Monday, October 21, 2019

Quantify

Quantify Quantify Quantify By Maeve Maddox A reader has asked me to discuss the word quantify: I was hoping you could help me with the word quantify. I feel like Im not quite using it correctly. As a term in logic, quantify means to ascribe universal or particular quantity to a term or proposition. For example, the statement â€Å"Dogs are playful† is not quantified. Adding a word like some or all quantifies it: â€Å"Some dogs are playful.† â€Å"All dogs are playful.† The Ngram Viewer indicates that quantify, along with metrics, has become especially popular since the 1960s. A Google search brings up 23,700,000 results for quantify and 90,600,000 for metrics. Note: The business definition of metrics is â€Å"standards of measurement by which efficiency, performance, progress, or quality of a plan, process, or product can be assessed.†    The urge to quantify by accumulating metrics seems to be as popular in our culture as coveting granite countertops. Job hunters are urged to quantify their resumes. Organizations study performance metrics. Bloggers quantify success by counting such things as visits and comments. As far as I can tell, in general usage, quantify means â€Å"put everything you can in the form of numbers or percentages.† Three ways to Quantify Achievements on Your Resume Quantifying the Clickbait and Linkbait in BuzzFeed Article Titles Track Thyself: Quantify Your Life For Productivity, Fun Quantify your ergonomic risk The Quantified Baby How to quantify your bodybuilding and transform your physique Social media users are obsessed with quantifying: I wish that I  could give more than five stars  for mobile kangaroo! . On a scale of 1 to 10  how would you rate your life? As of today I have over 100 followers on Twitter, and more  than 80 subscribers to my blog!   My  meow mix  video got a million shares  on Facebook today. The only errors I found in the use of quantify were in statements that used quantify where I would expect qualify. For example: â€Å"You need to quantify your opinions.† As the speaker was not asking for numbers, the verb qualify, â€Å"to modify (a statement, opinion, etc.) by the addition of some limitation or reservation,† was the more appropriate choice. If there’s a problem with the use of quantify, it lies in the implied message that everything of importance can be rendered in terms of numerical facts. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:12 Greek Words You Should Know"Owing to" vs "Due to"How Do You Fare?

Sunday, October 20, 2019

Patience The modern author’s lost virtue

Patience The modern author’s lost virtue Patience: The modern author’s lost virtue In our last article, we enumerated the different qualities successful indie authors usually have: they’re great writers, entrepreneurial-minded, good at marketing, etc. But here’s one quality only a select few possess: patience.The rise of self-publishing has brought with it the decline of this all-important virtue. There always seems to be a rush- to write, to get the next book out, to sell it. We’re in the pre-ordering, pre-promoting, pre-emptive stage of publishing. And if you’re like us, racing against the clock is starting to feel preposterous.Even established writers are ruled by the clock. Let’s consider Hugh Howey’s website: the first thing you see is this little widget indicating his progress on his upcoming books. I almost want to bet on which bar is going to be filled first, and that’s just one author! Why is this â€Å"race† so characteristic of self-publishing? Well, first, because indie authors are in charge of all the work- including how quickly pages go to print (concretely or digitally). The pace of a book’s release used to be determined by a publishing house; indies don’t face that controlling force.The second big reason is financial. Self-publishing authors don’t get advances. They are only able to earn money when the book is out and selling. A sense of urgency is a foregone conclusion, until you realize that your first book won’t sell as well as you hoped (gaining market traction is no quick or easy task). So you feel an even greater sense of urgency to churn out book #2†¦and 3†¦and so on and so forth.This can be perfectly fine and even prove advantageous, but can easily ruin all your hard work: with urgency comes precipitation. What’s precipitation? Well, it can be Joanna Penn ordering several thousand print copies of he r first non-fiction book before knowing how to market it, for example. Or in most less-extreme cases, releasing a first book that hasn’t been copy edited or proofread- or one full of formatting issues.When you enter the self-publishing race and start producing content at a fast pace, you can miss out on great opportunities- and I’m not even talking about the opportunity to simply spend more time on each book (before releasing it) to make it better.I’m talking about marketing opportunities. I’m talking about something that might sound like a sacrilege to many indie authors: sitting on finished work. I first thought of this when reading the excellent blog post by Hugh Howey on â€Å"The Liliana Nirvana Technique†, which basically consists of â€Å"publishing 5 works at once† and the 6th one shortly after.If you go through the comments below the post, you can get a sense of how crazy this sounds to many indie authors. However, when you think ab out it, it makes sense: by â€Å"flooding† Amazon all at once with your work, you dramatically increase your exposure; your books get linked to each other, â€Å"every sale leading to recommendations for 4 or 5 more of your works†, and readers looking for content see your name everywhere.Sure, this means your readers have to wait longer for your next book, but if they’re already your readers, the only thing you’re creating is anticipation and suspense (just as you should have done in your narrative)! Case in point: How many of us are chomping at the bit just to pre-order The Winds of Winter?The good thing is that all this â€Å"theoretical thinking† has actually been validated by several of â€Å"Liliana’s peers†, as Hugh puts it. It takes guts to sit on a book (let alone 4 or 5), but patience is a virtue even in a digital age.

