainment shows (like "Informe Especial", "Contacto", "Apuesto por tí") also air. in Australia is officially from 6:00 p.m | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Prime time to midnight, following Australian Eastern Standard Time, with the highest ratings normally achieved between 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Traditionally, prime time in New Zealand is considered to be 7:30pm to 10:30pm, but can be extended to cover the entire evening of television (5:30pm to 11:00pm). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=24973 |
Rational choice theory Rational choice theory, also known as choice theory or rational action theory, is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behavior. The basic premise of rational choice theory is that aggregate social behavior results from the behavior of individual actors, each of whom is making their individual decisions. The theory also focuses on the determinants of the individual choices (methodological individualism). then assumes that an individual has preferences among the available choice alternatives that allow them to state which option they prefer. These preferences are assumed to be complete (the person can always say which of two alternatives they consider preferable or that neither is preferred to the other) and transitive (if option A is preferred over option B and option B is preferred over option C, then A is preferred over C). The rational agent is assumed to take account of available information, probabilities of events, and potential costs and benefits in determining preferences, and to act consistently in choosing the self-determined best choice of action. In simpler terms, this theory dictates that every person, even when carrying out the most mundane of tasks, perform their own personal cost and benefit analysis in order to determine whether the action is worth pursuing for the best possible outcome. And following this, a person will choose the optimum venture in every case | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory This could culminate in a student deciding on whether to attend a lecture or stay in bed, a shopper deciding to provide their own bag to avoid the five pence charge or even a voter deciding which candidate or party based on who will fulfill their needs the best on issues that have an impact on themselves especially. Rationality is widely used as an assumption of the behavior of individuals in microeconomic models and analyses and appears in almost all economics textbook treatments of human decision-making. It is also used in political science, sociology, and philosophy. Gary Becker was an early proponent of applying rational actor models more widely. Becker won the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his studies of discrimination, crime, and human capital. A particular version of rationality is instrumental rationality, which involves seeking the most cost-effective means to achieve a specific goal without reflecting on the worthiness of that goal. Rational choice theorists do not claim that the theory describes the choice "process", but rather that it predicts the outcome and pattern of choices. An assumption often added to the rational choice paradigm is that individual preferences are self-interested, in which case the individual can be referred to as a homo economicus. Such an individual acts "as if" balancing costs against benefits to arrive at action that maximizes personal advantage | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory Proponents of such models, particularly those associated with the Chicago school of economics, do not claim that a model's assumptions are an accurate description of reality, only that they help formulate clear and falsifiable hypotheses. In this view, the only way to judge the success of a hypothesis is empirical tests. To use an example from Milton Friedman, if a theory that says that the behavior of the leaves of a tree is explained by their rationality passes the empirical test, it is seen as successful. Without specifying the individual's goal or preferences it may not be possible to empirically test, or falsify, the rationality assumption. However, the predictions made by a specific version of the theory are testable. In recent years, the most prevalent version of rational choice theory, expected utility theory, has been challenged by the experimental results of behavioral economics. Economists are learning from other fields, such as psychology, and are enriching their theories of choice in order to get a more accurate view of human decision-making. For example, the behavioral economist and experimental psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his work in this field. has become increasingly employed in social sciences other than economics, such as sociology, evolutionary theory and political science in recent decades | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory It has had far-reaching impacts on the study of political science, especially in fields like the study of interest groups, elections, behaviour in legislatures, coalitions, and bureaucracy. In these fields, the use of the rational choice paradigm to explain broad social phenomena is the subject of controversy. The concept of rationality used in rational choice theory is different from the colloquial and most philosophical use of the word. Colloquially, "rational" behaviour typically means "sensible", "predictable", or "in a thoughtful, clear-headed manner." uses a narrower definition of rationality. At its most basic level, behavior is rational if it is goal-oriented, reflective (evaluative), and consistent (across time and different choice situations). This contrasts with behavior that is random, impulsive, conditioned, or adopted by (unevaluative) imitation. Early neoclassical economists writing about rational choice, including William Stanley Jevons, assumed that agents make consumption choices so as to maximize their happiness, or utility. Contemporary theory bases rational choice on a set of choice axioms that need to be satisfied, and typically does not specify where the goal (preferences, desires) comes from. It mandates just a consistent ranking of the alternatives. Individuals choose the best action according to their personal preferences and the constraints facing them. E.g | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory , there is nothing irrational in preferring fish to meat the first time, but there is something irrational in preferring fish to meat in one instant and preferring meat to fish in another, without anything else having changed. The premise of rational choice theory as a social science methodology is that the aggregate behavior in society reflects the sum of the choices made by individuals. Each individual, in turn, makes their choice based on their own preferences and the constraints (or choice set) they face. At the individual level, rational choice theory stipulates that the agent chooses the action (or outcome) they most prefer. In the case where actions (or outcomes) can be evaluated in terms of costs and benefits, a rational individual chooses the action (or outcome) that provides the maximum net benefit, i.e., the maximum benefit minus cost. The theory applies to more general settings than those identified by costs and benefit. In general, rational decision making entails choosing among all available alternatives the alternative that the individual most prefers. The "alternatives" can be a set of actions ("what to do?") or a set of objects ("what to choose/buy"). In the case of actions, what the individual really cares about are the outcomes that results from each possible action. Actions, in this case, are only an instrument for obtaining a particular outcome | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory The available alternatives