Vigilance and E-Governance

VIGILANCE AND E-GOVERNANCE Vigilance means watchfullness or to bring awareness. Vigilance came into existence mainly for the purpose of fighting corruption. Corruption involves misuse of power , money ,government property etc. Though corruption can't be brought down to zero level, we can try to bring it as low as possible. This can be ensured by watchfulness, caution and vigilance. Or in other words it can be achieved by E-Governance. E-Governance is the use of various modern information and communication technologies such as internet, local area networks, mobile phones,etc. by the government to promote democracy and minimize the corruption level. Simply e-governance is electronic management and electronic controllership. Therefore vigilance and e-governance are required for ensuring corruptionless functioning of any private, public or government organisation. In order to achieve this purpose, govenment has implemented various online services under national e-governance plan like pro perty registration, railway reservation, pensions, passport, visa , company affairs, land records, e-courts, etc.Here we will discuss some of the examples and we will see how they are proven to be effective, not only for fighting against corruption but also for improving the efficiency, effectiveness and comfortness of public. ONLINE DELIVERY OF LAND TITLES IN KARNATAKA, INDIA Before the computerisation of The Department of Revenue in Karnataka, farmers had to seek the Village Accountant to get a copy of the Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops(RTC), a document needed for many purposes such as obtaining bank loans. But there were unnecessary delays and harassments. Many were forced to pay bribes.Land owners found it difficult to access the village accountant, as his duties entail traveling. The time taken by the village accountant to provide RTC ranged from 3 to 30 days depending upon the size off the bribe. A tyypical bribe for a certificate could range from Rs. 100 to Rs. 2000. If some details were to be written in an ambiguous fashion, out of selfish motives, the bribe could go upto rs. 10,000. Land records in the custody of village accountant were not open for public scrutiny. But after the computerisation of The Department of Revenue in Karnataka, for a fee of Rs. 5 , a printed copy of the RTC can be obtained online at computerised land record kiosks in 140 Taluk offices without any delay or bribe. The software incorporates the bio-logon metrics system, which authenticates the users with their fingerprint. A log is maintained of all transaction in a session. This makes an officer accountable for his decisions and actions. The government has also got plans to web-enable the database to make it available for the farmers to receive a copy of the land records locally through an internet kiosk. Although without a signature such a copy will only have an informative value.This scheme is also useful for preventing lands-scam as all the data related to the land is in a common server. COMPUTERISED INTERSTATE CHECK POSTS IN GUJARAT Gujarat has an extensive road network, which carries a large volume of commercial traffic. Major highway systems link Delhi to Mumbai and provide the pricipal link to the Kandla sea port on Gujarat's west coast. Gujarat's 10 check posts are positioned at the border with three neighbouring Indian states. Nearly 25,000 transport vehicles enter daily through these check posts. most of the trucking companies aim to increase their earnings from each vehicle.Often this has promoted transporters to load their trucks beyond permissible axle load, creating a serious safeety hazard. Without the computerisation, a suspect vehicle is flagged to stop , and then weighed on a weigh bridge located away from traffic. The legal penalty for overload is Rs. 2000 per ton. However most of such fines are illegaly negotiated. The problem of corruption was particulaly difficult to attack as the corrupt were backed by politicians. In the abse nce of any systematic inspection of vehicles, the transport companies also adopted various illegal practices.Duplicate copies of a single registration book from the Regional Transport Office (RTO) have been used for many different vehicles, using fake license plates. With the computerisation, all check posts are monitored at a central location using video cameras installed at every check post cabin. The video cameras captures the registration number of all trucks approaching the check post. Image processing software converts the video image of the registration number to a digital form and the details of the truck are acessed from a central database.An electronic weigh bridge measures the weight feeds it to the computer, which automatically issues a demand note for the fine. The use of computers and other electronic devices at the 10 remote interstate border check posts in gujarat, has reduced the corruption and significantly increased the state's tax revenue. ONLINE INDIAN RAILWAY T RAIN STATUS AND RESERVATION SYSTEM: Before the computerisation system it was very difficult to know the availability of train seat and reserving without paying money. Even sometimes passengers had to pay additional money inside the train.But after computerisation, the availability of seats can be accessed by anyone through internet. Passengers can even book tickets online. It drastically reduced corruption. Also autoupgradation of passenger tickets increased the revenue to Indian railways and decreased the additional income(bribe) to TTE. WORK PROGRESS MONITORING SYSTEM: This software is intensively used in all type of industry to monitor its work progress. This is not directly related with money corruption but it deals with monitoring corruption which includes delaying of projects which indirectly leads to increase the hidden cost of the company.CONCLUSION: Thus by deploying both vigilance and e-governance, the level of corruption has been reduced substantially. But the biggest cha llenge in deploying e-governance is not technology but the change in management. Sudden Management change not only affects the culture but also affects the workflow and the workers. E-governance doesn't mean proliferation of computer and other e-accessories, but is basically a political decision which calls for discipline and attitudinal change in officers and employees.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Essay

A critic has written that a family at the centre of the party â€Å"is clothed with the atmosphere of the south as with a garment. † How important is the setting of â€Å"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof† to the play’s dramatic impact? You may consider: – The bed sitting room of the stage set – The wider, geographical setting of the Mississippi Delta – The values of the play of the society revealed in the play In my opinion, the setting of the play is vital to the level of dramatic impact for a number of reasons. The main themes behind â€Å"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof† are represented and shown through the setting of the play. For example, the whole play is situated around the bedroom sitting area to put forward a key theme of the play: sexuality. If the setting wasn’t relevant to themes of the play, the audience would find it difficult to fully understand key elements of the play that Tennessee Williams was trying to put across. The bed sitting room in which the play is based around belongs to Brick and Maggie, two main characters. The irony of this being that bedrooms are assumed to be private and personal, yet it’s the most invaded room in the house. A prime example being when Big Mama, Brick’s mother enters the bedroom, commenting on how she â€Å"hates locked doors in a house†¦ † Maggie’s responds lightly by stating that â€Å"†¦ people have got to have some moments of privacy,† only to receive the invasive and ignorant reply â€Å"No, ma’am, not in my house. † Even as early as Act One, we witness the couple’s privacy being denied. The bed sitting room is also where many secrets of the family are eavesdropped on and later revealed. Again, as early as the start of Act One, Maggie reveals that â€Å"The walls in this place have ears,† clearly, it’s not only Big Mama being prying into the couple’s affairs. It’s also greatly ironic that the scorching heat outside is completely conflicting to the â€Å"heat† inside Maggie and Brick’s bedroom. It becomes increasingly apparent as the play develops that there are blatant problems facing the couple’s sexual relationship, again emphasising the recurring themes of sexuality, homosexuality and mendacity. The fact that the play is based around the bedroom of Brick and Maggie also helps the audience gain a better understanding of their characters, especially Brick’s. Not once throughout the entire script does Brick approach another character; it’s always the other characters that approach him. This shows the audience how reserved Brick is and how he likes to keep himself to himself, despite him being in such high demand with his fellow family members. These qualities of Brick are vital in the understanding of the play’s plot. The geographical setting of the play also greatly affects the dramatic impact. The play is set in the irritatingly hot Mississippi Delta, symbolising both the argumentative tension between characters such as Mae and Maggie and also the sexual tension between characters like Maggie and Brick. The plantation itself is relevant to meanings behind the play and its dramatic impact. Being built on very fertile land, the plantation shows the irony of Maggie’s great desire to become pregnant, contrasting with Mae who has six, irritating children. It also reinforces that the family are staying on Big Daddy’s property. Big Daddy has the power over both his wife and his sons, for it’s his decision as to who will inherit the land. â€Å"I’ll tell you what they’re up to, boy of mine! – They’re up to cutting you out of your father’s estate†¦ † The question of which son gains Big Daddy’s estate occurs regularly, causing conflict between the two couples. Whilst enhancing dramatic impact, it also represents the themes of mendacity and money. The history of the plantation itself relates strongly to the theme of homosexuality. Two homosexual men (Peter Ochello and Jack Straw) used to own and live on the plantation whilst Big Daddy worked there. With no family to pass the land onto, they handed it over to their loyal employee, Big Daddy. Knowing the history behind the place, the audience almost expects the theme of homosexuality to occur once again and indeed it does, this time with Brick and his friend Skipper. The South itself is also relevant to the play’s dramatic impact and putting it into context. With knowledge of the Civil War, slavery and enormous amounts of racism that took place in the South which was to some extent still very much present in the time the play was set, the audience is able to gain a better understanding of smaller characters and their relevance. Language is used for example that today would be considered racist such as when it says â€Å"A negro voice answers. † The black servants are mere voices in the play because of the script’s context. The South’s battle to cling onto slavery is reflected in the characters when some try desperately to cling onto their past. For example when Brick tells Big Daddy â€Å"†¦ Skipper and I went into pro-football after we left ‘Ole Miss’ because we were scared to grow up†¦ † The family values in which the play is set on is responsible for a lot of dramatic impact. Mae and Gooper’s lack of family values and determination to do whatever it takes to inherit Big Daddy’s plantation contrasts wonderfully with Big Mama’s determination for everybody to get along with one another, â€Å"We must all love each other†¦ † The great contrast allows the audience to delve, even further into the themes of money and family. It’s shown through the play’s entirety that money values only destroy families. The sexual values of the time were to have lots of babies as May and Maggie show us. May is constantly competing with Maggie, using the fact that she’s childless to win arguments, â€Å"Maggie , honey, if you had children of you own you’d know how funny that is†¦ † Maggie also feels the need to lie at the very end of the play by telling her family that she’s pregnant. The homosexual value of the play is quite relevant as Brick finds refuge in his bedroom and by drinking large amounts of alcohol to escape his homosexual feelings. Both women being expected to have lots of children and Brick having to turn to drink in an attempt to block out unwanted feelings are due to the time that the play was set and what was expected in society. The religious values of the play are to reflect Williams’ own feelings on the matter, creating great dramatic impact at the same time. Reverent Tucher, the family’s local reverent doesn’t even take religion seriously. He says â€Å"Did you all know that Halsey Bank’s widow put air-conditioning in the church†¦ † The reverend’s main worries are of money and his personal comfort in the church which contradicts everything Christianity stands for. Williams illustrates the characters of Brick and Big Daddy as being intelligent men, with lots of general knowledge and common sense. Therefore when he makes it apparent that neither of them believes in religion, he’s making a very controversial statement, especially among the outwardly religious society of 1950s Southern America. To conclude, the overall setting of the play has proven to affect the plot of the play, hidden symbolism, qualities of the characters and the key themes behind the play. Without specific references to the setting, the amount of dramatic impact would be absolutely minimal, probably resulting in the audience not fully understanding the points that Williams most wanted to stress and losing interest in the play altogether. So yes, the setting of the play is imperative to the play’s dramatic impact.

