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Practical Effect (practical + effect)
Selected AbstractsA Probabilistic Framework for Bayesian Adaptive Forecasting of Project ProgressCOMPUTER-AIDED CIVIL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING, Issue 3 2007Paolo Gardoni An adaptive Bayesian updating method is used to assess the unknown model parameters based on recorded data and pertinent prior information. Recorded data can include equality, upper bound, and lower bound data. The proposed approach properly accounts for all the prevailing uncertainties, including model errors arising from an inaccurate model form or missing variables, measurement errors, statistical uncertainty, and volitional uncertainty. As an illustration of the proposed approach, the project progress and final time-to-completion of an example project are forecasted. For this illustration construction of civilian nuclear power plants in the United States is considered. This application considers two cases (1) no information is available prior to observing the actual progress data of a specified plant and (2) the construction progress of eight other nuclear power plants is available. The example shows that an informative prior is important to make accurate predictions when only a few records are available. This is also the time when forecasts are most valuable to the project manager. Having or not having prior information does not have any practical effect on the forecast when progress on a significant portion of the project has been recorded. [source] Psychometric Properties of IRT Proficiency EstimatesEDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT: ISSUES AND PRACTICE, Issue 3 2010Michael J. Kolen Psychometric properties of item response theory proficiency estimates are considered in this paper. Proficiency estimators based on summed scores and pattern scores include non-Bayes maximum likelihood and test characteristic curve estimators and Bayesian estimators. The psychometric properties investigated include reliability, conditional standard errors of measurement, and score distributions. Four real-data examples include (a) effects of choice of estimator on score distributions and percent proficient, (b) effects of the prior distribution on score distributions and percent proficient, (c) effects of test length on score distributions and percent proficient, and (d) effects of proficiency estimator on growth-related statistics for a vertical scale. The examples illustrate that the choice of estimator influences score distributions and the assignment of examinee to proficiency levels. In particular, for the examples studied, the choice of Bayes versus non-Bayes estimators had a more serious practical effect than the choice of summed versus pattern scoring. [source] Role of the one-body Jastrow factor in the transcorrelated self-consistent field equationINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 7 2006Naoto Umezawa Abstract The one-body Jastrow factor has been introduced into the transcorrelated variational Monte Carlo (TC-VMC) method. The principal role of the one-body Jastrow factor in the Jastrow,Slater-type wave function is to prevent an unfavorable effect of the two-body Jastrow factor that alters the charge density. In the TC-VMC method, since the one-body orbitals are optimized by the transcorrelated self-consistent field (TC-SCF) equations, which take into account the electron,electron correlation interactions originating from the two-body Jastrow factor, the unfavorable effect of altering charge density can be avoided without introducing the one-body Jastrow factor. However, it is found that it is still better to incorporate a one-body Jastrow factor into the TC-VMC method for the practical effect of reducing numerical errors caused by the Monte Carlo sampling and the re-weighting calculations in solving the TC-SCF equations. Moreover, since the one-body Jastrow function adopted in the present work is constructed from the two-body Jastrow factor without increasing any variational parameter, the computational cost is not significantly increased. The preferable effect of the use of the one-body Jastrow factor in the TC-VMC calculation is demonstrated for atoms. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2006 [source] Developing evaluation capacity through process useNEW DIRECTIONS FOR EVALUATION, Issue 116 2007Jean A. King Over time, intentional process use can have the practical effect of building the evaluation capacity of an organization. This chapter outlines possible steps that take purposeful advantage of the evaluation process. [source] Tackling Offending on BailTHE HOWARD JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Issue 2 2000Anthea Hucklesby During the early 1990s the problem of offending on bail attracted a great deal of attention from politicians, the police, the media and the general public resulting in new legislation aimed at tackling the problem. The bail provisions in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (CJ&PO Act 1994) were one of these initiatives. This Act, inter alia, removed the presumption of bail for defendants who have allegedly committed certain types of offences on bail and enabled the police to attach conditions to police bail. This article discusses the main findings of a research project commissioned by the Home Office to investigate the impact of some of these legal changes. The research found that the provisions had had little practical effect on the number of defendants who had allegedly committed offences on bail who were remanded in custody. It did, however, identify an increase in the number of such defendants who were granted bail with conditions. Changes were found in remand decisions for two groups of defendants: those charged with serious offences who already had a bail history and defendants charged with vehicle crime and burglary. It will be argued that these changes reflected broader political and media debate about offending on bail rather than the legal changes incorporated into the CJ&PO Act 1994. [source] Märipa: To Know Everything The Experience of Power as Knowledge Derived from the Integrative Mode of ConsciousnessANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 2 2003Robin RoddArticle first published online: 8 JAN 200 Shamans of the Piaroa ethnic group (southern Venezuela) conceive of power in terms of knowledge derived from visionary experiences. Märipa is an epistemology concerning the translation of knowledge derived from the integrative mode of consciousness, induced primarily through the consumption of plant hallucinogens, to practical effect during waking life. I integrate mythological, neurobiological, experiential, and ethnographic data to demonstrate what märipa is, and how it functions. The theory and method of märipa underlie not only Piaroa shamanic activity, but all aspects of Piaroa life; mythology, causality, eschatology, and history. Piaroa shamanic practices involve conditioning the mind to achieve optimal perceptual capacities that facilitate accurate prediction and successful psycho-social prescription. Piaroa shamans describe their technologies of consciousness in terms of gods and spirits, but also in terms of studying and the acquisition of information. Because neurobiological processes underlie the development and experience of märipa, the language of neurobiology enables a partial translation of this indigenous epistemology. The concepts of feed forward neural processing and somatic markers are central to the processes of mental imagery cultivation that Piaroa shamans employ to divine solutions to adaptive problems. Piaroa 'techniques of ecstasy' involve the ability to apply mythological templates of human adaptation to schemas of human behaviour based on years of social analysis in association with heightened information processing capacities derivative of refined experimentation with the integrative mode of consciousness. Keyordsshamanism, neurophenomenology inugrativeconsciousness, hallucinogens [source] Re-constructing the urban landscape through community mapping: an attractive prospect for sustainability?AREA, Issue 2 2009Frances Fahy Community mapping is a relatively new tool with considerable potential in giving practical effect at the local level to sustainable development rhetoric. As a repository of socially constructed knowledge, it has considerable value in democratizing information both in terms of what is recorded and public access to it, in a manner that facilitates more meaningful participation of non-experts in planning and advocacy processes. Focusing on a community mapping project in Galway, Ireland, this research paper explores how the city's municipal authority is employing community mapping not just to record and promote the city's social, environmental, economic and cultural assets but also as a practical tool to bolster public participation in policy-making and to improve local communities' trust in the municipal authority, thereby shaping sustainability practices through enhanced governance. [source] | |||||||||||||