are often expressed as a set of objects, for example a set of "j" exhaustive and exclusive actions: For example, if a person can choose to vote for either Roger or Sara or to abstain, their set of possible alternatives is: The theory makes two technical assumptions about individuals' preferences over alternatives: Together these two assumptions imply that given a set of exhaustive and exclusive actions to choose from, an individual can "rank" the elements of this set in terms of his preferences in an internally consistent way (the ranking constitutes a partial ordering), and the set has at least one maximal element. The preference between two alternatives can be: Research that took off in the 1980s sought to develop models which drop these assumptions and argue that such behaviour could still be rational, Anand (1993). This work, often conducted by economic theorists and analytical philosophers, suggests ultimately that the assumptions or axioms above are not completely general and might at best be regarded as approximations. Alternative theories of human action include such components as Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's prospect theory, which reflects the empirical finding that, contrary to standard preferences assumed under neoclassical economics, individuals attach extra value to items that they already own compared to similar items owned by others | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory Under standard preferences, the amount that an individual is willing to pay for an item (such as a drinking mug) is assumed to equal the amount he or she is willing to be paid in order to part with it. In experiments, the latter price is sometimes significantly higher than the former (but see Plott and Zeiler 2005, Plott and Zeiler 2007 and Klass and Zeiler, 2013). Tversky and Kahneman do not characterize loss aversion as irrational. Behavioral economics includes a large number of other amendments to its picture of human behavior that go against neoclassical assumptions. Often preferences are described by their utility function or "payoff function". This is an ordinal number that an individual assigns over the available actions, such as: The individual's preferences are then expressed as the relation between these ordinal assignments. For example, if an individual prefers the candidate Sara over Roger over abstaining, their preferences would have the relation: A preference relation that as above satisfies completeness, transitivity, and, in addition, continuity, can be equivalently represented by a utility function. Both the assumptions and the behavioral predictions of rational choice theory have sparked criticism from various camps. As mentioned above, some economists have developed models of bounded rationality, which hope to be more psychologically plausible without completely abandoning the idea that reason underlies decision-making processes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory Other economists have developed more theories of human decision-making that allow for the roles of uncertainty, institutions, and determination of individual tastes by their socioeconomic environment (cf. Fernandez-Huerga, 2008). Martin Hollis and Edward J. Nell's 1975 book offers both a philosophical critique of neo-classical economics and an innovation in the field of economic methodology. Further they outlined an alternative vision to neo-classicism based on a rationalist theory of knowledge. Within neo-classicism, the authors addressed consumer behaviour (in the form of indifference curves and simple versions of revealed preference theory) and marginalist producer behaviour in both product and factor markets. Both are based on rational optimizing behaviour. They consider imperfect as well as perfect markets since neo-classical thinking embraces many market varieties and disposes of a whole system for their classification. However, the authors believe that the issues arising from basic maximizing models have extensive implications for econometric methodology (Hollis and Nell, 1975, p. 2). In particular it is this class of models – rational behavior as maximizing behaviour – which provide support for specification and identification. And this, they argue, is where the flaw is to be found. Hollis and Nell (1975) argued that positivism (broadly conceived) has provided neo-classicism with important support, which they then show to be unfounded | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory They base their critique of neo-classicism not only on their critique of positivism but also on the alternative they propose, rationalism. Indeed, they argue that rationality is central to neo-classical economics – as rational choice – and that this conception of rationality is misused. Demands are made of it that it cannot fulfill. In their 1994 work, "Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory", Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro argue that the empirical outputs of rational choice theory have been limited. They contend that much of the applicable literature, at least in political science, was done with weak statistical methods and that when corrected many of the empirical outcomes no longer hold. When taken in this perspective, rational choice theory has provided very little to the overall understanding of political interaction - and is an amount certainly disproportionately weak relative to its appearance in the literature. Yet, they concede that cutting edge research, by scholars well-versed in the general scholarship of their fields (such as work on the U.S. Congress by Keith Krehbiel, Gary Cox, and Mat McCubbins) has generated valuable scientific progress. Duncan K. Foley (2003, p. 1) has also provided an important criticism of the concept of "rationality" and its role in economics. He argued that“Rationality” has played a central role in shaping and establishing the hegemony of contemporary mainstream economics | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory As the specific claims of robust neoclassicism fade into the history of economic thought, an orientation toward situating explanations of economic phenomena in relation to rationality has increasingly become the touchstone by which mainstream economists identify themselves and recognize each other. This is not so much a question of adherence to any particular conception of rationality, but of taking rationality of individual behavior as the unquestioned starting point of economic analysis. Foley (2003, p. 9) went on to argue thatThe concept of rationality, to use Hegelian language, represents the relations of modern capitalist society one-sidedly. The burden of rational-actor theory is the assertion that ‘naturally’ constituted individuals facing existential conflicts over scarce resources would rationally impose on themselves the institutional structures of modern capitalist society, or something approximating them. But this way of looking at matters systematically neglects the ways in which modern capitalist society and its social relations in fact constitute the ‘rational’, calculating individual. The well-known limitations of rational-actor theory, its static quality, its logical antinomies, its vulnerability to arguments of infinite regress, its failure to develop a progressive concrete research program, can all be traced to this starting-point | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory Schram and Caterino (2006) contains a fundamental methodological criticism of rational choice theory for promoting the view that the natural science model is the only appropriate methodology in social science and that political science should follow this model, with its emphasis on quantification and mathematization. Schram and Caterino argue instead for methodological pluralism. The same argument is made by William E. Connolly, who