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Film analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 3

Film analysis - Essay Example He has applied the necessary measures required in ensuring customers’ satisfaction and improving the value of products in promoting consumption. Some of the entrepreneurial skills that the business people can learn include knowing who you are and what you want, understanding that work matters the most, and ensuring constant improvement through maintaining perfection and cleanliness. The entrepreneurs are supposed to be passionate about their businesses. In the movie, Jiro portrays the characteristics of a business-minded person. He asserts that he has not attained his full potential in business. This is even though his restaurant has been honored with the Michelin star and him being considered as the world’s greatest chef. Success in business can only be achieved if the entrepreneurs are passionate about what they do. For instance, the title of the documentary is derived from Jiro himself who indicates that he dreams of Sushi i.e. how to prepare it, serve and craft a be tter brand for the next day (Amazon.com). He indicates that he has never hated his business and is always ecstatic when preparing the Sushi. Closer analysis of the movie indicates that Jiro’s success is not only a product of love for Sushi, but also the pursuit for excellence. This downplays the behavior of those entrepreneurs who jump from one industry to another. They should understand that success is not about possession of many ideas; it is the art of creating and enacting change in the product line in relation to customer satisfaction. This establishes the passion that makes a person attend to the needs of the customer whole heartedly and be committed to the business for a long time like Jiro. This movie educates the aspiring entrepreneurs on the necessary principles required for one to be successful in business. They should understand who they are, prioritize their work and understand that pursuit for success bears a substantial price. Jiro came from a broken marriage a nd personally fed for himself since childhood. According to Amazon.com, he was a bully during his childhood days. The restaurant business saved his life. The focus on business products such as Sushi can transform one’s life. Work provides business people with focus, discipline and the relentless urge to improve marketing techniques. Personal realization has enabled Jiro to cater for the needs of customers and uphold customer satisfaction in the process. The restaurant’s popularity is related to the excellent skills he applies in serving customers i.e. serving left-left handed people on the left and making the sushi relatively smaller for women. The pursuit of Jiro’s sons in perfecting their craftsmanship indicates that focus on work is the most eminent recipe of a successful business. In one of the movie scenes, the senior apprentice describes how he made the egg Sushi for six months before it was deemed acceptable by Yoshikazu. The egg sushi could not have been popular among customers if the apprentice focused on the monetary returns of the product instead of improving value. Another aspect of business success stipulated in the movie is cleanliness. Cleanliness is one of the requirements of ensuring customer satisfaction. Jiro asserts, â€Å"If the restaurant doesn’t feel clean, the food isn’t going to taste good† (Amazon.com). Users will never enjoy products that are not clean. Perfection comes along at a heavy price. Jiro started his business as a

