Discounting and Present Value Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Discounting and Present Value Analysis - Essay Example Since I am the investor in this situation, I would perceive a certain required rate of return based on my own understandings and estimates of current market inflation, risk-free rate, expected rate of return of the market and other risk factors. Thus, it would be my choice to choose an appropriate required rate of return (RRR) keeping in view the above things. In this case, 8% is my RRR and at this rate I would sell the project for $281,893. C. Price and discount rate go inversely while inflation has a direct relation with the interest rates. If inflation increase, interest rates will rise too and since price goes inversely, it will fall. This would cause me to choose a higher RRR. This in turn, will cause the discount factor in the formula to increase, which would then cause the present value to decline. Thus, the prices I would charge currently will be lower that the previous case. D. If the inflation or interest rate rises in the market, it would cause me to choose a higher rate of return because of the increased risk. In other words, keeping the risk-free rate constant, my risk premium that I demand for a particular investment would rise. Since in this case, the goldmine is located in a third world country, my choice would be to charge a higher price in the wake of higher uncertainty regarding risk factors like inflation risk, interest rate risk etc. The right choice between the two bonds will correctly ... The right choice between the two bonds will correctly be based on bond ratings of the two companies issued by genuine credit rating agency. An authentic source would be ratings by Standard & Poor or Moody's. During the previous fiscal year, General Motors already declared a huge loss and much lower profits than previously projected. According to news, GM's bond rating was cut to junk status by S&P quite recently. This is a step taken keeping in view the highly unstable state of earning it has shown over the previous period. Moreover, S&P said clearly that GM is in a risky financial position for some time to come. The company has been losing market share to Asian rivals Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai, even as the overall number of new vehicles purchased each year in North America has hovered at record highs. Rising interest rates could keep the market from growing much more, the ratings agency said, and any reduction in demand would be a traumatic event for GM.1 On the other hand, Standard & Poor's Equity Research emphasized on a "strong buy" rating on Cisco Systems. The company also occupies a strong ranking among other forums like the Fortune 500. The decision here would be to pay a lower price for the bonds of General Motors than that of Cisco Systems. Even if Cisco Systems were not rated among the AAs, it would still be preferable because of the risk factors attached to General Motor's current status in the automobile industry and an uncertain future due to increased competition from Japanese manufacturers and particularly because of a highly low rated junk status assigned by S&P to its bonds. In other words, Cisco system bonds require a higher price to be paid today with a lower discount rate than GM. Work Cited GM, Ford Bond Ratings

Prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Essay Example for Free

Prejudice in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Essay Throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, many different prejudices are revealed. The most prominent being the racial prejudice between the white people and black people in Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930s. However, there are many more subtle and discreet prejudices against other people in Maycomb, also. One of the first prejudices to become known is against the Cunninghams. The Cunninghams are a very poor farming family who were hit hard by the Great Depression. The Cunninghams never took anything they cant pay back no church baskets and no scrimp stamps. They never took anything off anybody, they get along on what they have. They dont have much, but they get along on it. Scout explains to Miss Caroline, their first grade teacher, on page 20. The Cunninghams were hit hardest by the Depression and because of their level of poverty the Cunninghams are discriminated against. The thing is, you can scrub Walter Cunningham till he shines, you can put him in shoes and a new suit, but hell never be like Jem. Aunt Alexandra explains to Scout on page 224. Aunt Alexandra does not want Scout associating with Walter Cunningham simply because of his class. Aunt Alexandra is discriminating against the Cunninghams because they are below the Finches on the social strata. Probably the most prominent prejudice in the novel is the racial prejudice. Tom Robinson was a black man who was accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white girl. When Tom was put in jail awaiting trial, Atticus, his lawyer, went down one night and sat outside the jailhouse. A mob showed up that night with the intent to beat Tom Robinson but with Atticus there, the mob was stalled and eventually left. This mob was consumed with racial prejudice against the black people. Even Calpurnia, the black housekeeper for the Finches, is discriminated against. Although Calpurnia is treated fairly, it is obvious Calpurnia is considered to be on a lower social level than the Finches. Calpurnia calls Scout maam and Jem sir, although these are titles usually reserved for elders. An example of this is on page 207. Calpurnia addresses Jem after they have been missing at the trial all day with Hush your mouth, sir! When you oughta be hangin your head in shame you go along laughin. If Mr. Finch dont wear you out, I will get in that house, sir! Though it seems that the blacks are the ones who are prejudiced against, when Jem and Scout are taken to Calpurnias church, (their black house-keeper) the black people show hostility towards Jem and Scout. Lula, a black woman at the church confronts Calpurnia on page 119. You aint got no business bringin white chillun herethey got their church, we got ourn. Because the whites shun the blacks the blacks are prejudiced in return. Another prejudice that comes to light is the prejudice against Dolphus Raymond. Dolphus is a wealthy white