in his work Neuropolitics shows that advances in neuroscience further illuminate some of the problematic practices of rational choice theory. More recently Edward J. Nell and Karim Errouaki (2011, Ch. 1) argued that:The DNA of neoclassical economics is defective. Neither the induction problem nor the problems of methodological individualism can be solved within the framework of neoclassical assumptions. The neoclassical approach is to call on rational economic man to solve both. Economic relationships that reflect rational choice should be ‘projectible’. But that attributes a deductive power to ‘rational’ that it cannot have consistently with positivist (or even pragmatist) assumptions (which require deductions to be simply analytic). To make rational calculations projectible, the agents may be assumed to have idealized abilities, especially foresight; but then the induction problem is out of reach because the agents of the world do not resemble those of the model. The agents of the model can be abstract, but they cannot be endowed with powers actual agents could not have | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory This also undermines methodological individualism; if behaviour cannot be reliably predicted on the basis of the ‘rational choices of agents’, a social order cannot reliably follow from the choices of agents. Furthermore, Pierre Bourdieu fiercely opposed rational choice theory as grounded in a misunderstanding of how social agents operate. Bourdieu argued that social agents do not continuously calculate according to explicit rational and economic criteria. According to Bourdieu, social agents operate according to an implicit practical logic—a practical sense—and bodily dispositions. Social agents act according to their "feel for the game" (the "feel" being, roughly, habitus, and the "game" being the field). Other social scientists, inspired in part by Bourdieu's thinking have expressed concern about the inappropriate use of economic metaphors in other contexts, suggesting that this may have political implications. The argument they make is that by treating everything as a kind of "economy" they make a particular vision of the way an economy works seem more natural. Thus, they suggest, rational choice is as much ideological as it is scientific, which does not in and of itself negate its scientific utility. An evolutionary psychology perspective is that many of the seeming contradictions and biases regarding rational choice can be explained as being rational in the context of maximizing biological fitness in the ancestral environment but not necessarily in the current one | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory Thus, when living at subsistence level where a reduction of resources may have meant death it may have been rational to place a greater value on losses than on gains. Proponents argue it may also explain differences between groups. The rational choice approach allows preferences to be represented as real-valued utility functions. Economic decision making then becomes a problem of maximizing this utility function, subject to constraints (e.g. a budget). This has many advantages. It provides a compact theory that makes empirical predictions with a relatively sparse model - just a description of the agent's objectives and constraints. Furthermore, optimization theory is a well-developed field of mathematics. These two factors make rational choice models tractable compared to other approaches to choice. Most importantly, this approach is strikingly general. It has been used to analyze not only personal and household choices about traditional economic matters like consumption and savings, but also choices about education, marriage, child-bearing, migration, crime and so on, as well as business decisions about output, investment, hiring, entry, exit, etc. with varying degrees of success. Despite the empirical shortcomings of rational choice theory, the flexibility and tractability of rational choice models (and the lack of equally powerful alternatives) lead to them still being widely used | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory The relationship between the rational choice theory and politics takes many forms, whether that be in voter behaviour, the actions of world leaders or even the way that important matters are dealt with. Voter behaviour shifts significantly thanks to rational theory, which is ingrained in human nature, the most significant of which occurs when there are times of economic trouble. This was assessed in detail by Anthony Downs who concluded that voters were acting on thoughts of higher income as a person ‘votes for whatever party he believes would provide him with the highest utility income from government action’. This is a significant simplification of how the theory influences people's thoughts but makes up a core part of rational theory as a whole. In a more complex fashion, voters will react often radically in times of real economic strife, which can lead to an increase in extremism. The government will be made responsible by the voters and thus they see a need to make a change. Some of the most infamous extremist parties came to power on the back of economic recessions, the most significant being the far right Nazi Party in Germany, who used the hyperinflation at the time to gain power rapidly, as they promised a solution and a scapegoat for the blame | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Rational choice theory There is a trend to this, as a comprehensive study carried out by three political scientists concluded, as a ‘turn to the right’ occurs and it is clear that it is the work of the rational theory because within ten years the politics returns to a more common state. The fear for many is that rational thinking does not allow for an efficient resolution to some of the most troubling world problems, such as the climate crisis. In this way, nationalism will not allow countries to work together and thus the criticisms of the theory should be noted very carefully. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=25400 |
Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his books "Philosophical Explanations" (1981), which included his counterfactual theory of knowledge, and "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice" (1971), in which Nozick also presented his own theory of utopia as one in which people can freely choose the rules of the society they enter into. His other work involved ethics, decision theory, philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His final work before his death, "Invariances" (2001), introduced his theory of evolutionary cosmology, by which he argues invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through evolution across possible worlds. Nozick was born in Brooklyn to a family of Kohenic descent. His mother was born Sophie Cohen, and his father was a Jew from the Russian shtetl who had been born with the name Cohen and who ran a small business. Nozick attended the public schools in Brooklyn. He was then educated at Columbia University (A.B. 1959, "summa cum laude"), where he studied with Sidney Morgenbesser, and later at Princeton University (Ph.D. 1963) under Carl Hempel, and at Oxford University as a Fulbright Scholar (1963–1964). At one point he joined the youth branch of Norman Thomas's Socialist Party | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26275 |