Photosynthesis Vs Photovoltaic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Photosynthesis Vs Photovoltaic - Essay Example Plant cell converts sunlight into chemical energy by the photosynthesis process and solar cell converts it directly into electrical energy which is then used by humans. Photosynthesis is a natural process which is automatically carried out in all plants but electricity generation by solar cells is an artificial procedure. Solar cells need to be installed for this purpose and it requires much investment. Therefore, they are much expensive as compared to the plant cell. Another significant difference between both cells is that the bad photosynthetic cell can repair itself whereas there is no such provision in case of solar cells.  Both photosynthesis and photovoltaic energy conversion systems deal with transfer and conversion of heat energy into another form. Thus both systems should show compatibility with the Laws of Thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics accounts for the energy conservation of heat systems i.e. energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it only transforms fr om one form to another. According to, â€Å"A change in the internal energy of a closed thermodynamic system is equal to the difference between the heat supplied to the system and the amount of work done by the system on its surroundings†. Both plant and solar cells do not create energy but rather convert one form (solar irradiation) of energy into another. A certain amount of "transformation energy" will be used as the molecules of the "working body" do work on each other when they change from one state to another.

3d imaging using matlab Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

3d imaging using matlab - Essay Example However, none of these algorithms succeed to process more than a few tens of images when the amount of missing elements reaches 90% of the measurement matrix and cameras have large field of view (Martinec & Pajdla 2005). (Martinec & Pajdla 2005) proposes an algorithm has the following advantages: First, it provides an overall scene structure in a single step without requirements such as linear ordering of images in a sequence. Second, the solution is obtained as a global optimum of a reasonable cost function defined on an approximation to the original SFM (structure-from-motion) problem. (Martin & Doerry 2005) modify the existing Polar Format MATLAB implementation utilizing the Chirp Z-Transform that improves performance and memory usage achieving near real-time results for smaller apertures. They also add two new image formation options that perform a more traditional interpolation style image formation. These options allow the continued exploration of possible interpolation methods for image formation and some preliminary results comparing image quality are given. In this paper we review the principles used in reconstruction of three dimension images from two dimension images from a digital camera. The reconstruction algorithm of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is presented and implemented in MATLAB in the following sections. This section overviews the process of representing a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional representation. The projection process loses one dimension. This process is usually central projection in which a ray from a point in space is drawn from a three dimension world point through a fixed point in space, the centre of projection. This ray will intersect the chosen plane as the image plane. The intersection of the ray with the image plane represents the image of the point. This projection is similar to the camera in which a ray of light from a point in the world passes through the lens of a camera

OLI model Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

OLI model - Essay Example The above approach neglects critical issues, which are critical in defining a multinational firm. The model has three areas where its main advantages are based, that is; It has its advantages in explaining the MNEs existence. Ownership has its advantages in the sense that it addresses the question of why that some firms will go abroad and not others, it postulates that there are some benefits that allow it to overpower the cost of operating abroad. Since firms are the collection of different assets and MNEs candidate has a higher-than-average asset level to have an internal public goods character. The assets can be used in the production in various areas without reduction of their effectiveness. The assets include product dimensional factor, common to model in terms of a single index of the production of the firm. The highest sophisticated treatment in these lines is found in immediate work on non-homogeneous firms that combines the horizontal simplest version motive for FDI, with an assumption of their productivity differences (Faeth, 2009). The OLI model has an aspect to pay a sunk cost in productivity determination. Low-production can be produced only for the purposes of the home market; while medium productivity ones are chosen to pay for export fixed costs, but the most productive ones chosen to pay for higher costs for FDI engagements. The above predictions are in accordance with the evidence. On a further contribution, the model provides that industries with greater heterogeneities have more firms engaged in the FDI. Location advantages address the question of where the firm chooses to locate. Though the theory of international trade has taken ownership advantages just for granted, to make them in more obvious ways, this model has emphasized more on exploration of alternative motives to be located by MNEs abroad. The major factor that has created much attention is the clear distinction between vertical and horizontal FDI. Horizontal FDI happens when

Frozen yorgurt Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Frozen yorgurt - Essay Example It otherwise suffers from its flexibility, excess calories and loses its freshness very fast. Red Mango is the best to control, but it has limited the number of flavors. It is awesome when used as a supplement. As a result, it is somewhat costly. There is Baskin Robbins that contains thirty-one flavors, is readily affordable and is consumable at home in cakes. The blow to this category is its self-inefficiency and does not create such a welcoming atmosphere (Ahmed, Haroun and Eisa). Another competitor is the yogurt land that is not artificial, but is affordable. It contains moderate fats and has a taste of its kind. Reasons, why one would prefer frozen yogurt to the others, include its affordability ad lovely feel. It brings fewer health risks thus suitable for the growing youngsters. Considering that it’s painless, it provides an opportunity to couple with other staff including chocolate, candy, granola and fruits. Other benefits include the cooling effect it has during the summer, the awesome savor. Some advantages are personal like creating a beautiful moment when catching up with colleagues and creating an opportunity to spend time with

Post-Staff Reduction Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Post-Staff Reduction Plan - Essay Example But the security perspective of the installation will not change in any way (No reduction of the size of the building or installation is possible).My line of action to cope up with the unpleasant responsibilities will be by adopting the following strategies: 1. Generally, reduction in the staff strength will be on the basis of seniority, by applying the procedure of ‘last in first out’ method. In the present case, I will follow this method strictly, to remove any apprehensions in the minds of the staff. If any other member of the staff has to be removed on out of turn basis that will be by adopting the normal disciplinary proceedings and on the basis of the findings of the departmental enquiry. Reduction in staff on any count will be an unwelcome change, but I will face the situation with a positive attitude by orally assuring the staff that the impending retrenchment will be hopefully be a temporary phenomenon, and as soon as the budget constraints are improved they can look forward for a favorable response from the management. I will be guided by this principle: â€Å"Your behavior and attitude are critical elements in steering the group successfully through the transition. A positive attitude does not imply that you sho uld deny the difficult and unfortunate aspects of what might be happening.† (www.ucdmc.) The staff shall be in a state of anxiety. As such I will keep the doors of communication open, and deal with them with utmost patience. 3. I will impress upon the staff, that there is nothing wrong with the management of the company, the top management is responsible and ever eager to mitigate the difficulties of the employees facing retrenchment, but the bad shape of the economy and the market forces are responsible for the present state of affairs. I shall try my best to normalize the reactions of the employees and assure them of all lay-off benefits which will be settled within the quickest possible time. 4. I shall

Economic Issues of KFC Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Economic Issues of KFC - Essay Example As the report declares most of the people already face budget constraints due to either decreasing salaries or increasing inflation. The point here is that towards the end of the day, in a recession, people find themselves with less disposable income, they take rational decisions and become thoughtful about ways for spending it. Customers become more and more price conscious and look for low priced products, low priced substitutes or discounts and others. This explains why despite of this brutal recession, low cost retailers like Wal-Mart, Target Corporation, Aldi and Asda have been able to actually pose strong sales growth over the past four years. As mentioned earlier, during recessions, people look for low cost providers since they want more value for their money. Rather than spending on premium versions of the product, people shift to lower prices thus boosting the businesses of low cost providers. This essay stresses that quite understandably, during recessions, people can cut down their purchases of luxury products or purchases, which can be delayed under normal circumstances such as alcohol, clothing, home equipment, automobiles, and others. However, food, grocery, medicine, and drinks do not come in this category. Despite the fact that KFC is serving food but when faced with financial constraints, consumers avoid dine-in at restaurants or cafes and prefer to cook food at home, which can save them money. (Hemerijck, Knapen & Doorne, pp. 230-234, 2010). They throw parities at home rather than celebrating at fast food chains. This attitude of the consumers means that the business of food retailers is more likely to grow and statistics indicate that food and grocery retail business has showed steady growth, but at the same time, revenues of fast food chains like KFC and other restaurants decreases significantly. This pattern has pushed many small restaurant chains at the brink of insolvency (Wit & Meyer, pp. 390-394, 2010). A careful analysis may reveal that during a recession, some of the competitors do not only leave the marketplace due to bankruptcy or insolvency but these economic recessions also present a unique opportunity to upper middle class entrepreneurs who are willing to take the risk. The Bank of England has set the interest rate at 0.5 percent which the record low level in the history of UK

