MGM600-0803B-02 Applied Managerial Decision-Making - Phase 4 Essay - 1

MGM600-0803B-02 Applied Managerial Decision-Making - Phase 4 Discussion Board - Essay Example The equation for a regression analysis analyzes the relationship between one dependent variable and one or more independent variables (Curvefit 2008). In the regression equation, the dependent variable is modeled such that it is a function of the independent variables, constant, and an error term which is an estimation of the variations in the independent variable. A simple regression equation is one which tries to explain the dependent variable with a single explanatory for variable. For example, we know that the level of income of an individual can be explained by education, position, race, gender, and even age. When we would like to isolate the effects or relationship of income with race alone, this is called simple regression. However, when we take two or independent variables such as education, age, and race, then it is called multiple regressions (Curvefit 2008). Regression analysis has been a very useful tool in economists who are closely watching the relationship between variables. Regression analysis is used to forecast the GDP growth of the country by looking at the historic GDP data (Regression Analysis 2008). It is also used to determine the relationship between foreign exchange rate and the money supply in a given country. In business organizations, regression analysis is frequently utilized in order to make important decisions like pricing strategies (Regression Analysis 2008). WidgeCorp’s entry to the cold beverage sector should further be assessed by looking at the attractiveness of the market and the potential that it has in serving the customers. The company’s decision of coming up with a forecast of its monthly sales will be beneficial in decision of production levels. The monthly sales can be forecasted by using monthly sales as the dependent variable. In the regression equation, independent variables should include the amount investment in advertising, season, and time. The amount investment in advertising is important

Nobel prize Essay Example for Free

Nobel prize Essay The study of economics is a science. And like all sciences, it is firmly based upon the scientific method. It is important to remember this concept in the paper as it would be discussing implications of a paradigm shift in economics towards new schools of thought and applications of various methodologies. Economics, being a science, through trial and error and the application of the said scientific method, has evolved over the years since its original inception and has even garnered a certain place in the Nobel prize awards. Also, since the original conceptions of the early theories of economics which have been formulated by Smith, Ricardo, and Marshall, economics has come a long way and has integrated many discussions that belonged originally to other related disciplines and fields and employed its use under its own wing. However, as many have pointed out and as is becoming evident especially in todays modern age of financial crisis and market crashes, the science and discipline needs a new paradigm shift with respect to its application, understanding, and even methodological processes. Recently, BusinessWeek has published a story regarding the current failure of economists to not only predict the current financial crisis in the United States and the global economy, but also were not able to solve these issues using existing tools in economics. The disciplined then faces the question of whether or not economics needs a new paradigm shift. The objective of this paper is to explain, through analysis and understanding the basic frameworks of economics and how they work, why economics does not need a paradigm shift. In order to do this, the paper would be approaching the problem by understanding modern microeconomic and macro economic theory. It would also be the objective of this paper to understand the various anomalies on why such recent commentary has been made on the science and what are the probable ways in order to integrate such anomalies into the discipline in modern times. Towards the end of this paper, it is the hope that the reader is convinced that the science does not need a paradigm shift but rather merely needs to integrate such new problems into the current paradigm and framework in approaching the discipline and the problems that it tries to address. From the realm and point of view of microeconomics, there are various essential founding concepts that eventually launch into the more complicated discussions under microeconomics. Recent cutting edge microeconomic studies focus on game theory, simultaneous equilibria methods for consumers and producers, and even quantification of human behavior. In fact, if the paper was to summarize all recent activity under the academic wing and discussion of microeconomics, it would fill volumes and volumes of pages. However, what is important for the reader to realize is that even the most complicated microeconomic theories involving long mathematical equations and difficult matrix solutions are basically captured and can be derived from its founding theories such as utility maximization, the theory of consumer behavior, and understanding of perfect markets. Again, however, many have commented that the basic precepts that revolve around these founding microeconomic theories eventually produce anomalies that might as well create a new paradigm for approaching economic analysis because such founding theories do not actually reflect in the real world. Let us first take for example the discussions of utility maximization. The demand and supply framework which is the basic foundation of economics could be further distilled to understanding utility theory and the way consumers and producers are able to meet in the market by maximizing the levels of their happiness. In utility theory, there is the marginal utility curve which is a locus of points comparing the trade-off advantages and disadvantages between two goods any given set up. The tangency of this utility curve with a budget line of consumers eventually dictate areas which they choose to consume. Basically, standard utility theory in economics has the underlying principle and essential nature of perfect consumer rationality and consumer choice. Recently, however, social scientists, and even economists in some schools of thought, have pointed out that consumers are far from rational and could not conceivably draw a perfect utility curve that becomes the basic foundation for microeconomics. As such anomaly and arguments have pointed out, studies have reflected that consumers in the real world do not reflect perfect rationality because of the inability of human beings to perfectly compute various opportunity cost trade-offs simultaneously considering other variables. Furthermore, critics of utility theory have pointed out that the assumption of all things held constant that is ever so important in constructing basic microeconomic consumer choice is not actually applicable in real world situations. Therefore, as these detractors of modern economic theory point out, there must be a paradigm shift in the discipline.