Robert Nozick In addition, at Columbia he founded the local chapter of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, which in 1962 changed its name to Students for a Democratic Society. That same year, after receiving his bachelor of arts degree in 1959, he married Barbara Fierer. They had two children, Emily and David. The Nozicks eventually divorced and he remarried, to the poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Nozick died in 2002 after a prolonged struggle with stomach cancer. He was interred at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974) Nozick received a National Book Award in category Philosophy and Religion. There, Nozick argues that only a minimal state limited to the narrow functions of protection against "force, fraud, theft, and administering courts of law" could be justified without violating people's rights. For Nozick, a distribution of goods is just if brought about by free exchange among consenting adults from a "just" starting position, even if large inequalities subsequently emerge from the process. Nozick appealed to the Kantian idea that people should be treated as ends (what he termed 'separateness of persons'), not merely as a means to some other end. Nozick challenged the partial conclusion of John Rawls' Second Principle of Justice of his "A Theory of Justice", that "social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26275 |
Robert Nozick " "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" claims a heritage from John Locke's "Second Treatise on Government" and seeks to ground itself upon a natural law doctrine, but reaches some importantly different conclusions from Locke himself in several ways. Most controversially, Nozick argued that a consistent upholding of the non-aggression principle would allow and regard as valid consensual or non-coercive enslavement contracts between adults. He rejected the notion of inalienable rights advanced by Locke and most contemporary capitalist-oriented libertarian academics, writing in "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" that the typical notion of a "free system" would allow adults to voluntarily enter into non-coercive slave contracts. In "Philosophical Explanations" (1981), which received the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, Nozick provided novel accounts of knowledge, free will, personal identity, the nature of value, and the meaning of life. He also put forward an epistemological system which attempted to deal with both the Gettier problem and those posed by skepticism. This highly influential argument eschewed justification as a necessary requirement for knowledge. Nozick's four conditions for S's knowing that P were: Nozick's third and fourth conditions are counterfactuals. He called this the "tracking theory" of knowledge | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26275 |
Robert Nozick Nozick believed the counterfactual conditionals bring out an important aspect of our intuitive grasp of knowledge: For any given fact, the believer's method must reliably track the truth despite varying relevant conditions. In this way, Nozick's theory is similar to reliabilism. Due to certain counterexamples that could otherwise be raised against these counterfactual conditions, Nozick specified that: Where M stands for the method by which S came to arrive at a belief whether or not P. A major criticism of Nozick's theory of knowledge is his rejection of the principle of deductive closure. This principle states that if S knows X and S knows that X implies Y, then S knows Y. Nozick's truth tracking conditions do not allow for the principle of deductive closure. Nozick believes that the truth tracking conditions are more fundamental to human intuition than the principle of deductive closure. "The Examined Life" (1989), pitched to a broader public, explores love, death, faith, reality, and the meaning of life. According to Stephen Metcalf, Nozick expresses serious misgivings about capitalist libertarianism, going so far as to reject much of the foundations of the theory on the grounds that personal freedom can sometimes only be fully actualized via a collectivist politics and that wealth is at times justly redistributed via taxation to protect the freedom of the many from the potential tyranny of an overly selfish and powerful few | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26275 |
Robert Nozick Nozick suggests that citizens who are opposed to wealth redistribution which fund programs they object to, should be able to opt out by supporting alternative government approved charities with an added 5% surcharge. However, Jeff Riggenbach has noted that in an interview conducted in July 2001, he stated that he had never stopped self-identifying as a libertarian. Roderick Long reported that in his last book, "Invariances", "[Nozick] identified voluntary cooperation as the 'core principle' of ethics, maintaining that the duty not to interfere with another person's 'domain of choice' is '[a]ll that any society should (coercively) demand'; higher levels of ethics, involving positive benevolence, represent instead a 'personal ideal' that should be left to 'a person's own individual choice and development.' And that certainly sounds like an attempt to embrace libertarianism all over again. My own view is that Nozick's thinking about these matters evolved over time and that what he wrote at any given time was an accurate reflection of what he was thinking at that time." Furthermore, Julian Sanchez reported that "Nozick "always" thought of himself as a libertarian in a broad sense, right up to his final days, even as his views became somewhat less 'hardcore.'" "The Nature of Rationality" (1993) presents a theory of practical reason that attempts to embellish notoriously spartan classical decision theory | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26275 |
Robert Nozick "Socratic Puzzles" (1997) is a collection of papers that range in topic from Ayn Rand and Austrian economics to animal rights. A thesis claims that "social ties are deeply interconnected with vital parts of Nozick's later philosophy", citing these two works as a development of "The Examined Life". His last production, "Invariances" (2001), applies insights from physics and biology to questions of objectivity in such areas as the nature of necessity and moral value. Nozick created the thought experiment of the "utility monster" to show that average utilitarianism could lead to a situation where the needs of the vast majority were sacrificed for one individual. He also wrote a version of what was essentially a previously-known thought experiment, the experience machine, in an attempt to show that ethical hedonism was false. Nozick asked us to imagine that "superduper neuropsychologists" have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences. We would not be able to tell that these experiences were not real. He asks us, if we were given the choice, would we choose a machine-induced experience of a wonderful life over real life? Nozick says no, then asks whether we have reasons not to plug into the machine and concludes that since it does not seem to be rational to plug in, ethical hedonism must be false. Nozick was notable for the exploratory style of his philosophizing and for his methodological ecumenism | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26275 |
Robert Nozick Often content to raise tantalizing philosophical possibilities and then leave judgment to the reader, Nozick was also notable for drawing from literature outside of philosophy (e.g., economics, physics, evolutionary biology). In his 2001 work, "Invariances", Nozick introduces his theory of truth, in which he leans towards a deflationary theory of truth, but argues that objectivity arises through being invariant under various transformations. For instance, space-time is a significant objective fact because an interval involving both temporal and spatial separation is invariant, whereas no simpler interval involving only temporal or only spatial separation is invariant under Lorentz transformations. Nozick argues that invariances, and hence objectivity itself, emerged through a theory of evolutionary cosmology across possible worlds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26275 |