man but is a victim of isolation because of his relationship with a woman who is black. When Scout meets Mr. Dolphus Raymond during the trial Scout becomes aware that Dolphus is a victim of prejudice and has become an outcast. Dolphus pretended to be a drunk so he didnt have to explain the fact that he was simply in love with a black woman. The alcohol, Dolphus said, gave the people an excuse to say that Dolphus didnt know what he was doing. On page 200, Dolphus says to Dill and Scout When I come to this town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say Dolphus Raymonds in the clutches of whiskythats why he wont change his ways. He cant help himself, thats why he lives like he does. The people of Maycomb are intolerant of the way Dolphus chooses to live. Dolphus is discriminated against because he lives his life with a black woman. This is thought to be wrong in society in Maycomb. Yet another prejudice in Maycomb was that against Arthur Radley. Arthur Radley could see the segregation of the people of Maycomb and the prejudice. Therefore Arthur isolated himself; Arthur didnt want to be a part of Maycombs intolerance. By doing this Arthur became one of the outsiders and was still a victim of the prejudice, as Arthur was different. There were wild rumors circulating the town and the children made up stories and games about Arthur. Because he was virtually unknown, Arthur Radley was discriminated against. The theme of prejudice is explored many ways throughout the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The different kinds of prejudice explore how deep peoples  hatred of each other can go. It gives the reader good insight as to what makes people intolerant and why people shouldnt be prejudiced just because others are different. From discriminating against the poor to racial prejudice to silly rumors fueling intolerance, very few realize that everyone is different but also equal.

Aristotle And Concept Of Happiness Philosophy Essay

Aristotle And Concept Of Happiness Philosophy Essay In this paper, I wish to explore the concept of happiness as well as Aristotles take on it. I think for most of us, we rarely stop and think about what happiness is even though we cannot deny its inevitable existence. It is one of my major points that everyone has a different definition of what happiness is or what happiness means to them, and that definition changes along with time, when ones personal believes or opinions or convictions change as he progresses through life, they change because of a myriad of reasons, no social scientists can pin down exactly what they are but those changes are nevertheless very real and a direct correspondence of the direct interaction between the person and his or her environment. Aristotle proposes that the single idea of good must establish these three claims: Idea of Good Claim 1) We have ends which we choose for themselves. Idea of Good Claim 2) That there is only one such end. Idea of Good Claim 3) That end is happiness. He argues for Idea of Good Claim 1) as follows (Irwin 173): 1.1. If we choose everything because of something else, desire will be empty and futile. 1.2. We have a gut feeling that some desires are not empty and futile. 1.3. Therefore, we do not choose everything because of something else. 1.4. Therefore we choose something for its own sake. 1.5. What we choose for its own sake, therefore, must be the best good. The debatable premise is 2. As this is not conflicting with my own gut feelings, we will allow Aristotle postulate this claim. Postulate 1: We have a gut feeling that some desires are not empty and futile. Granting him this postulate, we allow his conclusion 5. that there are some things we choose for their own sake. This satisfies Idea of Good Claim 1). Aristotles criteria for the Idea of Good are self-sufficiency and completeness. Regarding these criteria he says, not all ends are complete. But the best good is apparently something complete. And so, if only one end is complete, the good we are looking for will be this end; if more ends than one are complete, it will be the most complete of these ends. (Irwin 7) Aristotle has not given good reason why there must be only one end from which all actions are a means, rather than several such ends. At this point I will not contend with Aristotle if he can posit this singularity and avoid contradiction further into his theory. Postulate 2: There is only one Idea of Good. Aristotle explores and finds happiness to be the best fit for these criteria of the Idea of Good. We must pause for a moment to clarify the translation of eudaimonia, translated to happiness in the text. In Greek, eudaimonia translates to living well or doing well, Happiness is the complete end [ones] complete happiness depends on himself, and not on external conditions. (Irwin 333) Regarding happiness as the single Idea of Good Aristotle says, Now happiness, more than anything else, seems complete without qualification. For we always choose it because of itself, never because of something else. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦The same conclusion also appears to follow from self-sufficiency. For the complete good seems to be self-sufficientà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ We hold an end to be self sufficient when all by itself it makes a life choiceworthy and lacking nothing; and that is what we think happiness does. (Irwin 8) Aristotle makes a good argument here for why happiness is the Idea of Good because he appea ls to ones intuition. My own intuition does not conflict with Aristotles proposition that eudaimonia is the most complete and self-sufficient end, to which other human objectives are means to. Aristotle has satisfied Idea of Good in Claim 3) if we allow him to postulate the first two claims. Aristotle has solidified his claim that eudaimonia is the Idea of the Good by satisfying the three claims. With this information, we progress to investigate which of the three types of lives reaches eudaimonia the best. Aristotle claims that the life of activity and reason achieves this goal best, and denies two alternatives: the life of gratification and the life of ambition. Aristotle argues that happiness is not a state or possession, but rather an activity that we engage in. Aristotle proposes that someone who is asleep for their entire life could not be eudaimonia. This is consistent