20th century art and culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

20th century art and culture - Essay Example History of art, along with history of science and philosophy, endeavors to record and interpret the ways in which human consciousness perceives and makes sense of itself and the world around it. Ethical principles and cultural values that informed the development of Western civilization are deeply rooted in its classical origins and, therefore, in its heavy reliance on the rationalist school of thought. Classicism, rationalism and humanism - the concept that can be regarded as a derivative of the first two - not only defined the path of Western culture, but also ensured this culture's extreme openness and perceptivity towards other cultures and non-Western schools and systems.This heritage of rationalist philosophy and humanist ethics ensured that in a complex historical situation the 20th century art drew its strength and inspiration from the same humanistic principles and managed to sustain an essentially positive and optimistic view of the oncoming cultural changes, brought on by industrial and social revolutions. On the examples of high modernism in poetry, Cubism in painting and International Style in architecture this essay will attempt to demonstrate the continuity within rationalist and humanist tradition that modern and postmodern Western art displayed. This continuity manifests itself, firstly, in acknowledging the historical sense within modernism, in claiming the indebtedness of the new art to classicism and tradition. Secondly, it expresses itself in questioning the nature of representation and emergence of non-realist schools and movements as a consequence of applying rationalist tools of scientific knowledge to specifically artistic ways of cognition. Thirdly, this continuity is reflected in challenging aestheticist ideas, in growing popularity of instrumentalist theories of art and in the idea of artistic 'engagement' which has undeniable affinity with the concept of humanism. And lastly, the evidence of such continuity can be found in relativel y recent phenomena of internationalization and globalization that affected all postmodern art and invited its interpretation as ultimately, universally humanist. The first half of the 20th century is often perceived as a time of breaking away from tradition, a time of explosive growth of avant-garde schools and movements, a time when new means of representation were being adopted to reflect revolutionary changes in science, technology and societal structures. These movements, despite their belonging to different spheres of art, literature and music, came to be known under a common name of modernism. It is not easily realised and admitted that modernism, for all its innovative spirit and love of experimentation, was fully consequential, if not predictable. It did not come out of nothing; it grew out of a certain tradition and emerged within the paradigm of rationalist and humanist values. An adequate first example to support our argument is T.S. Eliot, a poet who was also one of the first theorists of high modernism. Eliot's poetry is highly innovative in form and style; it bears all characteristics of high modernism (fragmentation, intertextual allusions, rejection of traditional forms and rhyme); at the same time it explicitly states its regard for classicism and tradition. Eliot expressed this regard in his seminal essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent", written in 1919: The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. (Eliot, 38) In the poem "Mr Appolinax", part of his most renowned collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, Eliot makes frequent use of classical allusions and conveys the sense of modernity being enclosed within the timelessness

Mr Clean “You gotta love a man who clean” Essay Example for Free

Mr Clean â€Å"You gotta love a man who clean† Essay Companies have many objectives when advertising their products and services. These objectives vary according to their industries, available distribution channels, and overall marketing strategies. The key to all advertising is attracting the right buyers. These are people who are more apt to buy a companys wares based on demographics like age and income, for example. Advertising should also repeat their messages often enough to familiarize consumers with their offerings. One of the major objectives of advertising is to increase sales and profits. Advertising is generally intended to motivate potential or current customers to behave in the way you desire. The specific messages, and the ways you want them to act vary based on your current position in the market and the money you have to invest in promotion. Normally, though, and objectives change over time as your company grows. For super bowl 2017, dozens of companies are rushing to generate buzz for themselves by releasing advertisements that are funny, emotional or edgy. While the big game was a week away, cleaning brand Mr. Clean clearly had the early edge in that regard. Mr. Clean has gotten buff and sexy for his Super Bowl ad debut. Procter Gamble has released its first-ever Super Bowl ad for Mr. Clean.  The 30-second spot features the iconic but refreshed character whos still bald and muscular but seems a little younger and sexier than his old self. Entitled Cleaner of Your Dreams, the mostly wordless and portray Mr. Clean showing up at a suburban red-haired house. The woman appears to be frustrated by a stain on her stove, before Mr. Clean, the iconic mascot of the brand, shows up in all his erotic glory. As the sensual music plays, the two characters clean the house, culminating in Mr. Clean mopping the floor in a muscle white shirt and extremely tight white pants that show off his assets. Mr. Clean sashays and dances as he moves and cleans from kitchen to  bathroom, to  the living  room as music pulses. The blissed-out homemaker also begins to sway to the musics vibe before a voice calls out her name.Sarah? Sarah? as the fantasy concludes. She opens her eyes and its her  tubby, lazy mate  standi ng before her. Clean enough? he asks. She crashes into his arms as they both collapse on the  couch. Then You gotta love a man who cleans pops across the screen. The idea behind the whole ad is to make cleaning attractive to men and challenge the idea that women are the only ones who would be interested in a cleaning product. According to HYPERLINK http://ibtimes.com, ibtimes.com 172 million views tune in to the super bowl and 59% were men. â€Å"Theres no better way to reach a co-ed audience than the Super Bowl, Procter Gamble vice president Martin Hettich told the website. And the subject were broaching with Mr. Clean really is for a co-ed audience, because its talking about cleaning and how men and women divide up the chores. And theres still a way to go. According to data gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2014, 83 percent of women reported doing household work, while just 65 percent of men said the same. Online, however, the ad was met with a broad range of reactions. Some liked the cheeky rebranding of the character, while others described themselves as uncomfortable with the idea of a sexualized Mr. Clean. Either way, the video has been a success in driving conversation about the brand, as it racked up nearly 450,000 views in a day on YouTube. (Per time magazine) This ad is different from the other Mr. Clean ads from way back when. It doesn’t create the issue of branding a female as a â€Å"housewife†. The other Mr. Clean advertisement considered females to be domestic wives who depend on their husbands for money and a house to clean. Manipulation is one of many worries that continue to be an issue with advertisements because many people find it unfair. Gender  roles persuade  people by establishing a minor feeling of a female and a wondrous feeling of a male. Note that advertisements glorify stereotypes of the female as a housewife with zero education and a great sense of style. On the other hand, male advertisements showcase males to be the provider of the household who is dependent on his wife or mother for food, clean clothes, and a bed to sleep on. According to Luuk Lagerwerf, Charlotte M.J. van Hooijdonk, and Ayalies Korenberg, â€Å"Advertisements containing connection are better comprehended than are advertisements containing similarity† (1840). If there is a relation between an advertisement and a person, the person will feel the need of buying that particular product.

Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances

Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances 1. INTRODUTION: Hedge funds are actively managed portfolios that hold positions in publicly traded securities. Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M. Kat (2000) stated on their report that A hedge fund is typically defined as a pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administrated by professional investment managers, and not widely available to the public? It charges both a performance fee and a management fee. It allows a flexible investment for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million) can use high risk techniques. Nowadays it is very clear that in the matter of alternative investment mutual fund is not performing well. As a high absolute returns and typically have features such as hurdle rates and incentive fees with high watermark provision hedge fund gives a better align to the interests of managers and investors. Moreover mutual funds typically use a long-only buy-and-hold type strategy on standard asset classes, which help to capture risk premia asso ciate with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk etc. However, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associate with dynamic trading strategies. That is why hedge fund comes into the picture. This is the year of 2009, which takes the greatest history of the world in the following century. In the year of 2008 the world saw the greatest fall down of the world economy. Lots of people missing their jobs, lots of company were stopped. The world economy faced the highest losses in the history. These all factors are showing only one way to makeover from that greatest downfall that is hedging. 3The last couple of decades have witnessed a rapidly growing in the hedge funds. Relative to traditional investment portfolios hedge funds exhibit some unique characteristics; they are flexible with respect to the types of securities they hold and the type of the position they take. 1 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2000). Multi-period performance persistence analysis of hedge fund s?. The journal of financial and quantitative analysis. Vol. 35, No,3. PP-327. 2 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004). Risks and portfolio decisions involving hedge funds?. The review of financial studies, Vol. 17, No.1. PP-64. 3 Journal of banking and finance 32(2008) 741-753- Hedge Fund Pricing and Model Uncertainty? by Spyridan D. Vrontos, Ioannis D. Vrontos, Daniel Giomouridies. 4The number of FOHFs increase by 40% between 2001 and 2003, and now comprised almost two third of the $650 billion invested in the USAs hedge fund market. Due to its nature it is difficult to estimate the current size of hedge fund industry. 5Van Hedge Fund Advisors estimates that by the end of 1998 there were 5380 hedge fund managing $311 in capital, with between $800 billion and $1 trillion in total assets, which indicates the higher number of recent new entries. So far, hedge fund is based on American phenomena. About 90% hedge fund managers are based in the US, 9% in Europe and 1% in Asia and elsewhere. Now a days around 5883 hedge funds are trading around the world. (*Barclay Hedge database) 4 Financial times, 29th October, 2003. www.vanhedge.com http://www.barclayhedge.com/products/hedge-fund-directory.html 1.1 Categories of Hedge fund investment objectives: Event Driven: Distressed securities- manager focuses on securities of companies in reorganization and bankruptcy, ranging from senior secured debt to the common stock of the company. Risk arbitrage- manager simultaneously buys stock in a company being acquired and sells stock in its acquirers. Global: International- manager pays attention to economic change around the world (except the United States) but more bottom-up oriented in that managers tend to be stock-pickers in markets they like. Uses index derivatives to a much lesser extent than macro managers. Emerging- Manager invests in less mature financial markets of the world, e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India. Because shorting is not permitted in many emerging markets, managers must go to cash or other markets when valuations make being long unattractive. Regional- Manager focuses on specific regions of the world, example- Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Global macro: Opportunistic trading manager that profits from changes in global economies typically based in major interest rate shifts. Uses leverage and derivatives. Market neutral: Long/short stocks- half long/half short. Manager attempts to lock-out or neutralize market risk. Convertible arbitrage- Manager goes long convertible securities and shorts the underlying equities. Stock index arbitrage- Manager buys a basket of stocks and sells short stock index futures, or the reverse. Fixed income arbitrage- Manager buys T-bonds and sells short index futures or the reverse. Short sales: Manager takes a position that stock prices will go down. Used as a hedge for long only portfolios and by those who feel market is approaching a bearish trend. U.S Opportunistic: Value â€Å" Manager focuses on assets, cash flow, book value, out-of-favor stocks. Growth â€Å" Manager invests in growth stocks, revenues, earnings, and growth potential are keys. Short term â€Å" Manager holds positions for a short time frame. Fund of fund: Capital is allocated among a number of hedge funds, providing investors with access to managers they might not be able to discover or evaluate in their own. Usually has a lower minimum than a hedge fund. Source: Carl Ackermann, Richard McEnally, and David Ravenscraft, The performance of hedge funds: Risk, Return and Incentives,? Journal of finance 54, no.3 (June 1999) figure 1, page-843. Reproduced from a hedge fund database firm named Managed Account Report (MAR) Inc, and distributed through LaPorte Asset Allocation System. 2. Literature review: Despite the increasing interest and recent development, few studies have been carried out on hedge funds comparing to other investment tools like mutual funds. An analysis of Hedge Fund performance 1984-2000? by Capocci Daniel using one of the greatest hedge fund database ever used on his working paper (2796 individual funds including 801 dissolved), to investigate hedge funds performance using various asset-pricing models, including an extension from of Carharts (1997) model combined with Fama and French (1998), Agarwal and Naik (2000) models that take into account the fact that some hedge funds invest in emerging market bond. At the end they found that their model does a better job describing hedge funds behaviour. That appears particularly good for the Event Driven, Global Macro, US Opportunistic, Equity non-Hedge and Sector funds. Since the early 1990s, when around 2000 hedge funds were managing assets totalling capital of $60 billion, the subsequent growth in the number and asset base of hedge funds has never really been refuted. The industry only suffered from a relative slowdown in 1998, but since then has enjoyed a renewed vitality with an estimated total of 10,000funds managing more than a trillion US dollars by the end of 2006. The growing trend of the sector remained remarkably sustained during the stock market collapse that started in March 2000, when the NASDAQ composite Index reached an all-time high of 5,132 and finished three years later with a floor level of 1,253. In the meantime, the global met asset value (NAV) of hedge funds continued to grow at a steady rate of 10.6% (Van Hedge Funds Advisors International, 2002), contrasting with a decrease of 2.7% in the worldwide mutual fund industry ( Investment Company Institute, 2003). In 2001, Capocci and Hubner(2004) estimated that there were 6,000 he dge fund managing around $400 billion. In 2007, Capocci, Duquenne and Hubner (2007) estimated that there were 10,000 hedge funds managing around $1 trillion. This is a growth of 11% in the number of funds and 26% in assets over six years (6PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci). Other studies from practitioners Hennessee (1994), and Oberuc (1994) also showed an evidence of superior performance in the case of hedge funds. Ackernann and Al. (1999) and Liang (1999) who compared the performance of hedge funds to mutual funds and several indices, found that hedge funds constantly obtained better performance than mutual funds. Their performance was not better than the performance of the market indices considered. They also indicated that the returns in hedge funds were more unstable than both the returns of mutual funds and those of market indices. According to Brown and Al. (1997) hedge funds showing good performance in the first part of the year reduce the volatility of their portfolio in the second half of the year (Capocci Daniel- An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984-2000). Taking all these results into account hedge funds seems a good investment tool. 6 PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci. Electronic copy available at: http//ssrn.com/abstract=1008319. 3. Research design and Methodology: In this section I would like to describe the empirical methodology to be used to measure the performance of hedge fund as well as the performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500. My aim is to identify which will give the better return for an investor. To investigate hedge funds performance and performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500 my study will follow some models like 4-factor model from of Carharts (1997) model, the 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993) models, the Sharpe ratio (1966) and Jensens alpha (1968) and CAPM. I divide my research into three sections. First section will analyse the performance of hedge funds, FTSE 100 and SP 500. This section sets out the models of performance measurement I will use. Second section will made correlation between Hedge fund vs. FTSE 100 and Hedge fund vs. SP 500 to find out the better portfolio. Third section will exposes a discussion as well as a description of my database and finally concludes the paper. 3.1. Performance measure models: The 4-factor model from Carhart (1997) Carharts (1997) 4-factor model is an extension of the Fama and French (1993) factor model. It not only takes into account the size of the firms, the book to market ratio, but there is an additional factor for the momentum effect. Grinblatt, Titman and Wermers (1995) define this effect as buying stocks that were past winners and selling past losers. This model is estimated with the following regressions: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ÃŽÂ ²p4 PR1YRt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size; HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity; PR1YRt= the factor mimicking portfolio for the momentum effect7 7 for a description of the construction of PR1YR see Carhart (1997). As stressed by Daniel et al. (1997), this model, which is effectively a four factor Jensen measure, assumes that betas with respect to the returns of four zero investment factor mimicking portfolios, are appropriate measures of multidimensional systematic risk. According to this model, in the absence of stock selection or timing abilities, the expected return for a fund is the sum of the risk free return and the products of the betas with the factor risk premium, which are simply the expected returns of each of these zero investment portfolios. The Carhart (1997) approach identifies a matching passive portfolio return for each fund return. This passive return, which is subtracted from the fund return to generate ÃŽÂ ±p, is a weighted average of the returns of the Carhart factor portfolios and the return of a one month T-bill (Capocci Daniel 2001, Journal- European Private Bankers, Nov, 2001). The 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993): Fama and French (1993) 3 factor model is estimated from an expected form of the CAPM regression. It takes the size and the book to market ratio of the firm into account. It uses the time series approach from Black, Jensen, and Scholles (1972) in the sense that the monthly returns on stocks are regressed on the returns to a market portfolio of stocks and mimicking portfolios for size and book to market. It is estimated from the following extension of the CAPM regression: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where, SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size, and HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity. SMLt which comes from small minus big meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to size, and HMLt which comes from high minus low meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to book to market equity8. HML (respectively SMB) is neutral relative to the size effect (respectively to the book to market). This means that these factors do a good job isolating the firm-specific components of returns (Fama and French 1993, 1995, 1996 and 2000). 8 See Fama and French (1993) for a precise description of the construction of SMBt and HMLt. The Sharp Ratio (1966): The Sharp ratios (1966) calculate the ratio of the average excess return and the return standard deviation of the fund that is being evaluated. As such it measures the excess return per unit of risk. Assuming all asset returns to be normally distributed, the CAPM tells us that in equilibrium the highest attainable Sharpe ratio is that of the market index. In more general terms, the market indexs sharp ratio represents the set of return distributions that is obtained when statically combining the market index with cash. With the market index being highly diversified, these distributions offer the highest achievable expected return for every possible standard deviation (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Jensens Alpha (1968): Jensens alpha was introduced in Jensen (1968) and equals the intercept of the regression: (Rh-Rf)= ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ² (Ri- Rf) + eh, Where Rh is the fund return, Rf is the risk free rate and Ri is the total return on the market index. Like the Sharpe ratio, Jensens alpha is rooted in the CAPM. According to the CAPM, in equilibrium all (portfolios of) assets with the same beta will offer the same expected return, any positive deviation therefore indicates superior performance (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Capital Asset Pricing Model: The first performance model that will be used is a capital asset pricing based single index model (CAPM). This model developed by Sharpe (1964) and Linter (1965) is the oldest performance evaluation model. Its formula is the following: Rpt â€Å" Rft = ÃŽÂ ±p + ÃŽÂ ²p (Rmt-Rft) + ept t= 1,2,, T Where, Rpt= return of fund p in month t, Rft= risk free return on month t, Rmt= return of the market portfolio on month t, ept= the error term, ÃŽÂ ±p and ÃŽÂ ²p= the intercept and the slope of the regression estimated. The intercept of this equation, ÃŽÂ ±p commonly called Jensens alpha (1968) is usually interpreted as a measure of out or under performance relative to the market proxy used. There are several extension of this model have been developed like- the Breeden (1979) intertemporal CAPM or the Ferson and Schadt (1996) CAPM that allows time variation in the expected returns and the risk (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). 4. Data Preparation: For data preparation my first step will be to collect the monthly data of the hedge fund index, FTSE 100 and SP 500. For my data collection I will use some sources like- Credit Suisse/ Tremont Hedge Fund Index (CSTHFI hereafter) which is an appropriate representative of the entire hedge fund industry, there are three biggest database of hedge fund in the world these are Managed Account Reports (MAR), Hedge Fund Research, Inc (HFR) and TASS Management (TASS). These databases were the most used in academic and commercial hedge fund studies. For the FTSE 100 and SP 500 I will use yahoo finance. 4.1. Bias in Hedge fund data: According to Ackermann et al. (1999) and to Fung and Hsieh (2000), two upward biases exist in the case of hedge funds. They do not exist in the case of mutual funds, and they both have an opposite impact to the survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is an important issue in mutual funds performance studies (see Carhart and al. 2000). This bias is present when a database contains only funds that have data for the whole period studies. In this case, there is a risk of overestimating the mean performance because the funds that would have ceased to exist because of their bad performance would not be taken into account. The two upward biases exist because, since hedge funds are not allowed to advertise, they consider inclusion in a database primarily as a marketing tool. The first phenomenon stressed by Ackermann and al. (1999) and called the self-selection bias is present because funds that realize good performance have less incentive to report their performance to data providers in order to attract new investors. The second point called instant history bias or backfilled bias (Fung and Hsieh 2000) occurs because after inclusion a funds performance history is backfilled. This may cause an upward bias because funds with less satisfactory performance history are less likely to apply for inclusion than funds with good performance history (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). To avoid these biases I will try to take all funds both living and dissolved into account. Once I have collected all the data that I need I will use SPSS to test the correlation between my two benchmarks FTSE 100 and SP 500. 5. Contingency Plan: To make my research effective I made a well constructed plan. I have drafted a project plan (Appendix A) with scheduled dates for when I intend to complete sections for submission. After completing my final exam I will jump in to this field. Advises from previous students who completed their dissertation, I made my project plan flexible to keep some things in mind like supervisors holiday and any unforeseen events such as my illness. I will try to keep a good communication with my supervisor for checking that I am in right track. I plan to make some formal meetings with my supervisor to discuss my progress and I will try to inform him about the state of my work. It is hard to spending too much time over one task and going off track, I hope I will manage this if there is no rush at the very last minute. Another worry is the collecting and analysing the data, that is why I plan to collect the data early June once I have finished my research design. If I face any kind of difficulties I will inform him and make a cut-off point where I should stop searching the board data and start my own primary data. As I do all SPSS classes and briefly touched about this, I think it will be easy to analyze the data but I need to increase a bit of use of control on it by practicing more. So I will set aside time for collecting data and practice more SPSS for regression analysis. I hope if all these go well, I will make my dissertation very effectively. Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances Analysis Of Hedge Fund Performances 1. INTRODUTION: Hedge funds are actively managed portfolios that hold positions in publicly traded securities. Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M. Kat (2000) stated on their report that A hedge fund is typically defined as a pooled investment vehicle that is privately organized, administrated by professional investment managers, and not widely available to the public? It charges both a performance fee and a management fee. It allows a flexible investment for a small number of large investors (usually the minimum investment is $1 million) can use high risk techniques. Nowadays it is very clear that in the matter of alternative investment mutual fund is not performing well. As a high absolute returns and typically have features such as hurdle rates and incentive fees with high watermark provision hedge fund gives a better align to the interests of managers and investors. Moreover mutual funds typically use a long-only buy-and-hold type strategy on standard asset classes, which help to capture risk premia asso ciate with equity risk, interest rate risk, default risk etc. However, they are not very helpful in capturing risk premia associate with dynamic trading strategies. That is why hedge fund comes into the picture. This is the year of 2009, which takes the greatest history of the world in the following century. In the year of 2008 the world saw the greatest fall down of the world economy. Lots of people missing their jobs, lots of company were stopped. The world economy faced the highest losses in the history. These all factors are showing only one way to makeover from that greatest downfall that is hedging. 3The last couple of decades have witnessed a rapidly growing in the hedge funds. Relative to traditional investment portfolios hedge funds exhibit some unique characteristics; they are flexible with respect to the types of securities they hold and the type of the position they take. 1 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2000). Multi-period performance persistence analysis of hedge fund s?. The journal of financial and quantitative analysis. Vol. 35, No,3. PP-327. 2 Agarwal, V. and Naik, N. (2004). Risks and portfolio decisions involving hedge funds?. The review of financial studies, Vol. 17, No.1. PP-64. 3 Journal of banking and finance 32(2008) 741-753- Hedge Fund Pricing and Model Uncertainty? by Spyridan D. Vrontos, Ioannis D. Vrontos, Daniel Giomouridies. 4The number of FOHFs increase by 40% between 2001 and 2003, and now comprised almost two third of the $650 billion invested in the USAs hedge fund market. Due to its nature it is difficult to estimate the current size of hedge fund industry. 5Van Hedge Fund Advisors estimates that by the end of 1998 there were 5380 hedge fund managing $311 in capital, with between $800 billion and $1 trillion in total assets, which indicates the higher number of recent new entries. So far, hedge fund is based on American phenomena. About 90% hedge fund managers are based in the US, 9% in Europe and 1% in Asia and elsewhere. Now a days around 5883 hedge funds are trading around the world. (*Barclay Hedge database) 4 Financial times, 29th October, 2003. www.vanhedge.com http://www.barclayhedge.com/products/hedge-fund-directory.html 1.1 Categories of Hedge fund investment objectives: Event Driven: Distressed securities- manager focuses on securities of companies in reorganization and bankruptcy, ranging from senior secured debt to the common stock of the company. Risk arbitrage- manager simultaneously buys stock in a company being acquired and sells stock in its acquirers. Global: International- manager pays attention to economic change around the world (except the United States) but more bottom-up oriented in that managers tend to be stock-pickers in markets they like. Uses index derivatives to a much lesser extent than macro managers. Emerging- Manager invests in less mature financial markets of the world, e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India. Because shorting is not permitted in many emerging markets, managers must go to cash or other markets when valuations make being long unattractive. Regional- Manager focuses on specific regions of the world, example- Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Global macro: Opportunistic trading manager that profits from changes in global economies typically based in major interest rate shifts. Uses leverage and derivatives. Market neutral: Long/short stocks- half long/half short. Manager attempts to lock-out or neutralize market risk. Convertible arbitrage- Manager goes long convertible securities and shorts the underlying equities. Stock index arbitrage- Manager buys a basket of stocks and sells short stock index futures, or the reverse. Fixed income arbitrage- Manager buys T-bonds and sells short index futures or the reverse. Short sales: Manager takes a position that stock prices will go down. Used as a hedge for long only portfolios and by those who feel market is approaching a bearish trend. U.S Opportunistic: Value â€Å" Manager focuses on assets, cash flow, book value, out-of-favor stocks. Growth â€Å" Manager invests in growth stocks, revenues, earnings, and growth potential are keys. Short term â€Å" Manager holds positions for a short time frame. Fund of fund: Capital is allocated among a number of hedge funds, providing investors with access to managers they might not be able to discover or evaluate in their own. Usually has a lower minimum than a hedge fund. Source: Carl Ackermann, Richard McEnally, and David Ravenscraft, The performance of hedge funds: Risk, Return and Incentives,? Journal of finance 54, no.3 (June 1999) figure 1, page-843. Reproduced from a hedge fund database firm named Managed Account Report (MAR) Inc, and distributed through LaPorte Asset Allocation System. 2. Literature review: Despite the increasing interest and recent development, few studies have been carried out on hedge funds comparing to other investment tools like mutual funds. An analysis of Hedge Fund performance 1984-2000? by Capocci Daniel using one of the greatest hedge fund database ever used on his working paper (2796 individual funds including 801 dissolved), to investigate hedge funds performance using various asset-pricing models, including an extension from of Carharts (1997) model combined with Fama and French (1998), Agarwal and Naik (2000) models that take into account the fact that some hedge funds invest in emerging market bond. At the end they found that their model does a better job describing hedge funds behaviour. That appears particularly good for the Event Driven, Global Macro, US Opportunistic, Equity non-Hedge and Sector funds. Since the early 1990s, when around 2000 hedge funds were managing assets totalling capital of $60 billion, the subsequent growth in the number and asset base of hedge funds has never really been refuted. The industry only suffered from a relative slowdown in 1998, but since then has enjoyed a renewed vitality with an estimated total of 10,000funds managing more than a trillion US dollars by the end of 2006. The growing trend of the sector remained remarkably sustained during the stock market collapse that started in March 2000, when the NASDAQ composite Index reached an all-time high of 5,132 and finished three years later with a floor level of 1,253. In the meantime, the global met asset value (NAV) of hedge funds continued to grow at a steady rate of 10.6% (Van Hedge Funds Advisors International, 2002), contrasting with a decrease of 2.7% in the worldwide mutual fund industry ( Investment Company Institute, 2003). In 2001, Capocci and Hubner(2004) estimated that there were 6,000 he dge fund managing around $400 billion. In 2007, Capocci, Duquenne and Hubner (2007) estimated that there were 10,000 hedge funds managing around $1 trillion. This is a growth of 11% in the number of funds and 26% in assets over six years (6PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci). Other studies from practitioners Hennessee (1994), and Oberuc (1994) also showed an evidence of superior performance in the case of hedge funds. Ackernann and Al. (1999) and Liang (1999) who compared the performance of hedge funds to mutual funds and several indices, found that hedge funds constantly obtained better performance than mutual funds. Their performance was not better than the performance of the market indices considered. They also indicated that the returns in hedge funds were more unstable than both the returns of mutual funds and those of market indices. According to Brown and Al. (1997) hedge funds showing good performance in the first part of the year reduce the volatility of their portfolio in the second half of the year (Capocci Daniel- An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984-2000). Taking all these results into account hedge funds seems a good investment tool. 6 PhD thesis paper by Daniel P.J. Capocci. Electronic copy available at: http//ssrn.com/abstract=1008319. 3. Research design and Methodology: In this section I would like to describe the empirical methodology to be used to measure the performance of hedge fund as well as the performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500. My aim is to identify which will give the better return for an investor. To investigate hedge funds performance and performance of FTSE 100 and SP 500 my study will follow some models like 4-factor model from of Carharts (1997) model, the 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993) models, the Sharpe ratio (1966) and Jensens alpha (1968) and CAPM. I divide my research into three sections. First section will analyse the performance of hedge funds, FTSE 100 and SP 500. This section sets out the models of performance measurement I will use. Second section will made correlation between Hedge fund vs. FTSE 100 and Hedge fund vs. SP 500 to find out the better portfolio. Third section will exposes a discussion as well as a description of my database and finally concludes the paper. 3.1. Performance measure models: The 4-factor model from Carhart (1997) Carharts (1997) 4-factor model is an extension of the Fama and French (1993) factor model. It not only takes into account the size of the firms, the book to market ratio, but there is an additional factor for the momentum effect. Grinblatt, Titman and Wermers (1995) define this effect as buying stocks that were past winners and selling past losers. This model is estimated with the following regressions: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ÃŽÂ ²p4 PR1YRt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size; HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity; PR1YRt= the factor mimicking portfolio for the momentum effect7 7 for a description of the construction of PR1YR see Carhart (1997). As stressed by Daniel et al. (1997), this model, which is effectively a four factor Jensen measure, assumes that betas with respect to the returns of four zero investment factor mimicking portfolios, are appropriate measures of multidimensional systematic risk. According to this model, in the absence of stock selection or timing abilities, the expected return for a fund is the sum of the risk free return and the products of the betas with the factor risk premium, which are simply the expected returns of each of these zero investment portfolios. The Carhart (1997) approach identifies a matching passive portfolio return for each fund return. This passive return, which is subtracted from the fund return to generate ÃŽÂ ±p, is a weighted average of the returns of the Carhart factor portfolios and the return of a one month T-bill (Capocci Daniel 2001, Journal- European Private Bankers, Nov, 2001). The 3-factor model from Fama and French (1993): Fama and French (1993) 3 factor model is estimated from an expected form of the CAPM regression. It takes the size and the book to market ratio of the firm into account. It uses the time series approach from Black, Jensen, and Scholles (1972) in the sense that the monthly returns on stocks are regressed on the returns to a market portfolio of stocks and mimicking portfolios for size and book to market. It is estimated from the following extension of the CAPM regression: Rpt-Rft=ÃŽÂ ±p+ÃŽÂ ²pi (Rmt â€Å"Rft) + ÃŽÂ ²p2 SMBt +ÃŽÂ ²p3 HMLt + ept t= 1,2,,T Where, SMBt= the factor mimicking portfolios for size, and HMLt= the factor mimicking portfolio for book to market equity. SMLt which comes from small minus big meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to size, and HMLt which comes from high minus low meant to mimic the risk factor in returns related to book to market equity8. HML (respectively SMB) is neutral relative to the size effect (respectively to the book to market). This means that these factors do a good job isolating the firm-specific components of returns (Fama and French 1993, 1995, 1996 and 2000). 8 See Fama and French (1993) for a precise description of the construction of SMBt and HMLt. The Sharp Ratio (1966): The Sharp ratios (1966) calculate the ratio of the average excess return and the return standard deviation of the fund that is being evaluated. As such it measures the excess return per unit of risk. Assuming all asset returns to be normally distributed, the CAPM tells us that in equilibrium the highest attainable Sharpe ratio is that of the market index. In more general terms, the market indexs sharp ratio represents the set of return distributions that is obtained when statically combining the market index with cash. With the market index being highly diversified, these distributions offer the highest achievable expected return for every possible standard deviation (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Jensens Alpha (1968): Jensens alpha was introduced in Jensen (1968) and equals the intercept of the regression: (Rh-Rf)= ÃŽÂ ± + ÃŽÂ ² (Ri- Rf) + eh, Where Rh is the fund return, Rf is the risk free rate and Ri is the total return on the market index. Like the Sharpe ratio, Jensens alpha is rooted in the CAPM. According to the CAPM, in equilibrium all (portfolios of) assets with the same beta will offer the same expected return, any positive deviation therefore indicates superior performance (Gaurav S. Amin and Harry M.Kat (2002), Hedge fund performance 1990-2000). Capital Asset Pricing Model: The first performance model that will be used is a capital asset pricing based single index model (CAPM). This model developed by Sharpe (1964) and Linter (1965) is the oldest performance evaluation model. Its formula is the following: Rpt â€Å" Rft = ÃŽÂ ±p + ÃŽÂ ²p (Rmt-Rft) + ept t= 1,2,, T Where, Rpt= return of fund p in month t, Rft= risk free return on month t, Rmt= return of the market portfolio on month t, ept= the error term, ÃŽÂ ±p and ÃŽÂ ²p= the intercept and the slope of the regression estimated. The intercept of this equation, ÃŽÂ ±p commonly called Jensens alpha (1968) is usually interpreted as a measure of out or under performance relative to the market proxy used. There are several extension of this model have been developed like- the Breeden (1979) intertemporal CAPM or the Ferson and Schadt (1996) CAPM that allows time variation in the expected returns and the risk (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). 4. Data Preparation: For data preparation my first step will be to collect the monthly data of the hedge fund index, FTSE 100 and SP 500. For my data collection I will use some sources like- Credit Suisse/ Tremont Hedge Fund Index (CSTHFI hereafter) which is an appropriate representative of the entire hedge fund industry, there are three biggest database of hedge fund in the world these are Managed Account Reports (MAR), Hedge Fund Research, Inc (HFR) and TASS Management (TASS). These databases were the most used in academic and commercial hedge fund studies. For the FTSE 100 and SP 500 I will use yahoo finance. 4.1. Bias in Hedge fund data: According to Ackermann et al. (1999) and to Fung and Hsieh (2000), two upward biases exist in the case of hedge funds. They do not exist in the case of mutual funds, and they both have an opposite impact to the survivorship bias. Survivorship bias is an important issue in mutual funds performance studies (see Carhart and al. 2000). This bias is present when a database contains only funds that have data for the whole period studies. In this case, there is a risk of overestimating the mean performance because the funds that would have ceased to exist because of their bad performance would not be taken into account. The two upward biases exist because, since hedge funds are not allowed to advertise, they consider inclusion in a database primarily as a marketing tool. The first phenomenon stressed by Ackermann and al. (1999) and called the self-selection bias is present because funds that realize good performance have less incentive to report their performance to data providers in order to attract new investors. The second point called instant history bias or backfilled bias (Fung and Hsieh 2000) occurs because after inclusion a funds performance history is backfilled. This may cause an upward bias because funds with less satisfactory performance history are less likely to apply for inclusion than funds with good performance history (Capocci Daniel 2001, An analysis of hedge fund performance 1984- 2000). To avoid these biases I will try to take all funds both living and dissolved into account. Once I have collected all the data that I need I will use SPSS to test the correlation between my two benchmarks FTSE 100 and SP 500. 5. Contingency Plan: To make my research effective I made a well constructed plan. I have drafted a project plan (Appendix A) with scheduled dates for when I intend to complete sections for submission. After completing my final exam I will jump in to this field. Advises from previous students who completed their dissertation, I made my project plan flexible to keep some things in mind like supervisors holiday and any unforeseen events such as my illness. I will try to keep a good communication with my supervisor for checking that I am in right track. I plan to make some formal meetings with my supervisor to discuss my progress and I will try to inform him about the state of my work. It is hard to spending too much time over one task and going off track, I hope I will manage this if there is no rush at the very last minute. Another worry is the collecting and analysing the data, that is why I plan to collect the data early June once I have finished my research design. If I face any kind of difficulties I will inform him and make a cut-off point where I should stop searching the board data and start my own primary data. As I do all SPSS classes and briefly touched about this, I think it will be easy to analyze the data but I need to increase a bit of use of control on it by practicing more. So I will set aside time for collecting data and practice more SPSS for regression analysis. I hope if all these go well, I will make my dissertation very effectively.