Ronald Coase Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. He was the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School, where he arrived in 1964 and remained for the rest of his life. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991. Coase, who believed economists should study real markets and not theoretical ones, established the case for the corporation as a means to pay the costs of operating a marketplace. Coase is best known for two articles in particular: "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), which introduces the concept of transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms; and "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960), which suggests that well-defined property rights could overcome the problems of externalities (see Coase theorem). Additionally, Coase's transaction costs approach is currently influential in modern organizational economics, where it was reintroduced by Oliver E. Williamson. Ronald Harry Coase was born in Willesden, a suburb of London, on 29 December 1910. His father, Henry Joseph Coase (1884–1973) was a telegraphist for the post office, as was his mother, Rosalie Elizabeth Coase (née Giles; 1882–1972), before marriage. As a child, Coase had a weakness in his legs, for which he was required to wear leg-irons. Due to this problem, he attended the school for physical defectives. At the age of 12, he was able to enter Kilburn Grammar School on scholarship | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase At Kilburn, he studied for the intermediate examination of the University of London as an external student in 1927–29. Coase married Marion Ruth Hartung of Chicago, Illinois in Willesden, England, 7 August 1937. Although they were unable to have children, they were married 75 years until her death in 2012, making him one of the longest-married Nobel Prize laureates. Coase attended the London School of Economics, where he took courses with Arnold Plant and received a bachelor of commerce degree in 1932. During his undergraduate studies, Coase received the Sir Ernest Cassel Travelling Scholarship, awarded by the University of London. He used this to visit the University of Chicago in 1931–1932 and studied with Frank Knight and Jacob Viner. Coase's colleagues would later admit that they did not remember this first visit. Between 1932–34, Coase was an assistant lecturer at the Dundee School of Economics and Commerce, which later became part of the University of Dundee. Subsequently, Coase was an assistant lecturer in commerce at the University of Liverpool between 1934–1935 before returning to London School of Economics as a member of staff until 1951. He then started to work at the University at Buffalo and retained his British citizenship after moving to the United States in the 1950s. In 1958, he moved to the University of Virginia. Coase settled at the University of Chicago in 1964 and became the co-editor of the "Journal of Law and Economics" with Aaron Director | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase He was also for a time a trustee of the Philadelphia Society. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991. Nearing his 100th birthday, Coase was working on a book concerning the rise of the economies of China and Vietnam. In an interview, Coase explained the mission of the Coase China Society and his vision of economics and the part to be played by Chinese economists. This became "How China Became Capitalist" (2012) co-authored with Ning Wang. Coase was honoured and received an honorary doctorate from the University at Buffalo Department of Economics in May 2012. Coase died in Chicago on 2 September 2013 at the age of 102. His wife had died on 17 October 2012. He was praised across the political spectrum, with Slate Magazine calling him "one of the most distinguished economists in the world" and "Forbes" magazine calling him "the greatest of the many great University of Chicago economists". The Washington Post called his work over eight decades "impossible to summarize" while recommending five of his papers to read. In "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), a brief but highly influential essay, Coase attempts to explain why the economy features a number of business firms instead of consisting exclusively of a multitude of independent, self-employed people who contract with one another | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase Given that "production could be carried on without any organization [that is, firms] at all", Coase asks, why and under what conditions should we expect firms to emerge? Since modern firms can only emerge when an entrepreneur of some sort begins to hire people, Coase's analysis proceeds by considering the conditions under which it makes sense for an entrepreneur to seek hired help instead of contracting out for some particular task. The traditional economic theory of the time (in the tradition of Adam Smith) suggested that, because the market is "efficient" (that is, those who are best at providing each good or service most cheaply are already doing so), it should always be cheaper to contract out than to hire. Coase noted, however, a number of transaction costs involved in using the market; the cost of obtaining a good or service via the market actually exceeds the price of the good. Other costs, including search and information costs, bargaining costs, keeping trade secrets, and policing and enforcement costs, can all potentially add to the cost of procuring something from another party. This suggests that firms will arise which can internalise the production of goods and services required to deliver a product, thus avoiding these costs. This argument sets the stage for the later contributions by Oliver Williamson: markets and hierarchies are alternative co-ordination mechanisms for economic transactions. There is a natural limit to what a firm can produce internally, however | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase Coase notices "decreasing returns to the entrepreneur function", including increasing overhead costs and increasing propensity for an overwhelmed manager to make mistakes in resource allocation. These factors become countervailing costs to the use of the firm. Coase argues that the size of a firm (as measured by how many contractual relations are "internal" to the firm and how many "external") is a result of finding an optimal balance between the competing tendencies of the costs outlined above. In general, making the firm larger will initially be advantageous, but the decreasing returns indicated above will eventually kick in, preventing the firm from growing indefinitely. Other things being equal, therefore, a firm will tend to be larger: The first two costs will increase with the spatial distribution of the transactions organised and the dissimilarity of the transactions. This explains why firms tend to either be in different geographic locations or to perform different functions. Additionally, technology changes that mitigate the cost of organising transactions across space may allow firms to become larger – the advent of the telephone and of cheap air travel, for example, would be expected to increase the size of firms | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase A further exploration of the dichotomy between markets and hierarchies as co-ordination mechanisms for economic transactions, derived a third alternative way called Commons based peer production, in which individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals. Upon publishing his article The Federal Communications Commission in 1959, Coase received negative feedback from the faculty at the University of Chicago over his conclusions and apparent conflicts with A. C. Pigou. According to Coase, "What I said was thought to run counter to Pigou's