with the definition given earlier of eudaimonia. Just as the function of a harpist is to play the harp, and the function of the physician is to care for the body, the function of the human being according to Aristotle is to remain active and employ reason in ones life. Aristotle contemplates the human function saying, we take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be activity and actions of the soul that involve reason. (Irwin 9) He denies that the human function is bodily pleasure because those qualities are shared with animals. Aristotle claims our purpose must be a life of active contemplation, saying, The remaining possibility, then, is some sort of life of action of the part of the soul that has reasonà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ we take the human function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be activity and actions of the soul that involve reason. (Irwin 9) Aristotles argument for activity holds for our own time, people who remain active appear to be happier than those who can no longer be, such as the elderly. However, activity involving reason may be too narrow of a definition. One viable alternative is productivity in whatever respect one is capable of. Aristotle is confining his alternatives of what constitutes a good life to his own talents, rather than allowing people with other dispositions to also live eudaimonia. The life of gratification focuses on sensory pleasures as the means to happiness. Aristotle denies that pleasure is necessarily a good, and pain is necessarily an evil. He separates goods into two types, conditional and unconditional. He argues that pleasure is conditionally good for us because we have the pain corresponding to it. For example, hunger is a pain that is satisfied by eating food. Aristotle argues that bodily pleasures are only good under the condition that the corresponding pain is present. Any further pursuit of bodily pleasures to Aristotle is a pursuit of the excess and such pleasure is no longer a good. Reciprocally, the existence of pain in small amounts can be enjoyable as well as it gives us an occasion to satisfy it. Thus, those who live for bodily pleasure, the life of gratification, are not pursuing the most complete good but rather pursue an excess of bodily sensation. Aristotle admits that we all enjoy and are just in enjoying a degree of sensory gratificat ion, but he renders base those who overindulge. The ambitious life is one focused on attaining honor and acknowledgement from others. Aristotle denies this as a viable means to attain eudaimonia because it focuses on the opinions of others. Eudaimonia is a state which should not be so fickle and easily lost as public opinion, and thus Aristotle discards this option, saying, This, however, appears too superficial to be [eudaimonia]; for it seems to depend more on those who honor than on the one honored, whereas we intuitively believe that the good is something of our own and hard to take from us. Further, it would seem, they pursue honor to convince themselves they are good. (Irwin 4) This is a convincing denial of pursuing a life of ambition. I accept an assumption Aristotle makes that living well is not constituted by the opinions of others, but rather by the virtue of oneself. So far we have accepted Aristotles premise that activity is needed to reach eudaimonia, but we have questioned the necessity for study. We have accepted Aristotles denial of the two alternative lives, as they focus on either overindulgence or public opinion. Due to space constraints we will not discuss the possibility of other lives, though there are plenty worthy of mention. One means that Aristotle proposes to remain active is having loving friendships. Aristotle offers loving friendships with good people as the most complete friendship, saying, complete friendship is the friendship of good people similar in virtue; for they wish goods in the same way to each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in their own rightThese kinds of friendships are likely to be rare, since such people are few. (Irwin 122-123) Complete friendships cannot be based on utility or erotic pleasure, but rather love. Aristotle says, Those who are friends for utility dissolve the friendship as soon as the advantage is removed; for they were never friends of each other, but of what was expedient for them. (Irwin 123) Aristotle proposes that a life of friendship facilitates activity, because we are social creatures by nature. A life involving study and contemplation, for example, serves as a medium to foster a respect and exchange of ideas, which is inherent in a loving friendship. In addition, we can expand Aristotles conclusions to apply to other means of remaining active, such as a life of military service, the life of a physician, or the life of an artist. In addition, friends help regulate our behavior in making virtuous decisions, as virtue is also a vital component of reaching eudaimonia. Aristotle says, no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all other goods. Indeed rich people and holders of powerful positions need friends, how else would one benefit from such prosperity if one had no opportunity for beneficenceà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ But in poverty also and in other misfortunes, people think friends are the only refugeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦The young need friends to keep them from error. The old need friends to care for them and support the actions that fail because of weakness. (Irwin 119) Aristotle is correct in finding that activity is a vital element in achieving eudaimonia, and that friendship plays an important role in helping us remain active and virtuous. We can apply a broader application of this search for happiness by allowing lives other than that of study and contemplation to be pursued, as long as virtue and loving friendships are present. To arrive at this conclusion we postulated two of Aristotles premises (see Postulate 1 and Postulate 2); allowing these lead us to a worthwhile map of how one may reach eudaimonia, the Idea of Good which follows from the postulates. Overlaying a life of productivity for Aristotles requirement of study, we have achieved a valid argument, assuming the postulates, for a means of human flourishing. One should live ones life with virtue, activity, and productivity.