Roger Angell :: essays research papers

Throughout his tenure at The New Yorker, Roger Angell has received the reputation as one of the best baseball writers ever, though his contributions to the magazine do not stop there. His family likely influenced his decision to join the magazine as both his mother and step-father worked for The New Yorker. This Harvard graduate began his work at the newspaper in 1962 as an editor, but now mostly writes about his passion: baseball. (Weich)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Roger Angell grew up in a less-than-perfect household. His father was unfaithful to his mother, and it was said that it went the other way also. At the age of eight, Angell’s parents divorced. His mother, an editor at The New Yorker, remarried only three months later to her colleague, E.B. White, also an editor. (Angell) Angell lived with his mother and step-father during his childhood. In 1942, he would graduate from Harvard. (Baseballlibrary.com)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Angell began writing for The New Yorker in 1962. It wasn’t so much his knowledge of baseball that made him a great writer, but the fact that he was a fan. His articles were never overloaded with statistics and many would not even include one. His view from a fans perspective forced his articles to focus more on the emotions he felt during the games and how the way the players reacted towards the game. Inside Sports columnist, Richard Ford explained Angell’s writing techniques.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Roger Angell has been writing about baseball for more than forty years — mostly for the New Yorker magazine — and for my money he's the best there is at it. There's no writer I know whose writing on sport, and particularly baseball, is as anticipated, as often reread and passed from hand to hand by knowledgeable baseball enthusiasts as Angell's is, or whose work is more routinely and delightedly read by those who really aren't enthusiasts. Among the thirty selections in this volume are several individual essays and profiles (the Bob Gibson profile, 'Distance,' for instance) which can be counted in that extremely small group of sports articles that people talk over and quote for decades, and which have managed to make a lasting contribution to the larger body of American writing.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   (Weich) Roger Angell credited his superior writing skills to being given freedom to write about what he wants, how he wants to write.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Angell: ‘I think that instinctively I thought I'd have to trust myself and to report about what I was seeing, what I was thinking as a fan, and not to try to fake it by being knowing about these players and their deliveries and all that stuff which I later learned about.

Courtesy in Sir Gawain and the Greenknight Essay -- Sir Gawain and the

Courtesy in Sir Gawain and the Greenknight In modern society, Martha Stewart and Miss Manners are authorities in the social amenities of community gatherings, and they promote their ideas in television programs and books. But in the Middle Ages, elegant behavior is illustrated in the Middle English poem, â€Å"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,† in a detailed account of a holiday celebration at King Arthur’s castle. In this text, the idea of courtesy is shown as the foremost attribute of a knight, and King Arthur is introduced as the â€Å"most courteous of all† (26) rulers. In a mealtime setting, the lives and customs of â€Å"[t]he most noble knights known under Christ† (51) are displayed, and courteous behavior is established as the hallmark of knighthood. By showcasing the common experience of eating, the narrator reveals the significance of courtesy in courtly life and discloses the customs of this era. Indeed, the sequence, kind, and presentation of foods at the feast provide a framework f or the courteous demeanor in this adventurous tale. When the feast begins, servants enter wi...

Learning Disability Case Study Essay -- Psychological Assessment

A psychological assessment is a fundamental aspect in measuring intellectual disabilities (Drew & Hardman, 2007). Information provided from partaking in an assessment includes severity of the disability and an understanding of the individual’s limitations as a result of the disability (Drew & Hardman, 2007). Knowledge of these elements, as explained by Drew and Hardman, aid in determining the necessary supports required by the individual to help them cope with the disability. It is important that the assessment measures both cognitive and adaptive aspects of an individual’s functioning because, â€Å"Mental retardation is a disability characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behaviour as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills† (Drew & Hardman, 2007, p. 19). Once an assessment of these areas has been completed an individual may be identified as having an intellectual disability. Information discovered by the assessment may lead parents to feel a sense of relief knowing the reason behind their child’s struggles (Lerner & Johns, 2012). With an identification the information collected from the assessment helps professionals provide better care and support to the child and their family (Drew & Hardman, 2007). Identification also leads to increased legal rights of a child for special education and access to essential supports and services (Lerner & Johns, 2012). Unfortunately, the results for an assessment may not be completely accurate, nor fully capture the child’s true performance capabilities (Drew & Hardman, 2007). Also, a diagnosis entails a label and Lerner and Johns (2012), explain that such labels can harmful for children. This diagnostic la... ...are or after their death. This planning will ensure that the child will be prepared for a life without parents to fall back on for support. Works Cited Drew, C., & Hardman, M. (2007). Intellectual Disabilities Across the Lifespan (9th ed). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson. Hallahan, D. P., Kauffman, J. M., McIntyre, L. J., & Mykota, D. (2010). Exceptional learners: An Introduction to special education. Canadian Edition. Toronto, ON: Pearson Education. Harwell, J., & William Jackson, R. (2008). The Complete Learning Disabilities Handbook: Ready-to-Use Strategies & Activities for Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA.: Jossey-Bass. Lerner, J. W, & Johns, B. H. (2012). Learning disabilities and related mild disabilities: teaching strategies and new directions (12th ed.). USA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Personal development Essay