Industry Production :: Industrial Production Manufacturing Essays

Industry Production The structure of industrial production and the service industries is characterized by the prevalence of smarkforce, 30% beingll and medium-sized companies (94% and 5.6% according to 100 workers) thoug981 data), employing, however, only 70% of the workforce, 30% being monopolized by large c ompanies (more than 100 workers) though these comprise only 0.4% of the total. This means that companies are widely dispersed over the whole country, obviously with significant location and concentration of industry, and more than half the industrial comp anies operate at little more than workshop level, as is seen by the small workforce in each production unit. On the other hand, the small number of large companies is explained by increased concentration, at that level also indicated by the high number of employees. There is only a limited number of cooperative companies (food sector and the transformation of agricultural products), while large companies tend to become multinational. The presence of companies with foreign capital monopolizing specific commodity secto rs (pharmaceuticals, photographic materials, electronics, cosmetics etc.) is far from rare. One particular kind of development regards medium-sized companies, frequently derivations of small family-run businesses with a specialized production, which as a result of management flexibility have succeeded in reconverting production and using technol ogical innovations which, with increased competitivity, enable them to penetrate international markets, in this way contributing to the consolidation of the Italian image and presence throughout the world. The Industrial Sectors The steel and metalworking industries The country's economic revival in the immediate postwar period was essentially sustained by development and expansion of the basic industries, particularly the steel industry, itself conditioned by the importation of raw materials such as ores, scrap iron and coal. Membership of ECSC enabled the Italian steel industry, which had installed the integral processing cycle, to attain extremely high levels of production thus satisfying increasingly greater domestic demand, such as that of the engineering industry, as well as the export market. Following plant reconversion steel and metal production is now stagnating due to the international economic situation dominated by strong competition from Japanese industries and plastics, leading to overproduction in the principal European countries. The engineering industries Mechanical engineering production is extremely varied and includes companies such as shipbuilding, aerospace, carbuilding etc. with complex work cycles, together with the manufacturers of simple tools. Component manufacturing is also well developed and cl osely allied to companies producing durable goods not easily classified in any one sector (for example, non-metallic materials used in the car industry: rubber, glass, plastics etc). In practice, mechanical engineering with its diversification and multiple relationships with other industries is considered the mainstay of the national productive system also in terms of the large workforce employed (over 2,2