Friday, October 18, 2019

Informative Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Informative - Speech or Presentation Example My case, like most traffic offenses, did not require my presence in court. Instead, it was handled by a violations bureau that exerted a fine on me without having to appear in court. Traffic offenses, according to Neubauer, and Fradella, refer to a group of offenses involving self-propelled motor vehicles. These violations range from parking violations to improper equipment. Speeding is the most common traffic offense, along with driving without a license and driving with a revoked or suspended license. Traffic offenses are, typically, punishable by a small fine (475). The traffic court, according to Jacques, usually has under, its jurisdiction and control, a violations bureau to handle nonmoving violations, so that you can appear and pay a fine to be fixed by the judge without the requirement of an appearance in court. It would be ideal if the traffic judge could hear the case of each person cited into court for any motor vehicle code violation personally, but this would require a s ubstantial number of additional judges and court personnel. Therefore, it is better that the traffic judge devote his time and attention to those moving violations which are the causes of accidents and delegate to a bureau the duty of collecting a fixed fine in the nonmoving violations (381). Although, in my case, I did not require to go to court, I chose to attend a court case anyway to learn the procedure followed in court cases. As soon as you are put under arrest on suspicion of a crime, you became a defendant. Defendants enjoy several rights, which are; right to presumption of innocence until proven guilty, the right to be informed of your charges, the right to maintain silence, the right to retain an attorney, the right to be assigned an attorney, the right to request a reasonable postponement, the right to or not to testify, the right to call or subpoena a witness and the right to appeal. Once you have your day in court, you should expect several things. First, you should alw ays pay serious attention to what the court staff and the judge are saying. Additionally, you should be aware that all proceedings in the court are recorded, and the judge will always offer an opening statement. After the judge is through with the opening statement, the cases are called out in order starting with a request for postponement, uncontested motion, first arraignment, plea of guilty, plea of not guilty (without an attorney) and plea of not guilty (with an attorney). If you have no attorney, the case can be postponed to give you the opportunity to obtain either a private attorney or a court appointed public defender. In cases involving disputes, the disputes can be solved without having to go in front of a judge through discussions arbitrated by a mediator. You can also choose to enter a plea agreement. This is where you choose to reach a negotiated settlement instead of having to undergo a trial. While entering a plea, you might need to negotiate with the prosecutor or at torney who represents the state. However, all plea agreements must be reviewed and approved by a judge for them to become biding. Bergman, Berman, and Berman-Barrett, state that plea bargaining can be conveniently divided into two forms: sentence and charge bargaining. Sentence bargaining is a plea bargaining type in which the prosecutor agrees to

Effect Size Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Effect Size - Assignment Example Moderator is the variable that has an effect on the interrelationship between the two variables which have a zero order correlation. In another case an importance of the mediator variables has to be seen and it has been known by the researchers that the mediator variables have been seen to be following the models that are given by the researchers (Briggs, 2006). One of the models realizes that interferes between the response as well as the stimulus that an organism has. This model has been seen to represent the complete formulation of the mediation hypotheses that has been recognized by the social sciences researchers. In the general terms it has been said that the mediator can be defined as a variable when the relationship between the predictor and the criterion is defined and is established in an analytical manner. The external events when assume an importance of the psychological significance only than the importance of the mediators is to be realized. In this case the mediator model can be represented by the following diagrams. The mediator variable can be represented by the path diagram and this model has been seen to assume the three variable systems in which there are two main causal paths that join the variable, the path measures the direct impact of the indirect variable and this also measures the impact of the mediator (Baron, and Kenny, 1986, 1180). The variable in this case has been seen to function as the mediator when the specific set of characteristics are being followed by the variable and these are inclusive of the variations that might be noticed in the independent variable and these are the changes that have been seen to notify the changes that are related to the mediator. In a similar manner the variations that take place in the mediators notify the changes in the variable (Hayes, and Preacher, 2008, p. 880). Effect size Strength of the relationship between the two variables can be measured by the effect size. Here it can be said that the effect size is the research on a numeric scale. It is the effect size that can be helpful in making the measures if the deference between the two variables is real or if the deference is because of the change that has occurred in the various factor that have caused the changes in the values (Klein, Fan, & Preacher, 2006, p. 100). It has been seen that in case of the hypotheses testing the effect size, the sample size as well as the critical significance levels are the ones that have been given an importance and these are the ones that have been leveled with each other in hypotheses testing. An importance of the effect size has been determined in the case of the Meta analysis and in this case it has been seen that the effect size is the one that takes into consideration the different studies and it has been seen that in this case the different studies are combined together into the single studies (Briggs, 2006). It has been said that for the purpose of the Meta analysis the kind of effect size being used is the one that is in correlation with the sum of all the researches being taken into consideration.