Personal development and success are often, if not usually, tied up with a successful and satisfying career or careers. This means that career development is a key element to a self improvement program, whether for an adult or young student; even for a mature student. Do you agree or disagree? Why?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Career development is a key, if not central part of every individual’s growth. It is an aspect of humanity which should necessarily follow and apply where ‘growth’ and ‘development’ of a person is concerned. I believe it holds great significance to an individual not only because it defines the individual’s identity in terms of where he or she stands in society, but because it will also influence and perhaps dictate an individual’s personal or private life to the detriment or development of it. Career development should then be pursued if one is expected to grow holistically and lead a satisfying life. Is it important to have particular strengths and skills in a particular career or is destiny more important?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Both are important in every aspect of life, but more so in every career. Having particular strengths and skills and working hard in honing them is important in school, the workplace, and the rest of society. Opportunities and fortunate turn of events which work to our advantage are also important, and should be acted upon, but jumping in an endeavor without the proper skills and aforementioned strengths can only bring people so far, or not bring them anywhere at all. Strength and skills, as well as the instance of good fortune holds great significance in every career, and contribute to its development. Do you feel most people are stressed and unhappy with their jobs? Why do you think so many people work at jobs they really have no interest in and/or may actually hate?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   ‘Work’ isn’t supposed to be fun, at least not conventionally. People do what they can to get by, to earn tax dollars and involve themselves in the dreary drag of work they dislike or even hate, day in and day out in the hopes of finding a more satisfying and fulfilling job, to retire young, and enjoy the rest of what life has to offer. Unfortunately most of us get caught in ‘transitional’ jobs which we end up doing for the greater extent

Brady Act & Constitutional Law

How guns and firearms are sold and owned in the United States of America has changed as both firearms and the outlook of the general public about gun ownership by private individuals developed and changed over time. From the very first time firearms were introduced to the public to the use of firearms for a variety of reasons other than as a weapon to kill or maim another human being intentionally, laws and regulations state-wide as well as national has been put into action so that the problems arising from poor gun control can be addressed.There are several laws in effect in the United States today which directly affect the selling and ownership of guns. One of these laws is the Brady Handgun Control Act, a law which was campaigned for and was inspired by the vision and dedication of Ms. Sarah Brady, wise of the deceased James Brady. Sarah Brady campaigned for the creation of law that would make gun sale and purchase a process that erases the chances that guns fall into the wrong ha nds. Sarah lost her husband after James was killed during an assassination attempt against former US president Ronal Reagan.The Brady Act was passed, but it has many critics coming from different sides. Some praise the initiative especially those who believe that one of the serious issues that law makers and law enforcement units should address is firearms and violence. â€Å"The Brady Act was passed in response to what Congress describes as an ‘epidemic of gun violence†¦ ’ Whether or not the evaluation reflected in the enactment of the Brady Act is correct as to the extent of the danger and the efficacy of the legislation, the congressional decision surely warrants more respect that it is accorded in today's unprecedented decision (Kommers, Finn, Jacobsohn, 2004, p.270). † The constitutional law implications of the Brady Act – The enactment into law of the Brady Handgun Control Act (previously the Brady Handgun Control Bill) created many after effect s. The immediate constitutional implication of the Brady Act is the changing of what can be considered as the legal process of owning a gun. Prior to the Brady Act, there are no laws that require the screening of individuals who want to purchase a firearm.But because of the Brady Act, suppliers, dealers and sellers of firearms who are identified by the Brady Act as required by the law to undergo customer screening is now constrained to do so, lest they are subjected to the penalties that go with the violation of the Brady Act. Another noticeable effect of the Brady Act in the constitutional law is the idea of enforcing state laws into the federal system, which some believed as a breach of the sovereignty of the states and a direct violation of the tenth amendment.The tenth amendment basically guarantees the sovereignty of the states from the perceived blanket and federal rule of rules and laws which are being imposed nationwide. When the Brady Bill was passed and made the Brady Act, local state governments and courts were torn on whether or not the country is guilty of usurping state powers when they introduced the Brady Act and the features of this particular law.According to the book made by National Research Council titled â€Å"Containing the Threat from Illegal Bombings: An Integrated National Strategy for Marking, Tagging, Rendering Inert, and Licensing Explosives and Their Precursors,† not all of the states proved to be receptive to the idea of the federal government, and there are some who felt that there are existing problems found in the imposition of the Brady Act in all of the states.â€Å"Shortly after the act's passage, local law enforcement officials from around the country filed lawsuits seeking to enjoin its enforcement and to have its interim provisions declared unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment (National Research Council, 1998, p. 290). † The response of the different courts that heard out this cry over undue pressure from the federal government was varied. This is because the interpretation and tolerance towards the use and imposition of the Brady Act in every state is also different.Some states think that the features of the Brady Act are ok. â€Å"The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Mack v. United States upheld the constitutionality of the interim provisions, finding in the Brady Act, nothing unusually jarring to our system of federalism (National Research Council, 1998, p. 290). † But while there are courts who ruled in favor of the Brady Act and its imposition in the state, there were also instances wherein the court ruled in favor of the state government and its rights, â€Å"some courts, like the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Koog v.United States, found the interim provisions unconstitutional, explaining that the interim duties effectively commandeer the legislative processes of the States, and in violation of the Tenth Amendment, cross the line from permissible encouragement of a state regulatory response into that constitutionally forbidden territory of coercion of the sovereign States (National Research Council, 1998, p. 290). † Besides the friction that the Brady Act made with regards to the relationship of the government of the sovereign states and the federal government, the law also appears to have a significant role in how the law makers would create other laws.The Brady Act acts as precedent for the creation of other laws against other things closely related to firearms, starting with the regulation of explosive products. Facing an age where terrorism is largely defined by the use of bombs and by the presence of chemicals being used for bomb-making, law makers may rethink their position in pending laws that will affect bomb and explosives regulation. â€Å"The fate of the Brad Act has obvious implications for any regulations that Congress may devise to control ammonium nitrate or other explosive products (National Research Council, 1998, p. 290).† There are other effects on law and constitution caused by the Brady Act. For example, the Brady Act provided the plug to close several holes in some existing laws in gun control, like the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 and acted as a law that supported other judicial efforts to combat violence originating from firearms, like the Federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The Brady Act as a law went head on against some of the existing state laws on firearms purchase and selling, and because it was a redundancy, some states did not see fit to use or implement it.But this does not seem to matter because, according to Siegel, the Brady Act was considered by some as ineffective in achieving what it was designed for. â€Å"When Jen Ludwig and Philip Cook compared two sets of states – thirty-two that installed the Brady Law in 1994 and eighteen states plus the District of Columbia, which already had similar types of laws prior to 1994 – they found that there was no evidence that implementing the Brady Law contributed to a reduction in homicide (Siegel, 2005, pg 49).† Conclusion – It is easily imaginable how the proponents of the Brady Act only had in mind the undertaking of a noble cause to protect the public. But as it turned out, the Brady Bill did not only became a source of confusion and debate concerning constitutional rights of the state government which cannot be breached by federal government, it also proved as a blunt knife when it comes to the effort in cutting down irresponsible firearms sell that leads to violence.Proponents of the Brady Act were hoping that the rest of the country would embrace it and that the efforts will be validated by its efficacy. But at some point they were wrong because of many things. First, there are already similar laws installed in some states that the Brady Law is just an unnecessary cause of confusion for them. Second, the resulting effort to make the Brady A ct a nationwide and blanket law was met with criticisms over the supposed encroachment of federal government illegally on constitutionally protected state government rights.If the Brady Act proves that it can provide a very sound framework from which new rules will be made from (i. e. the law on the restriction of explosives), then the Brady Act will indirectly make a positive contribution towards efforts which are geared in getting the same results similar to the outcome that the Brady Bill was hoping to achieve. References Kommers, Donald P. , Finn, John E. and Jacobsohn, Gary J.(February 2004). American Constitutional Law: Essays, Cases, and Comparative Notes, Second Edition, Volume 1. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. National Research Council (July 1998). Containing the Threat from Illegal Bombings: An Integrated National Strategy for Marking, Tagging, Rendering Inert, and Licensing Explosives and Their Precursors. National Academies Press. Siegel, Larry J. (March 2005). Cr iminology. Wadsworth.

Comparing poems Essay

Salome turns out to be an evil and very disturbed character; she gets pleasure by beheading people. In this poem it turns out that Salome has removed few other heads previously and she would doubtlessly do it again. She does not even know who’s head it is that is next to her, but it seems like that she does not care at all. This makes her sound like a whore. As the maid walk’s in this makes her feel more comfortable and better for some reason. Hitcher: The man seems really stressed and tired, and when he receives the phone call from his boss that is his final straw. He seems very jealous of the hitcher this is because he is free of stress and is a free spirit. He seems very frustrated. The Man He Killed: This poem is very interesting. It turns out that they don’t want to kill each other but because they are at war with each other’s country. One of them says â€Å"you’d treat if met where any bar is or help to half-a-crown. He is saying if I met you in any other circumstances I would take you to a bar and buy you a pint. My Last Duchess: She is very very jealous, in fact she is so jealous that she wants to poison he and watch he die very slowly. She makes the poison sound like something that is rich and luxurious. Salome: There is some alliteration on line 18-19 where the sound of maid’s clanging makes Salome happy. Throughout the poem the tone of it makes the poem sound like a young girl who is spoiled and self-indulgent. In this poem there are quite a few clichi s e. g. â€Å"and ain’t life a bitch†. Hitcher: In this poem the first stanza has some typical rhymes which bind’s the poem together – â€Å"tired†, â€Å"fired†, â€Å"hired†. Can you see the effect of this? He is tired and then his boss threatens to fire him then he hires a Vauxhall Astra. A lot of clichi ‘s are used in this poems here are some examples â€Å"The truth he said was blowin’ in the wind, or around the next bend†. â€Å"he’d said he liked the breeze to run its fingers/ through his hair†. The Man He Killed: There are colloquialisms such as â€Å"off-hand like† which provide an earthy realism along with the rough sounding meter. The Laboratory: This poem uses consolation irony. It also uses some alliteration here is an example â€Å"Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste† and here is another example â€Å"Brand, burn up, bite into its grace-â€Å". It also has some ambiguity in it here is an example â€Å"If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me? â€Å". Salome: The first verse describes how she is trying to figure out whose head is on the pillow next to here. The second verse describes how she started to feel less â€Å"hangover† when the maid rough in her breakfast. The third verse discusses how she is trying to dissolve the life of â€Å"†¦ the booze and the fags and the sex†. Then she decides to â€Å"turf out the blighter from her bed†. Hitcher: This poem has five stanzas and a regular five line shape with the third line being the longest in all of them. If you look at each third line you will see some sort of a pattern occurring. The shape of the stanza is very interesting. The Man He Killed: This poem has a simple but formal structure of five short stanzas all rhyming ABAB. The last tow stanzas remind the men that they could be friends if they met in any other situation. Stanza’s two and three: set out the qualifying circumstances that change everything for the men’s fate: they are soldiers in opposing armies and therefore enemies. The laboratory: The title in this poem gives us a big hint on where the scene takes place. The speaker is a woman; she takes a lot of pleasure watching the procedure. In the second verse we cab see why the woman wanted revenge, she wanted revenge because the speaker has been betrayed by her lover. In verse three she watches the apothecary at work and is fascinated by what he is doing. She is in no hurry. She takes pleasure in the preparation. This is better than dancing in the kings palace.