Government Affiliation and Cloning Essay -- Biology Medical Biomedical

Government Affiliation and Cloning Abstract The theory to alter and duplicate a human being first arose in the early 1900s. It became widely controversial since the entrance of the experiments on real animals by the 1990s. Influenced by its citizens, the governments all over the world stepped in to regulate the new process by establishing specific laws tackling the issue. Each government differed from the others, and hence, each national law varies from another. However, attempts were made to unify the regulations under international circumstances in organizations such as the United Nations. Still undergoing conformation, the effort to halt cloning failed to stay constant, and would continue to change in the future. Since the successful cloning of the sheep Dolly in Roslin Institution of Scotland on July 5, 1996 (Peters, 2003, p.161), governments wrestled with the ideal of human cloning. Thrust with the responsibility to regulate a new form of artificial mammalian reproduction, and possibly human reproduction, the government became the deciding factor amidst the storm of controversy. Dolly signifies the first mammal cloned from the fully differentiated cell, which already had the genes of its function fully expressed. It allowed the duplication of another individual from any living cell of body. Ian Wilmut announced and patented the Roslin Technique, the method to clone Dolly, on February 22, 1997 and explained the details on the issue of Nature five days later (Peters, 2003, p.161). The reaction was immediate. Within hours of Wilmut’s announcement, the Church of Scotland released its rebuttal, criticizing the event as unethical. Likewise, the world was quick to establish its stance, pron ouncing the cloning of human as mora... ...e Government Affiliation 5 answer is simply democracy in action. Surely, the population will voice its opinion upon the matter, and whatever the majority of this generation decides, it will be enforced peacefully. Even as the times change-- people’s opinion change—it is still sure that the voices of the public will be heard. Government Affiliation 6 Bibliography NCSL. (2005, June). State Human Cloning Law. 7-27-05: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/Genetics/rt-shcl.htm. Peters, Ted. 2003. Playing God? New York and London: Routledge. Stanford. (2001, December). International Cloning Policy. Human Cloning- Cloning Policy. 7-24-05: http://www.stanford.edu/~eclipse9/sts129/cloning/policy.html. United Nations. (2005, May). Ad Hoc Committee on an International Convention Against the Reproduction Cloning of Human Beings. 7-28-05: http://www.un.org/law/cloning/.

Organization of learning experiences Essay

There are a number of issues with this approach to curriculum theory and practice. The first is that the plan or programme assumes great importance. For example, we might look at a more recent definition of curriculum as: ‘A program of activities by teachers designed so that pupils will attain so far as possible certain educational and other schooling ends or objectives [4]. The problem here is that such programmes inevitably exist prior to and outside the learning experiences. This takes much away from learners. They can end up with little or no voice. They are told what they must learn and how they will do it. The success or failure of both the program and the individual learners is judged on the basis of whether pre-specified changes occur in the behaviour and person of the learner. If the plan is tightly adhered to, there can only be limited opportunity for educators to make use of the interactions that occur. It also can deskill educators in another way. For example, a number of curriculum programs, particularly in the USA, have attempted to make the student experience ‘teacher proof’. The logic of this approach is for the curriculum to be designed outside of the classroom or school. Educators then apply programs and are judged by the products of their actions. It turns educators into technicians. Second, there are questions around the nature of objectives. This model is hot on measurability. It implies that behaviour can be objectively, mechanistically measured. There are obvious dangers here: there always has to be some uncertainty about what is being measured. We only have to reflect on questions of success in our work. It is often very difficult to judge what the impact of particular experiences has been. Sometimes it is years after the event that we come to appreciate something of what has happened. For example, most informal educators who have been around a few years will have had the experience of an ex-participant telling them in great detail about how some forgotten event brought about some fundamental change. Yet there is something more. In order to measure, things have to be broken down into smaller and smaller units. The result, as many of you will have experienced, can be long lists of often trivial skills or competencies. This can lead to a focus in this approach to curriculum theory and practice on the parts rather than the whole; on the trivial, rather than the significant. It can lead to an approach to education and assessment which resembles a shopping list. When all the items are ticked, the person has passed the course or has learnt something. The role of overall judgment is somehow sidelined. Third, there is a real problem when we come to examine what educators actually do in the classroom, for example. Much of the research concerning teacher thinking and classroom interaction, and curriculum innovation has pointed to the lack of impact on actual pedagogic practice of objectives. One way of viewing this is that teachers simply get it wrong as they do not work with objectives. The difficulties that educators experience with objectives in the classroom may point to something inherently wrong with the approach, that it is not grounded in the study of educational exchanges. It is a model of curriculum theory and practice largely imported from technological and industrial settings. Fourth, there is the problem of unanticipated results. The focus on pre-specified goals may lead both educators and learners to overlook learning that is occurring as a result of their interactions, but which is not listed as an objective. The apparent simplicity and rationality of this approach to curriculum theory and practice, and the way in which it mimics industrial management have been powerful factors in its success. A further appeal has been the ability of academics to use the model to attack teachers. There is a tendency, recurrent enough to suggest that it may be endemic in the approach, for academics in education to use the objectives model as a stick with which to beat teachers. ‘What are your objectives? ‘ is more often asked in a tone of challenge than one of interested and helpful inquiry. The demand for objectives is a demand for justification rather than a description of ends. It is not about curriculum design, but rather an expression of irritation in the problems of accountability in education. [5]