World War 2 and the Superpower Nation :: essays research papers

The Second World War gave rise to a multitude of new ideas which changed the course of modern society, the idea which has had the greatest impact on the world as a whole is the concept of the superpower nation. To be a superpower, a nation needs to have a strong economy, an overpowering military, immense international political power, and related to this, a strong national ideology. It was this war (WWII), and its results that spawned the formation of superpowers and lead them to experience such a preponderance of power. To understand how the Second World War impacted birth of superpowers it is important to first understand and examine the causes of the war. The United States gained its strength in world affairs from its status as an economic power and as a heavily industrialized nation. In the years preceding the war and the Great Depression, America was the world's largest producer and arguably had the strongest and most stable economy. In the USSR at the same time, Stalin was implementing his 'five year plans' to modernize the Soviet economy. From these situations, similar foreign policies resulted from widely divergent origins. Roosevelt's isolationism emerged from the wide and prevalent domestic desire to remain neutral in any international conflicts. It was widely believed that America entered the First World War simply in order to save its industry's capitalist investments in Europe. Whether this is the case or not, Roosevelt was forced to work with an inherently isolationist Congress, only expanding its horizons after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He signed the Neutrality Act of 1935, making it illegal for the United States to ship arms to the belligerent governments of any conflict. The act also stated that belligerent nations could buy only non-armaments from the US, and even these were only to be bought with cash. In contrast, Stalin was by necessity interested in European affairs, but only to the point of concern to the USSR. Russian foreign policy was fundamentally Leninist in its concern to keep the USSR out of war. Stalin wanted to consolidate Communist power and modernize the country's industr y. The Soviet Union was committed to collective action for peace, as long as that commitment did not mean that the Soviet Union would take a brunt of a Nazi attack as a result. Examples of this can be seen in the Soviet Unions' attempts to achieve a mutual assistance treaty with Britain and France.

Isds Ch 5

Business Intelligence, 2e (Turban/Sharda/Delen/King) Chapter 5 Text and Web Mining 1) DARPA and MITRE teamed up to develop capabilities to automatically filter text-based information sources to generate actionable information in a timely manner. Answer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 190 2) A vast majority of business data is captured and stored in text documents that are structured. Answer: FALSE Diff: 2Page Ref: 192 3) Text mining is important to competitive advantage because knowledge is power, and knowledge is derived from text data sources. Answer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 192 ) The purpose and processes of text mining are different from those of data mining because with text mining the input to the process are data files such as Word documents, PDF files, text excerpts, and XML files. Answer: FALSE Diff: 3Page Ref: 192 5) The benefits of text mining are greatest in areas where very large amounts of textual data are being generated, such as law, academic research, finance, and medicine. Ans wer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 192 6) Unstructured data has a predetermined format. It is usually organized into records as categorical, ordinal, and continuous variables and stored in databases.Answer: FALSE Diff: 2Page Ref: 193 7) Stemming is the process of reducing inflected words to their base or root form. Answer: TRUE Diff: 1Page Ref: 193 8) Stop words, such as a, am, the, and was, are words that are filtered out prior to or after processing of natural language data. Answer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 193 9) The goal of natural language processing (NLP) is syntax-driven text manipulation. Answer: FALSE Diff: 2Page Ref: 196 10) Two advantages associated with the implementation of NLP are word sense disambiguation and syntactic ambiguity. Answer: FALSE Diff: 2Page Ref: 196 1) By applying a learning algorithm to parsed text, researchers from Stanford University's NLP lab have developed methods that can automatically identify the concepts and relationships between those concepts in the tex t. Answer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 197 12) Text mining can be used to increase cross-selling and up-selling by analyzing the unstructured data generated by call centers. Answer: TRUE Diff: 1Page Ref: 200 13) Compared to polygraphs for deception-detection, text-based deception detection has the advantages of being nonintrusive and widely applicable to textual data and transcriptions of voice recordings.Answer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 201 14) The main purpose of establishing the corpus is to collect all of the documents related to the context being studied. Answer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 207 15) The main categories of knowledge extraction methods are recall, search, and signaling. Answer: FALSE Diff: 2Page Ref: 210 16) Web pages consisting of unstructured textual data coded in HTML and logs of visitors' interactions provide rich data that can easily provide effective and efficient knowledge discovery. Answer: FALSE Diff: 3Page Ref: 217 7) Web crawlers are Web content mining tools that are used to read through the