analysis by a number of economists at the University of Chicago and was therefore, according to them, wrong. At a meeting in Chicago I was able to convince these economists that I was right and Pigou's analysis faulty." Coase had presented his paper in 1960 during a seminar in Chicago, to twenty senior economist including George Stigler and Milton Friedman. He gradually won over the usually skeptic audience, in what has later been considered a "paradigm-shifting moment" in the genesis of Chicago Law and Economics. Coase would join the Chicago faculty four years later. Published in the "Journal of Law and Economics" in 1960, while Coase was a member of the Economics department at the University of Virginia, "The Problem of Social Cost" provided the key insight that it is unclear where the blame for externalities lies | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase The example he gave was of a rancher whose cattle stray onto the cropland of his neighbour. If the rancher is made to restrict his cattle, he is harmed just as the farmer is if the cattle remain unrestrained. Coase argued that without transaction costs the initial assignment of property rights makes no difference to whether or not the farmer and rancher can achieve the economically efficient outcome. If the cost of restraining cattle by, say, building a fence, is less than the cost of crop damage, the fence will be built. The initial assignment of property rights determines who builds the fence. If the farmer is responsible for the crop damage, the farmer will pay for the fence (as long the fence costs less than the crop damage). The allocation of property rights is primarily an equity issue, with consequences for the distribution of income and wealth, rather than an efficiency issue. With sufficient transaction costs, initial property rights matter for both equity and efficiency. From the point of view of economic efficiency, property rights should be assigned such that the owner of the rights wants to take the economically efficient action. To elaborate, if it is efficient not to restrict the cattle, the rancher should be given the rights (so that cattle can move about freely), whereas if it is efficient to restrict the cattle, the farmer should be given the rights over the movement of the cattle (so the cattle are restricted) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase This seminal argument forms the basis of the famous Coase theorem as labelled by Stigler. Though trained as an economist, Coase spent much of his career working in a law school. He is a central figure in the development of the subfield of law and economics. He viewed law and economics as having two parts, the first "using the economists' approach and concepts to analyze the working of the legal system, often called the economic analysis of the law"; and the second "a study of the influence of the legal system on the working of the economic system." Coase said that the second part "is the part of law and economics in which I am most interested." In his Simons Lecture celebrating the centennial of the University of Chicago, titled "Law and Economics at Chicago", Coase noted that he only accidentally wandered into the field: Despite wandering accidentally into law and economics, the opportunity to edit the Journal of Law and Economics was instrumental in bringing him to the University of Chicago: Coase believed that the University of Chicago was the intellectual center of law and economics. He concluded his Simons lecture by stating: I am very much aware that, in concentrating in this lecture on law and economics at Chicago, I have neglected other significant contributions to the subject made elsewhere such as those by Guido Calabresi at Yale, by Donald Turner at Harvard, and by others | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase But it can hardly be denied that in the emergence of the subject of law and economics, Chicago has played a very significant part and one of which the University can be proud. Another important contribution of Coase is the Coase conjecture, which states that an informal argument that durable-goods monopolists do not have market power because they are unable to commit to not lowering their prices in future periods. When asked what he considered his politics to be, Coase stated, I really don't know. I don't reject any policy without considering what its results are. If someone says there's going to be regulation, I don't say that regulation will be bad. Let's see. What we discover is that most regulation does produce, or has produced in recent times, a worse result. But I wouldn't like to say that all regulation would have this effect because one can think of circumstances in which it doesn't. Coase admitted that early in life, he aligned himself with socialism. Guido Calabresi wrote that Coase's focus on transaction costs in "The Nature of the Firm" was the result of his socialist beliefs. Reflecting on this, Coase wrote: "It is very difficult to know where one's ideas come from but for all I know he may well be right." Coase continued: Coase was research advisor to the Institute, an organisation that promotes research on institutions and organizations – the laws, rules, customs, and norms – that govern real economic systems, with particular support for young scholars from developing and transitional countries | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Ronald Coase The University of Chicago Law School carries on the legacy of through the mission of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics. Each year, the University of Chicago Law School hosts the Coase Lecture, which was delivered in 2003 by himself. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26354 |
Statistics is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments. See glossary of probability and statistics. When census data cannot be collected, statisticians collect data by developing specific experiment designs and survey samples. Representative sampling assures that inferences and conclusions can reasonably extend from the sample to the population as a whole. An experimental study involves taking measurements of the system under study, manipulating the system, and then taking additional measurements using the same procedure to determine if the manipulation has modified the values of the measurements. In contrast, an observational study does not involve experimental manipulation. Two main statistical methods are used in data analysis: descriptive statistics, which summarize data from a sample using indexes such as the mean or standard deviation, and inferential statistics, which draw conclusions from data that are subject to random variation (e.g., observational errors, sampling variation) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics Descriptive statistics are most often concerned with two sets of properties of a "distribution" (sample or population): "central tendency" (or "location") seeks to characterize the distribution's central or typical value, while "dispersion" (or "variability") characterizes the extent to which members of the distribution depart from its center and each other. Inferences on mathematical statistics are made under the framework of probability theory, which deals with the analysis of random phenomena. A standard statistical procedure involves the test of the relationship between two statistical data sets, or a data set and synthetic data drawn from an idealized model. A hypothesis is proposed for the statistical relationship between the two data sets, and this is compared as an alternative to an idealized null hypothesis of no relationship between two data sets. Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis is done using statistical tests that quantify the sense in which the null can be proven false, given the data that are used in the test. Working from a null hypothesis, two basic forms of error are recognized: Type I errors (null hypothesis is falsely rejected giving a "false positive") and Type II errors (null hypothesis fails to be rejected and an actual relationship between populations is missed giving a "false negative"). Multiple problems have come to be associated with this framework: ranging from obtaining a sufficient sample size to specifying an adequate null hypothesis | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics Measurement processes that generate statistical data are also subject to error. Many of these errors are classified as random (noise) or systematic (bias), but other types of errors (e.g., blunder, such as when an analyst reports incorrect units) can also occur. The presence of missing data or censoring may result in biased estimates and specific techniques have been developed to address these problems. The earliest writings on probability and statistics, statistical methods drawing from probability theory, date back to Arab mathematicians and cryptographers, notably Al-Khalil (717–786) and Al-Kindi (801–873). In the 18th century, statistics also started to draw heavily from calculus. In more recent years statistics has relied more on statistical software to produce these tests such as descriptive analysis. is a mathematical body of science that pertains to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data, or as a branch of mathematics. Some consider statistics to be a distinct mathematical science rather than a branch of mathematics. While many scientific investigations make use of data, statistics is concerned with the use of data in the context of uncertainty and decision making in the face of uncertainty. In applying statistics to a problem, it is common practice to start with a population or process to be studied. Populations can be diverse topics such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics Ideally, statisticians compile data about the entire population (an operation called census). This may be organized by governmental statistical institutes. "Descriptive statistics" can be used to summarize the population data. Numerical descriptors include mean and standard deviation for continuous data types (like income), while frequency and percentage are more useful in terms of describing categorical data (like education). When a census is not feasible, a chosen subset of the population called a sample is studied. Once a sample that is representative of the population is determined, data is collected for the sample members in an observational or experimental setting. Again, descriptive statistics can be used to summarize the sample data. However, the drawing of the sample has been subject to an element of randomness, hence the established numerical descriptors from the sample are also due to uncertainty. To still draw meaningful conclusions about the entire population, "inferential statistics" is needed. It uses patterns in the sample data to draw inferences about the population represented, accounting for randomness. These inferences may take the form of: answering yes/no questions about the data (hypothesis testing), estimating numerical characteristics of the data (estimation), describing associations within the data (correlation) and modeling relationships within the data (for example, using regression analysis) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics Inference can extend to forecasting, prediction and estimation of unobserved values either in or associated with the population being studied; it can include extrapolation and interpolation of time series or spatial data, and can also include data mining. Mathematical statistics is the application of mathematics to statistics. Mathematical techniques used for this include mathematical analysis, linear algebra, stochastic analysis, differential equations, and measure-theoretic probability theory. The earliest writings on probability and statistics date back to Arab mathematicians and cryptographers, during the Islamic Golden Age between the 8th and 13th centuries. Al-Khalil (717–786) wrote the "Book of Cryptographic Messages", which contains the first use of permutations and combinations, to list all possible Arabic words with and without vowels. The earliest book on statistics is the 9th-century treatise "Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages", written by Arab scholar Al-Kindi (801–873). In his book, Al-Kindi gave a detailed description of how to use statistics and frequency analysis to decipher encrypted messages. This text laid the foundations for statistics and cryptanalysis. Al-Kindi also made the earliest known use of statistical inference, while he and later Arab cryptographers developed the early statistical methods for decoding encrypted messages. Ibn Adlan (1187–1268) later made an important contribution, on the use of sample size in frequency analysis | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics The earliest European writing on statistics dates back to 1663, with the publication of "Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality" by John Graunt. Early applications of statistical thinking revolved around the needs of states to base policy on demographic and economic data, hence its "stat-" etymology. The scope of the discipline of statistics broadened in the early 19th century to include the collection and analysis of data in general. Today, statistics is widely employed in government, business, and natural and social sciences. The mathematical foundations of modern statistics were laid in the 17th century with the development of the probability theory by Gerolamo Cardano, Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. Mathematical probability theory arose from the study of games of chance, although the concept of probability was already examined in medieval law and by philosophers such as Juan Caramuel. The method of least squares was first described by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1805. The modern field of statistics emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century in three stages. The first wave, at the turn of the century, was led by the work of Francis Galton and Karl Pearson, who transformed statistics into a rigorous mathematical discipline used for analysis, not just in science, but in industry and politics as well | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics Galton's contributions included introducing the concepts of standard deviation, correlation, regression analysis and the application of these methods to the study of the variety of human characteristics—height, weight, eyelash length among others. Pearson developed the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, defined as a product-moment, the method of moments for the fitting of distributions to samples and the Pearson distribution, among many other things. Galton and Pearson founded "Biometrika" as the first journal of mathematical statistics and biostatistics (then called biometry), and the latter founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London. Ronald Fisher coined the term null hypothesis during the Lady tasting tea experiment, which "is never proved or established, but is possibly disproved, in the course of experimentation". The second wave of the 1910s and 20s was initiated by William Sealy Gosset, and reached its culmination in the insights of Ronald Fisher, who wrote the textbooks that were to define the academic discipline in universities around the world. Fisher's most important publications were his 1918 seminal paper "The Correlation between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance" (which was the first to use the statistical term, variance), his classic 1925 work "Statistical Methods for Research Workers" and his 1935 "The Design of