Free Essays on Coraline

Coraline Reviewed by Sarah Have you ever wanted to read a book that keeps you on the edge of your seat and at the same time you will be scared of what’s going to happen next? Well if the answer is yes then Coraline is the right book for you. This wonderful book was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean. I chose this book because I had never read a good scary story in my entire life. This book is supernatural fiction. This story mainly takes place in another world that looks exactly the same as Coraline’s home. Although it looks the same, to Coraline it feels much different. The love and happiness from her real home is missing. This other world is not a bright and happy place like Coraline expected. It is gray and boring. In fact, not only is this unknown world dull and unhappy, it is also full of scary creatures. Coraline is very sad in this strange, horrible world. Although the the author did not give a detailed description of what Coraline looks like, I imagined that she was about my size, but thinner, with dark brown hair, beaming black eyes and a narrow face. I thought Coraline was a very brave girl. She showed her courage in the story when she went down into a dark cellar and found herself being chased by a frightening, button-eyed creation of the â€Å"other† mother. I liked the fact that even though she was scared, Coraline never stopped trying. She believed in herself and knew that some day she was going to get out of this miserable place. The story begins with Coraline finding the door to another world. Ready for adventure she goes inside, and what she finds amazes her at first but after a while things start falling apart and everything turns into a total and complete nightmare. Her real parents are missing and she is trapped inside this other place. Coraline must find her parents and her way out before the â€Å"other† mother changes her. During her adventure she finds many lost souls ... Free Essays on Coraline Free Essays on Coraline Coraline Reviewed by Sarah Have you ever wanted to read a book that keeps you on the edge of your seat and at the same time you will be scared of what’s going to happen next? Well if the answer is yes then Coraline is the right book for you. This wonderful book was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Dave McKean. I chose this book because I had never read a good scary story in my entire life. This book is supernatural fiction. This story mainly takes place in another world that looks exactly the same as Coraline’s home. Although it looks the same, to Coraline it feels much different. The love and happiness from her real home is missing. This other world is not a bright and happy place like Coraline expected. It is gray and boring. In fact, not only is this unknown world dull and unhappy, it is also full of scary creatures. Coraline is very sad in this strange, horrible world. Although the the author did not give a detailed description of what Coraline looks like, I imagined that she was about my size, but thinner, with dark brown hair, beaming black eyes and a narrow face. I thought Coraline was a very brave girl. She showed her courage in the story when she went down into a dark cellar and found herself being chased by a frightening, button-eyed creation of the â€Å"other† mother. I liked the fact that even though she was scared, Coraline never stopped trying. She believed in herself and knew that some day she was going to get out of this miserable place. The story begins with Coraline finding the door to another world. Ready for adventure she goes inside, and what she finds amazes her at first but after a while things start falling apart and everything turns into a total and complete nightmare. Her real parents are missing and she is trapped inside this other place. Coraline must find her parents and her way out before the â€Å"other† mother changes her. During her adventure she finds many lost souls ...