content of a Web site automatically. Answer: FALSE Diff: 1Page Ref: 218 18) Amazon. com leverages Web usage history dynamically and recognizes the user by reading a cookie written by a Web site on the visitor's computer. Answer: TRUE Diff: 1Page Ref: 221 19) The quality of search results is impossible to measure accurately using strictly quantitative measures such as click-through rate, abandonment, and search frequency. Additional quantitative and qualitative measures are required. Answer: TRUE Diff: 2Page Ref: 222 0) Customer experience management applications gather and report direct feedback from site visitors by benchmarking against other sites and offline channels, and by supporting predictive modeling of future visitor behavior. Answer: FALSE Diff: 3Page Ref: 224 21) A vast majority of business data are stored in text documents that are ________. A) mostly quantitative B) virtually unstructured C) semi-structured D) highly structured Answer: B Diff: 1 Page Ref: 192 22) Text mining is the semi-automated process of extracting ________ from large amounts of unstructured data sources.A) patterns B) useful information C) knowledge D) all of the above Answer: D Diff: 2Page Ref: 192 23) All of the following are popular application areas of text mining except: A) information extraction B) document summarization C) question answering D) data structuring Answer: D Diff: 2Page Ref: 193 24) Which of the following correctly defines a text mining term? A) Tagging is the number of times a word is found in a specific document. B) A token is an uncategorized block of text in a sentence. C) Rooting is the process of reducing inflected words to their base form.D) A term is a single word or multiword phrase extracted directly from the corpus by means of NLP methods. Answer: D Diff: 3Page Ref: 194 25) ________ is a branch of the field of linguistics and a part of natural language processing that studies the internal structure of words. A) Morphology B) Corpus C) Stemming D) Polysemes Answer: A Diff: 2Page Ref: 194 26) Using ________ as a rich source of knowledge and a strategic weapon, Kodak not only survives but excels in its market segment defined by innovation and constant change. A) visualization B) deception detection C) patent analysis D) semantic cuesAnswer: C Diff: 2Page Ref: 194 27) It has been shown that the bag-of-word method may not produce good enough information content for text mining tasks. More advanced techniques such as ________ are needed. A) classification B) natural language processing C) evidence-based processing D) symbolic processing Answer: B Diff: 2Page Ref: 195 28) Why will computers probably not be able to understand natural language the same way and with the same accuracy that humans do? A) A true understanding of meaning requires extensive knowledge of a topic beyond what is in the words, sentences, and paragraphs.B) The natural human language is too specific. C) The part of speech depends only on the definition and not on the context within which it is used. D) All of the above. Answer: A Diff: 3Page Ref: 196 29) At a very high level, the text mining process consists of each of the following tasks except: A) create log frequencies B) establish the corpus C) create the term-document matrix D) extract the knowledge Answer: A Diff: 2Page Ref: 207 30) In ________, the problem is to group an unlabelled collection of objects, such as documents, customer comments, and Web pages into meaningful groups without any prior knowledge.A) search recall B) classification C) clustering D) grouping Answer: C Diff: 2Page Ref: 211 31) The two main approaches to text classification are ________ and ________. A) knowledge engineering; machine learning B) categorization; clustering C) association; trend analysis D) knowledge extraction; association Answer: A Diff: 2Page Ref: 211 32) Commercial software tools include all of the following except: A) GATE B) IBM Intelligent Miner Data Mining Suite C ) SAS Text Miner D) SPSS Text Mining Answer: A Diff: 2Page Ref: 216 33) Why does the Web pose great challenges for effective and efficient knowledge discovery?A) The Web search engines are indexed-based. B) The Web is too dynamic. C) The Web is too specific to a domain. D) The Web infrastructure contains hyperlink information. Answer: B Diff: 2Page Ref: 217 34) A simple keyword-based search engine suffers from several deficiencies, which include all of the following except: A) a topic of any breath can easily contain hundreds or thousands of documents B) many documents that are highly relevant to a topic may not contain the exact keywords defining them C) web mining can identify authoritative Web pages D) many of the search results are marginally or not relevant to the topic Answer: CDiff: 3Page Ref: 217 35) Which of the following is not one of the three main areas of Web mining? A) Web search mining B) Web content mining C) Web structure mining D) Web usage mining Answer: A Diff: 2 Page Ref: 218 36) Which of the following refers to developing useful information from the links included in the Web documents? A) Web content mining B) Web subject mining C) Web structure mining D) Web matter mining Answer: C Diff: 2Page Ref: 219 37) A ________ is one or more Web pages that provide a collection of links to authoritative pages, reference sites, or a resource list on a specific topic.A) hub B) hyperlink-induced topic search C) spoke D) community Answer: A Diff: 2Page Ref: 219 38) All of the following are types of data generated through Web page visits except: A) data stored in server access logs, referrer logs, agent logs, and client-side cookies B) user profiles C) hyperlink analysis D) metadata, such as page attributes, content attributes, and usage data Answer: C Diff: 2Page Ref: 220 