Should it be lowered Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Should it be lowered - Essay Example During an interview by CBS News, John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College said that the drinking law was an abysmal failure in eliminating underage drinking, it drove the habit underground behind the scenes, into more risky and unmanageable settings. These settings included basements, fraternity houses and locked dormitories where minors hid from the law and adults. The law created a dangerous culture of irresponsible and reckless habits, unsupervised binge and excess drinking. For example, minors gulp bottles of beer in seconds trying to perfect the art of getting drunk quickly before they are discovered by adults (Johnson & Alex, 46). The irresponsible drinking behaviour endangers the lives of minors because they cannot access emergency medical care during their drinking sprees as they hide themselves. They also fear reporting alcohol related medical emergencies since it is breaking the law. The drinking age should be lowered because the current law is unworkable, difficult to enforce and doesn’t stop minors from drinking. The enforcement of this law is routinely avoided and results in two or three arrests out of thousands of violations. The police aren’t in apposition to stop all cases of underage drinking, they can only contain it. The police department admitted that the law is ineffective. The police tried different techniques to curb drinking by minors but only few techniques succeeded (Toomey & Rosenfeld, 57). For example, they would find a party where minors were drinking and seal the house. They would write tickets to all the minors coming from the house and report them to their parents. All these efforts only pushed underage drinking underground instead of eliminating the habit. Pushing the drinking habit underground is endangers lives of the minors because encourages irresponsible drinking extremes and other antisocial behaviour such as drug abuse and crime. According to Ellis Henican (author of

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Literary Analysis Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Literary Analysis - Article Example The war with the Koreans symbolized a sense of not belonging or alienation in America. The story is a portentous reminder of the devastations that families went through and male emigration during the Vietnam War. The story provides different versions of the Chinese-American experiences and different contradictions that shaped these experiences. The character ‘Brother’ reveals the contradictions that shaped Chinese-American experiences that were felt during the historical period in which the story is set. The younger of the author highly opposed the Vietnam War. The brother was forced to make a decision between running away to Canada and going to the Vietnam War which made him enlist himself in the navy in order to fight in that war even though he joined the navy with no intention of killing anyone. Even though he was born in America and fought for America, the brother remained an object of suspicion. The author points out how many Chinese men were going into America in order to avoid being forced to serve in the Chinese military. During the basic training, he was asked by the company commander on where he came from. He was also found to speak pretty good English which makes him a communications specialist. This entails something analogous to a certification or the confirmation of his Americanness. In this chapter, Kingston imagined of how her brother was able to resolve the contradictions that were faced by the Chinese Americans-this is a sense of a fragmented belonging and identity . He was able to manage both Chinese and American hence bringing in an integrated identity (Ludwig and lexoae-Zagni 152). Her brother moved from one experience to the other and in he returned back to America in the end. The brother had managed both Chinese and Americans but ended up returning to America, which brings in a contradiction of the Chinese-American experience. A similar case is found in â€Å"Birds of paradise lost† by Andrew Lam. The story is