12 Classic Essays on English Prose Style

12 Classic Essays on English Prose Style Despite the changes in English prose over the past few centuries, we may still benefit from the stylistic observations of the old masters. Here, chronologically arranged, are 12  key passages from our collection of Classic Essays on English Prose Style. (To read the complete essays, click on the highlighted titles.) Samuel Johnson on the Bugbear StyleThere is a mode of style for which I know not that the masters of oratory have yet found a name; a style by which the most evident truths are so obscured, that they can no longer be perceived, and the most familiar propositions so disguised that they cannot be known. . . . This style may be called the terrifick, for its chief intention is, to terrify and amaze; it may be termed the repulsive, for its natural effect is to drive away the reader; or it may be distinguished, in plain English, by the denomination of the bugbear style, for it has more terror than danger.(Samuel Johnson, On the Bugbear Style, 1758) Oliver Goldsmith on Simple EloquenceEloquence is not in the words but in the subject, and in great concerns the more simply anything is expressed, it is generally the more sublime. True eloquence does not consist, as the rhetoricians assure us, in saying great things in a sublime style, but in a simple style, for there is, properly speaking, no such thing as a sublime style; the sublimity lies only in the things; and when they are not so, the language may be turgid, affected, metaphoricalbut not affecting.(Oliver Goldsmith, Of Eloquence, 1759) Benjamin Franklin on Imitating the Style of the SpectatorAbout this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With that view, I took some of the papers, and making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by for a few days, and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand.(Benjamin Franklin, Imitating the Style of the Spectator, 1789) William Hazlitt on Familiar StyleIt is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of expr ession, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use.(William Hazlitt, On Familiar Style, 1822) Thomas Macaulay on the Bombastic Style[Michael Sadlers style is] everything which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what he has to say with the perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the eloquence proper to scientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds vigorously out of his compositions after five-and-twenty. That portion of his two thick volumes which is not made up of statistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations, apostrophes, metaphors, similesall the worst of their respective kinds.(Thomas Babington Macaulay, On Sadlers Bombastic Declamations, 1831) Henry Thoreau on a Vigorous Prose StyleThe scholar might frequently emulate the propriety and emphasis of the farmers call to his team, and confess that if that were written it would surpass his labored sentences. Whose are the t ruly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the months labor in the farmers almanac, to restore our tone and spirits. A sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plow instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.(Henry David Thoreau, A Vigorous Prose Style, 1849) Cardinal John Newman on the Inseparability of Style and SubstanceThought and  speech  are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one;  style  is a thinking out into  language. This is what I have been laying down, and this is literature: not  things, not the verbal  symbols  of things; not on the other hand mere  words; but thoughts expressed in language. . . .  A great author, Gentlemen, is not one who merely has a  copia verborum, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid  phrases  and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it.(John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1852) Mark Twain on Fenimore Coopers Literary OffencesCoopers word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he does not say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate words. . . . There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.(Mark Twain, Fenimore Coopers Literary Offences, 1895) Agnes Repplier on the Right WordsMusicians know the value of chords; painters know the value of colors; writers are often so blind to the value of words that they are content with a bare expression of their thoughts . . .. For every sentence that may be penned or spoken the right words exist. They lie concealed in the inexhaustible wealth of a vocabulary enriched by centuries of noble thought and delicate manipulation. He who does not find them and fit them into place, who accepts the first term which presents itself rather than search for the expression which accurately and beautifully embodies his meaning, aspires to mediocrity, and is content with failure.(Agnes Repplier, Words, 1896) Arthur Quiller-Couch on Extraneous Ornament[L]et me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not- can never be- extraneous Ornament. . . . [I]f you here requ ire a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it- wholeheartedly- and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.(Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, On Style, 1916) H.L. Mencken on Woodrow Wilsons StyleWoodrow knew how to conjure up such words. He knew how to make them glow, and weep. He wasted no time upon the heads of his dupes, but aimed directly at their ears, diaphragms and hearts. . . . When Wilson got upon his legs in those days he seems to have gone into a sort of trance, with all the peculiar illusions and delusions that belong to a frenzied pedagogue. He heard words giving three cheers; he saw them race across a blackboard like Socialists pursued by the Polizei; he felt them rush up and kiss him.(H.L. Mencken, The Style of Woodrow, 1921) F.L. Lucas on Stylistic HonestyAs the police put it, anything you say may be used as evidence against you. If handwriting reveals character, writing reveals it still more. . . . Most style is not honest enough. Easy to say, but hard to practice. A writer may take to long words, as young men to beards- to impress. But long words, like long beards, are often the badge of charlatans. Or a writer may cult ivate the obscure, to seem profound. But even carefully muddied puddles are soon fathomed. Or he may cultivate eccentricity, to seem original. But really original people do not have to think about being original- they can no more help it than they can help breathing. They do not need to dye their hair green.(F.L. Lucas, 10 Principles of Effective Style, 1955) For the complete collection, visit Classic Essays on English Prose Style.