Our estimate that 85% of all health research is being avoidably “wasted” [Chalmers & Glasziou, 2009] commonly elicits disbelief. Our own first reaction was similar: “that can’t be right?” Not only did 85% sound too much, but given that $200 billion per year is spent globally on health and medical research, it implied an annual waste of $170 billion. That amount ranks somewhere between the GDPs of Kuwait and Hungary. It seems a problem worthy of serious analysis and attention. But how can we estimate the waste?
Black Harvard economics professor wrote a research paper investigating whether racial differences in police shooting rates were the result of “racial bias” or “statistical discrimination”. Statistical discrimination = an individual or institution treats people differently based on data that reflects the average behavior of a racial group. Racial bias = if police pull over black drivers at a rate that disproportionately exceeded their likelihood of drug possession, that would be an irrational behavior representing individual or institutional bias.
Jewish Harvard Health & Human Rights Fellow finds flaws in methodology, but also shows extreme lack of neutrality to social science research! These are two of his opening statements: 1. "There should be no argument that black and Latino people in Houston are much more likely to be shot by police compared to whites." 2. "the idea of “statistical discrimination” is just as abhorrent as “racial bias”."
Methodological flaw one seems valid.
1. pulling people over who are most likely to have done something illegal, and making more arrests is rational behavior by police. It isn't the right approach to shootings though, as police officers are not trying to rationally maximize the number of shootings.
2. flaw two is described as this: actual study assumes a population of people who are shot by police OR people who are arrested. Proper approach is to assume a population of drivers stopped by police that can have one of two outcomes: they can be arrested, or not. This is a less valid criticism, because "proper approach" doesn't even have shooting as an outcome! Finding is that of the two groups (shot OR arrested), racial disparity in arrest rates is larger than the racial disparity in police shooting.
System Thinking insists that systems (of all kinds) must be analyzed as a whole in order to understand its emergent properties and the interrelatedness of its constituent parts (McDermott & O'Connor, 1997). Action Research is a research methodology that lay emphasis on researchers to work with practitioners rather than on them. The modern workplace requires systems thinking because it’s a complex whole that exhibits emergence and it is also in urgent need of expert guidance and knowledge that enables its inhabitants to become more productive and efficient. In the light of the bare minimum of options present for such possibilities, the author makes the case that action research can both teach and enable practitioners to incorporate systems thinking in their workplace. The paper gives a brief introduction to systems thinking and action research then makes the case for action research in the workplace and finally rounds off with strategies for conducting successfully action research.
We are tired of XP, Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, Software Craftsmanship (aka XP-Lite) and anything else getting in the way of...Programming, Motherfucker.
We are tired of being told we're autistic idiots who need to be manipulated to work in a Forced Pair Programming chain gang without any time to be creative because none of the 10 managers on the project can do...Programming, Motherfucker.
Europäische Geschichte Online (EGO) is an online European transcultural history composed of multimedia knowledge items encompassing the period from 1450 to 1950. EGO is methodologically pragmatic, international and interdisciplinary. It combines a variety of approaches and perspectives from debates in multiple languages and thus interlinks international scholars working in the various disciplines of European history.
IceScrum is an J2EE application for using Scrum while keeping the spirit of a collaborative workspace. It also offers virtual boards with post-its for sprint backlog, product backlog and others.
The tool offers everything that is in Scrum :
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The role management: Product Owner, ScrumMaster, Team member and StakeHolder
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The product backlog management with advanced features for prioritizing stories
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Scrum lifecycle including a roadmap view
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Release planning
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Sprint backlog, as a task board facilitating the Scrum ceremonial
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Management of impediments
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Chart production such as burndown charts, velocity charts, cumulative flow diagram
Icescrum offers others agile practices like :
* Roadmap
* Vision
* Features
* User stories
* Acceptance tests associated to stories
* User roles
* Planning poker
WebSM website is dedicated to the methodological issues of Web surveys, but it also covers the broader area of modern technologies and survey data collection. It provides latest news and a database on literature, software, events, and people. WebSM site was funded by the European Union in 2003-2005.
Recent functional neuroimaging studies have shown that reflecting on representations of the present self versus temporally distant selves is associate...