Ch8 Test Bank

CHAPTER 8 SECTION 1: CONTINUOUS PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS MULTIPLE CHOICE 1. Which of the following represents a difference between continuous and discrete random variables? a. Continuous random variables assume an uncountable number of values, and discrete random variables do not. b. The probability for any individual value of a continuous random variable is zero, but for discrete random variables it is not. c. Probability for continuous random variables means finding the area under a curve, while for discrete random variables it means summing individual probabilities. d. All of these choices are true. ANS:DPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 2.Which of the following is always true for all probability density functions of continuous random variables? a. The probability at any single point is zero. b. They contain an uncountable number of possible values. c. The total area under the density function f(x) equals 1. d. All of these choices are true. ANS:DPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 3. Suppose f(x) = 0. 25 . What range of possible values can X take on and still have the density function be legitimate? a. [0, 4] b. [4, 8] c. [? 2, +2] d. All of these choices are true. ANS:DPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 4. The probability density function, f(x), for any continuous random variable X, represents: a. ll possible values that X will assume within some interval a ? x ? b. b. the probability that X takes on a specific value x. c. the height of the density function at x. d. None of these choices. ANS:CPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 5. Which of the following is true about f(x) when X has a uniform distribution over the interval [a, b]? a. The values of f(x) are different for various values of the random variable X. b. f(x) equals one for each possible value of X. c. f(x) equals one divided by the length of the interval from a to b. d. None of these choices. ANS:CPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 6.The probability density function f(x) for a uniform random variable X defined over the interval [2, 10] is a. 0. 125 b. 8 c. 6 d . None of these choices. ANS:APTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 7. If the random variable X has a uniform distribution between 40 and 50, then P(35 ? X ? 45) is: a. 1. 0 b. 0. 5 c. 0. 1 d. undefined. ANS:BPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 8. The probability density function f(x) of a random variable X that has a uniform distribution between a and b is a. (b + a)/2 b. 1/b ? 1/a c. (a ? b)/2 d. None of these choices. ANS:DPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 9. Which of the following does not represent a continuous uniform random variable? . f(x) = 1/2 for x between ? 1 and 1, inclusive. b. f(x) = 10 for x between 0 and 1/10, inclusive. c. f(x) = 1/3 for x = 4, 5, 6. d. None of these choices represents a continuous uniform random variable. ANS:CPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 10. Suppose f(x) = 1/4 over the range a ? x ? b, and suppose P(X > 4) = 1/2. What are the values for a and b? a. 0 and 4 b. 2 and 6 c. Can be any range of x values whose length (b ? a) equals 4. d. Cannot answer with the information given. ANS:BPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 11. What is the shape of the probability density function for a uniform random variable on the interval [a, b]? a.A rectangle whose X values go from a to b. b. A straight line whose height is 1/(b ? a) over the range [a, b]. c. A continuous probability density function with the same value of f(x) from a to b. d. All of these choices are true. ANS:DPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 TRUE/FALSE 12. A continuous probability distribution represents a random variable having an infinite number of outcomes which may assume any number of values within an interval. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 13. Continuous probability distributions describe probabilities associated with random variables that are able to assume any finite number of values along an interval.ANS:FPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 14. A continuous random variable is one that can assume an uncountable number of values. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 15. Since there is an infinite number of values a continuous random variable can assume, the probability of each individual value is virtually 0. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 16. A continuous random variable X has a uniform distribution between 10 and 20 (inclusive), then the probability that X falls between 12 and 15 is 0. 30. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 17. A continuous random variable X has a uniform distribution between 5 and 15 (inclusive), then the probability that X falls between 10 and 20 is 1. . ANS:FPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 18. A continuous random variable X has a uniform distribution between 5 and 25 (inclusive), then P(X = 15) = 0. 05. ANS:FPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 19. We distinguish between discrete and continuous random variables by noting whether the number of possible values is countable or uncountable. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 20. In practice, we frequently use a continuous distribution to approximate a discrete one when the number of values the variable can assume is countable but very large. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 21. Let X represent weekly income expressed in dollars. Since there is no set upper limit, we cannot identify (and thus cannot count) all the possible values. Consequently, weekly income is regarded as a continuous random variable. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 22. To be a legitimate probability density function, all possible values of f(x) must be non-negative. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 23. To be a legitimate probability density function, all possible values of f(x) must lie between 0 and 1 (inclusive). ANS:FPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 24. The sum of all values of f(x) over the range of [a, b] must equal one. ANS:FPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 25.A probability density function shows the probability for each value of X. ANS:FPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 26. If X is a continuous random variable on the interval [0, 10], then P(X > 5) = P(X ? 5). ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 27. If X is a continuous random variable on the interval [0, 10], then P(X = 5) = f(5) = 1/10. ANS:FPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 28. If a point y lies outside the range of the possible values of a ran dom variable X, then f(y) must equal zero. ANS:TPTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 COMPLETION 29. A(n) ____________________ random variable is one that assumes an uncountable number of possible values.ANS:continuous PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 30. For a continuous random variable, the probability for each individual value of X is ____________________. ANS: zero 0 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 31. Probability for continuous random variables is found by finding the ____________________ under a curve. ANS:area PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 32. A(n) ____________________ random variable has a density function that looks like a rectangle and you can use areas of a rectangle to find probabilities for it. ANS:uniform PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 33. Suppose X is a continuous random variable for X between a and b.Then its probability ____________________ function must non-negative for all values of X between a and b. ANS:density PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 34. The total area under f(x) for a continuous random variable must equal _________ ___________. ANS: 1 one PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 35. The probability density function of a uniform random variable on the interval [0, 5] must be ____________________ for 0 ? x ? 5. ANS: 1/5 0. 20 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 36. To find the probability for a uniform random variable you take the ____________________ times the ____________________ of its corresponding rectangle.ANS: base; height height; base length; width width; length PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 37. You can use a continuous random variable to ____________________ a discrete random variable that takes on a countable, but very large, number of possible values. ANS:approximate PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 SHORT ANSWER 38. A continuous random variable X has the following probability density function: f(x) = 1/4, 0 ? x ? 4 Find the following probabilities: a. P(X ? 1) b. P(X ? 2) c. P(1 ? X ? 2) d. P(X = 3) ANS: a. 0. 25 b. 0. 50 c. 0. 25 d. 0 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 Waiting TimeThe length of time patients must wait to see a doctor at an emergen cy room in a large hospital has a uniform distribution between 40 minutes and 3 hours. 39. {Waiting Time Narrative} What is the probability density function for this uniform distribution? ANS: f(x) = 1/140, 40 ? x ? 180 (minutes) PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 40. {Waiting Time Narrative} What is the probability that a patient would have to wait between one and two hours? ANS: 0. 43 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 41. {Waiting Time Narrative} What is the probability that a patient would have to wait exactly one hour? ANS: 0PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 42. {Waiting Time Narrative} What is the probability that a patient would have to wait no more than one hour? ANS: 0. 143 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 43. The time required to complete a particular assembly operation has a uniform distribution between 25 and 50 minutes. a. What is the probability density function for this uniform distribution? b. What is the probability that the assembly operation will require more than 40 minutes to complete? c. Suppose more time was allowed to complete the operation, and the values of X were extended to the range from 25 to 60 minutes.What would f(x) be in this case? ANS: a. f(x) = 1/25, 25 ? x ? 50 b. 0. 40 c. f(x) = 1/35, 25 ? x ? 60 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 44. Suppose f(x) equals 1/50 on the interval [0, 50]. a. What is the distribution of X? b. What does the graph of f(x) look like? c. Find P(X ? 25) d. Find P(X ? 25) e. Find P(X = 25) f. Find P(0 < X < 3) g. Find P(? 3 < X < 0) h. Find P(0 < X < 50) ANS: a. X has a uniform distribution on the interval [0, 50]. b. f(x) forms a rectangle of height 1/50 from x = 0 to x = 50. c. 0. 50 d. 0. 50 e. 0 f. 0. 06 g. 0. 06 h. 1. 00PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 Chemistry Test The time it takes a student to finish a chemistry test has a uniform distribution between 50 and 70 minutes. 45. {Chemistry Test Narrative} What is the probability density function for this uniform distribution? ANS: f(x) = 1/20, 50 ? x ? 70 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 46. {Chemistry Test Narrative} Find the pr obability that a student will take more than 60 minutes to finish the test. ANS: 0. 50 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 47. {Chemistry Test Narrative} Find the probability that a student will take no less than 55 minutes to finish the test. ANS: 0. 75PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 48. {Chemistry Test Narrative} Find the probability that a student will take exactly one hour to finish the test. ANS: 0 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 49. {Chemistry Test Narrative} What is the median amount of time it takes a student to finish the test? ANS: 60 minutes PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 50. {Chemistry Test Narrative} What is the mean amount of time it takes a student to finish the test? ANS: 60 minutes PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 Elevator Waiting Time In a shopping mall the waiting time for an elevator is found to be uniformly distributed between 1 and 5 minutes. 1. {Elevator Waiting Time Narrative} What is the probability density function for this uniform distribution? ANS: f(x) = 1/4, 1 ? x ? 5 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 52. {Elevator Wa iting Time Narrative} What is the probability of waiting no more than 3 minutes? ANS: 0. 50 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 53. {Elevator Waiting Time Narrative} What is the probability that the elevator arrives in the first minute and a half? ANS: 0. 125 PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1 54. {Elevator Waiting Time Narrative} What is the median waiting time for this elevator? ANS: 3 minutes PTS:1REF:SECTION 8. 1