39) When registered users revisit Amazon. com, they are greeted by name. This task involves recognizing the user by ________. A) pattern discovery B) association C) text miningD) readi ng a cookie Answer: D Diff: 1Page Ref: 221 40) Forward-thinking companies like Ask. com, Scholastic, and St. John Health System are actively using Web mining systems to answer important questions of â€Å"Who? † â€Å"Why? † and â€Å"How? † The benefits of integrating these systems: A) are measured qualitatively in terms of customer satisfaction, but not measured using financial or other quantitative measure. B) can be significant in terms of incremental financial growth and increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction. C) have not yet outweighed the costs of the Web mining systems and analysis.D) can be infinitely measurable. Answer: B Diff: 3Page Ref: 222 41) ________ is the semi-automated process of extracting patterns from large amounts of unstructured data sources. Answer: Text mining Diff: 1Page Ref: 192 42) ________ is the process of identifying valid, novel, potentially useful, and ultimately understandable patterns in data stored in structured database s, where the data are organized in records structured by categorical, ordinal, or continuous variables. Answer: Data mining Diff: 1Page Ref: 192 43) ________ is the grouping of similar documents without having a predefined set of categories.Answer: Clustering Diff: 2Page Ref: 193 44) In linguistics, a(n) ________ is a large and structured set of texts prepared for the purpose of conducting knowledge discovery. Answer: corpus Diff: 1Page Ref: 193 45) ________ is the process of reducing inflected words to their base or root form. Answer: Stemming Diff: 1Page Ref: 193 46) ________ words or noise words are words that are filtered out prior to or after processing of natural language data. Answer: Stop Diff: 1Page Ref: 193 47) The term â€Å"stop-words† are used by text mining to ________ commonly used words.Answer: eliminate Diff: 2Page Ref: 193 48) ________ is an important component of text mining and is a subfield of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. It stud ies the problem of understanding the natural human language. Answer: Natural language processing (NLP) Diff: 1Page Ref: 196 49) ________ analysis is a technique used to detect favorable and unfavorable opinions toward specific products and services using textual data sources, such as customer feedback in Web postings and the detection of unfavorable rumors. Answer: Sentiment Diff: 2Page Ref: 197 0) At a very high level, the first of three consecutive tasks in the text mining process is to establish the ________, which is a list of organized documents. Answer: corpus Diff: 1Page Ref: 207 51) In the text mining process, the output of task two is a flat file called a ________ matrix where the cells are populated with the term frequencies. Answer: term-document Diff: 3Page Ref: 207 52) One of the main approaches to text classification is ________ in which an expert's knowledge is encoded into the system either declaratively or in the form of procedural classification rules.Answer: knowl edge engineering Diff: 2Page Ref: 211 53) A(n) ________ is one or more Web pages that provide a collection of links to authoritative pages. Answer: hub Diff: 1Page Ref: 219 54) ________ mining is the process of extracting useful information from the links embedded in Web documents. Answer: Web structure Diff: 2Page Ref: 219 55) ________ mining is the extraction of useful information from data generated through Web page visits and transactions. Answer: Web usage Diff: 2Page Ref: 220 56) Analysis of the information collected by Web servers can help better understand user behavior.Analysis of this data is called ________ analysis. Answer: clickstream Diff: 2Page Ref: 220 57) ________ applications focus on â€Å"who and how† questions by gathering and reporting direct feedback from site visitors, by benchmarking against other sites and offline channels, and by supporting predictive modeling of future visitor behavior. Answer: Voice of Customer Diff: 2Page Ref: 224 58) Web analyti cs, CEM, and VOC applications form the foundation of the Web site ________ ecosystem that supports the online business' ability to positively influence desired outcomes. Answer: optimization Diff: 2Page Ref: 224 9) The ________ model, which is one where multiple sources of data describing the same population are integrated to increase the depth and richness of the resulting analysis, forms the framework of the Web site optimization ecosystem. Answer: convergent validation Diff: 3Page Ref: 225 60) Fundamental to the optimization process is ________, gathering data and information that can then be transformed into tangible analysis and recommendations for improvement using Web mining tools and techniques. Answer: measurement Diff: 3Page Ref: 225 61) Compare and contrast text mining and data mining.Answer: Text mining is the semi-automated process of extracting patterns (useful information and knowledge) from large amounts of unstructured data sources. Data mining is the process of ide ntifying valid, novel, potentially useful, and understandable patterns in data stored in structured databases, where the data are organized in records structured by categorical, ordinal, or continuous variables. Text mining is the same as data mining in that it has the same purpose and uses the same processes, but with text mining the input to the process is a collection of unstructured data files such as Word documents, PDF files, and so on.Diff: 2Page Ref: 192 62) Why will computers probably not be able to understand natural language the same way and with the same accuracy that humans do? Answer: Natural human language