Experiments", where he developed rigorous design of experiments models | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics He originated the concepts of sufficiency, ancillary statistics, Fisher's linear discriminator and Fisher information. In his 1930 book "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection", he applied statistics to various biological concepts such as Fisher's principle (which A. W. F. Edwards called "probably the most celebrated argument in evolutionary biology") and Fisherian runaway, a concept in sexual selection about a positive feedback runaway affect found in evolution. The final wave, which mainly saw the refinement and expansion of earlier developments, emerged from the collaborative work between Egon Pearson and Jerzy Neyman in the 1930s. They introduced the concepts of "Type II" error, power of a test and confidence intervals. Jerzy Neyman in 1934 showed that stratified random sampling was in general a better method of estimation than purposive (quota) sampling. Today, statistical methods are applied in all fields that involve decision making, for making accurate inferences from a collated body of data and for making decisions in the face of uncertainty based on statistical methodology. The use of modern computers has expedited large-scale statistical computations and has also made possible new methods that are impractical to perform manually. continues to be an area of active research for example on the problem of how to analyze big data. When full census data cannot be collected, statisticians collect sample data by developing specific experiment designs and survey samples | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics itself also provides tools for prediction and forecasting through statistical models. The idea of making inferences based on sampled data began around the mid-1600s in connection with estimating populations and developing precursors of life insurance. To use a sample as a guide to an entire population, it is important that it truly represents the overall population. Representative sampling assures that inferences and conclusions can safely extend from the sample to the population as a whole. A major problem lies in determining the extent that the sample chosen is actually representative. offers methods to estimate and correct for any bias within the sample and data collection procedures. There are also methods of experimental design for experiments that can lessen these issues at the outset of a study, strengthening its capability to discern truths about the population. Sampling theory is part of the mathematical discipline of probability theory. Probability is used in mathematical statistics to study the sampling distributions of sample statistics and, more generally, the properties of statistical procedures. The use of any statistical method is valid when the system or population under consideration satisfies the assumptions of the method. The difference in point of view between classic probability theory and sampling theory is, roughly, that probability theory starts from the given parameters of a total population to deduce probabilities that pertain to samples | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics Statistical inference, however, moves in the opposite direction—inductively inferring from samples to the parameters of a larger or total population. A common goal for a statistical research project is to investigate causality, and in particular to draw a conclusion on the effect of changes in the values of predictors or independent variables on dependent variables. There are two major types of causal statistical studies: experimental studies and observational studies. In both types of studies, the effect of differences of an independent variable (or variables) on the behavior of the dependent variable are observed. The difference between the two types lies in how the study is actually conducted. Each can be very effective. An experimental study involves taking measurements of the system under study, manipulating the system, and then taking additional measurements using the same procedure to determine if the manipulation has modified the values of the measurements. In contrast, an observational study does not involve experimental manipulation. Instead, data are gathered and correlations between predictors and response are investigated. While the tools of data analysis work best on data from randomized studies, they are also applied to other kinds of data—like natural experiments and observational studies—for which a statistician would use a modified, more structured estimation method (e.g., Difference in differences estimation and instrumental variables, among many others) that produce consistent estimators | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics The basic steps of a statistical experiment are: Experiments on human behavior have special concerns. The famous Hawthorne study examined changes to the working environment at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company. The researchers were interested in determining whether increased illumination would increase the productivity of the assembly line workers. The researchers first measured the productivity in the plant, then modified the illumination in an area of the plant and checked if the changes in illumination affected productivity. It turned out that productivity indeed improved (under the experimental conditions). However, the study is heavily criticized today for errors in experimental procedures, specifically for the lack of a control group and blindness. The Hawthorne effect refers to finding that an outcome (in this case, worker productivity) changed due to observation itself. Those in the Hawthorne study became more productive not because the lighting was changed but because they were being observed. An example of an observational study is one that explores the association between smoking and lung cancer. This type of study typically uses a survey to collect observations about the area of interest and then performs statistical analysis. In this case, the researchers would collect observations of both smokers and non-smokers, perhaps through a cohort study, and then look for the number of cases of lung cancer in each group | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
Statistics A case-control study is another type of observational study in which people with and without the outcome of interest (e.g. lung cancer) are invited to participate and their exposure histories are collected. Various attempts have been made to produce a taxonomy of levels of measurement. The psychophysicist Stanley Smith Stevens defined nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio scales. Nominal measurements do not have meaningful rank order among values, and permit any one-to-one (injective) transformation. Ordinal measurements have imprecise differences between consecutive values, but have a meaningful order to those values, and permit any order-preserving transformation. Interval measurements have meaningful distances between measurements defined, but the zero value is arbitrary (as in the case with longitude and temperature measurements in Celsius or Fahrenheit), and permit any linear transformation. Ratio measurements have both a meaningful zero value and the distances between different measurements defined, and permit any rescaling transformation. Because variables conforming only to nominal or ordinal measurements cannot be reasonably measured numerically, sometimes they are grouped together as categorical variables, whereas ratio and interval measurements are grouped together as quantitative variables, which can be either discrete or continuous, due to their numerical nature | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=26685 |
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