is vague for computers to understand; and a true understanding of meaning requires extensive knowledge of a topic beyond what is in the words, sentences, and paragraphs. Diff: 1Page Ref: 196 63) NLP has successfully been applied to a variety of tasks via computer programs to automatically process natural human language that previously could only be done by humans.Li st three of the most popular of these tasks. Answer: Any three of the following: †¢Information retrieval. The science of searching for relevant documents, finding specific information within them, and generating metadata as to their contents. †¢Information extraction. A type of information retrieval whose goal is to automatically extract structured information from a certain domain, using machine-readable documents. †¢Question answering. The task of automatically answering a question posed in natural language; that is, producing a human-language answer when given a human-language question. Automatic summarization. The creation of a shortened version of a text document by a computer program that contains the most important points of the document. †¢Natural language generation. Systems convert information from computer databases into readable human language. †¢Natural language understanding. Systems convert samples of human language into more formal representa tions that are easier for computer programs to manipulate. †¢Machine translation. The automatic translation of one human language to another. †¢Foreign language reading. A computer program that assists a onnative language speaker to read a foreign language. †¢Foreign language writing. A computer program that assists a nonnative language user in writing in a foreign language. †¢Speech recognition. Converts spoken words to machine-readable input. †¢Text-to-speech. A computer program converts normal language text into human speech. †¢Text proofing. A computer program reads a proof copy of a text in order to detect and correct any errors. †¢Optical character recognition. The automatic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten, or printed text.Diff: 2Page Ref: 199 64) Describe a marketing application of text mining. Answer: Text mining can be used to increase cross-selling and up-selling by analyzing the unstructured data generated by call cente rs. Text generated by call-center notes as well as transcriptions of voice conversations with customers can be analyzed by text mining algorithms to extract novel, actionable information about customers' perceptions toward a company's products and services. Text mining is valuable for customer relationship management (CRM).Companies can use text mining to analyze unstructured text data, combined with the relevant structured data extracted from organizational databases, to predict customer perceptions and subsequent purchasing behavior. Diff: 2Page Ref: 200 65) What is the primary purpose of text mining within the context of knowledge discovery? Answer: The primary purpose of text mining within the context of knowledge discovery is to process unstructured (textual) data along with structured data, if relevant to the problem, to extract meaningful and actionable patterns for better decision making.Diff: 1Page Ref: 206 66) Diagram and explain the three-step text mining process. Answer: See Figure 5. 5 in the textbook. Diff: 2Page Ref: 207 67) List two options for managing or reducing the dimensionality (size) of the term-document matrix (TDM). Answer: †¢A domain expert goes through the list of terms and eliminates those that do not make much sense for the context of the study. †¢Eliminate terms with very few occurrences in very few documents. †¢Transform the matrix using singular value decomposition. Diff: 3Page Ref: 210 8) What are three of the challenges for effective and efficient knowledge discovery posed by the Web? Answer: The Web is too big for effective data mining. Because of the sheer size of the Web, it is not feasible to set up a data warehouse to replicate, store, and integrate all of the data on the Web, making data collection and integration a challenge. The Web is too complex. The complexity of a Web page is far greater than a page in a traditional text document collection. Web pages lack a unified structure.The Web is too dynamic. The Web is a highly dynamic information source. Not only does the Web grow rapidly, but its content is constantly being updated. The Web is not specific to a domain. The Web serves a broad diversity of communities and connects billions of workstations. Web users have very different backgrounds, interests, and usage purposes. The Web has everything. Only a small portion of the information on the Web is truly relevant or useful to someone or some task. Diff: 2Page Ref: 217 9) Define the three main areas of Web mining and each area's source of information. Answer: Web content mining refers to the extraction of useful information from Web pages. Source: unstructured textual content of the Web pages, usually in HTML format. Web structure mining is the process of extracting useful information from the links embedded in Web documents. Source: the URL links contained in the Web pages. Web usage mining is the extraction of useful information from data generated through Web page visits and tr ansactions.Source: the detailed description of a Web site's visits. Diff: 2Page Ref: 218 70) List three business applications of Web mining. Answer: 1. Determine the lifetime value of clients. 2. Design cross-marketing strategies across products. 3. Evaluate promotional campaigns. 4. Target electronic ads and coupons at user groups based on user access patterns. 5. Predict user behavior based on previously learned rules and users' profiles. 6. Present dynamic information to users based on their interests and profiles. Diff: 2Page Ref: 221

Confessions of the Worlds Worst Parent

The essay written by Jerri Cook titled Confessions of the World’s Worst Parent, is based on the book Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry written by author Lenore Skenazy (Cook). Cook provides similarities about raising her son and uses Skenazy’s experiences as they both point out the feeling of being judged by â€Å"good† parents because they gave their children the freedom to explore life without constant supervision. Cook shows the struggles between raising children the way she was raised and the way society wants them to be raised today.Cook explains to the audience in a humorous fashion the questions that all parents deal with, children and their freedom to explore and the paranoia that they will be hurt or taken. Presently the planet is dealing with the age of too much information, along with this comes misinformation and overinflated imaginations. Cook mentions that life for children was different when she w as a child; children were left to their own devices and the parents trusted them to do the right thing and it did not do any harm (Cook). Cook explains throughout her that society may be producing a planet filled with paranoid parents and children  that cannot fend for themselves.Should parents give their children more responsibility and trust to explore and acquire life skills on their own? The method that Cook uses to make her point to the audience throughout her essay is an anecdotal technique. She uses examples from her own life raising her son and quotes from Skenazy’s book to find a personal common ground with parents raising children. Cook points out the criticisms that Skenazy faced when opening her personal life to the media and sharing her child rearing skills.The use of Cook’s anecdotal technique allows the readers to find a common ground with the author that is familiar and comforting. The humorous way that Cook invites the reader into her life can appeal to parents that might think they are alone with their child rearing fears about not being a good enough parent; this style of writing could comfort a parent to make them feel they are not alone. Cook uses her research to find valid reasons to why parents today are too overprotective and paranoid and shares this interesting information with the audience.To begin with, Cook gives the audience an example of how her son â€Å"Josh told a classmate about throwing rocks at some beavers, and a teacher overheard† the school was â€Å"concerned that the children were 1) being made to work too hard in the garden and 2) that they weren’t being properly supervised† (Cook). Cook mentions that she was confused by the concern, and wondered if she was expected to â€Å"get in the car and go get them? † (Cook). Unfortunately for Cook and her children, the experience left a lasting impression of guilt and that Cook never wanted to be seen as â€Å"the â€Å"bad† p arent† again (Cook).From that point on Cook was â€Å"constantly at their side† (Cook) even though it caused some distress to her and her family. Similarly, Cook mentions that Skenazy â€Å"was nearly devoured by the media and other parents† because â€Å"she let her nine year old son ride the New York subway alone† (Cook). Skenazy wrote a column about her son’s adventure for the â€Å"New York Sun† (Cook) and it had caused her to be â€Å"criticized by every child safety â€Å"expert† (Cook) which in turn initiated an investigation of neglect for her son.Cook uses this example to show the different methods of parenting that exist and that some parents still feel that their children are fully capable and intelligent enough to make good choices. On the other hand Cook explains the paranoid state of affairs that the â€Å"good parents† (Cook) are inflicting on their children. As a result, Cook mentions that Skenazy started her ow n investigation into the actual facts and statistics about children and safety. Through Cook’s description of Skenazy’s investigations she learned that â€Å"Not only is the fear irrational, according to the statisticians Skenazy interviewed, it’s based solely on perception.† (Cook).This â€Å"perception† (Cook) can also be altered by the â€Å"issue of parent peer pressure† (Cook). Cook quotes Skenazy by writing, â€Å"Hell hath no fury like a self-righteous parent† (Cook). Furthermore, Cook explains Skenazy’s idea of the â€Å"helicopter parent† (Cook) that hover over their children â€Å"wasting their time, responding to threats that don’t exist† (Cook). Cook illustrates the idea about the old question of â€Å"how many cases have there been of children being injured or killed by tainted Halloween candy? † (Cook).After doing some research and asking questions the answer to the question turned out to be â€Å"none† (Cook). An â€Å"urban legend† (Cook) that unfortunately began with a horrible incident involving â€Å"relatives, in attempt to save their sorry selves, sprinkled some of the drug on the dead child’s Halloween candy after a child got into a relative’s stash of heroin and died† (Cook). This unfortunate incident has caused panic and concern for parents during Halloween for decades and to the dismay of children when a large portion of their candy was put in the garbage because it looked tampered with.In conclusion, Cook wrote this essay to humorously explain with anecdotes the trivial nonsense guilt that the â€Å"good parents† inflict on other parents that do not have the same views on the supervision of children. Cook tries to ease some of the guilt and inadequacy of being a â€Å"bad parent†. Cook makes light about not following parental peer pressure and raising their children as they feel comfortable and in the be st interest of their children.