A cautionary tale

Anthony Edwards wrote this cautionary tale for genetics students at Stanford University whom he was teaching in 1965. It has not previously been published. "Its appearance now is due to my having been asked whether a copy from the papers of the Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg might be put on the web by the US National Library of Medicine", he says. "Lederberg was Professor of Genetics at Stanford at the time and I must have given him a copy. More remarkably, he thought it worth keeping." It concerns what is known as Simpson's paradox.     

Planning in a state of turbulence

This paper is concerned with an exploration of the role of the long range planner, whether in the private or public sector of the economy, and the impact made upon the processes of his work by government's increasing propensity to manipulate the economy. The authors' researches over the last 2 years into the comparative nature of planning processes in the U.K. economy have made it abundantly clear to them that planners are increasingly concerned at the dangerous potential of such impact upon their forecasting procedures. The emphasis here will rest upon the planner in private enterprises, although the authors' work in both local government and the nationalized enterprises suggest that the problem is of equal importance in these sectors.The authors consider first the past nature of the search processes in long range planning and the context of such attempts to narrow down the range of variables that form the enterprise's perception of its future. Secondly, they examine the emerging discontinuity and the changing role of government, with particular reference to indicative planning concepts. Then they introduce some of the findings of a recent survey of attitudes towards long range planning in the construction industry of the U.K., a sector vitally influenced by turbulence in the economy and with particular interest in government's ideas of macro-planning. Finally Edwards and Harris examine the implications to government and to planners of their findings.     

Statisticians in stained glass houses

Statistics and stained glass may seem an odd combination, but the windows of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, say otherwise. Anthony Edwards explains.     

Generalized linear models with functional predictors

Summary. We present a technique for extending generalized linear models to the situation where some of the predictor variables are observations from a curve or function. The technique is particularly useful when only fragments of each curve have been observed. We demonstrate, on both simulated and real data sets, how this approach can be used to perform linear, logistic and censored regression with functional predictors. In addition, we show how functional principal components can be used to gain insight into the relationship between the response and functional predictors. Finally, we extend the methodology to apply generalized linear models and principal components to standard missing data problems.     

Liberal dreams: Materialism and evolutionary civil society in the projection of nation in Southeast Asia

This article focuses on the introduction of ethnicity into Southeast Asia, as a component of the nineteenth century British projection of empire. The argument is that rather than projecting a cosmopolitan vision of community, British liberalism naturalised ethnicity through the concept of civil society. This presented a global vision of societies being independent and emerging from the local landscape. These liberal notions of civil society represent an early incarnation of self-determination. The British Empire in Southeast Asia emerged within this intellectual climate, and its early construction reflected this vision. In essence, the British Empire in Southeast Asia was founded on the nebulous idea of providing self-determination to Southeast Asian nations. This notion of self-determination was a qualified concept of independence, framed around opening these civil societies to British trading hegemony.     

The Moral Dilemmas of Positive Discrimination

Positive discrimination is a contentious topic both politically and in social policy terms. Reasoned debate about it has been hampered by a fundamental misunderstanding about what it is and what makes it peculiar, that took hold in the immediate post-Plowden era. This paper argues that what distinguishes positive discrimination from other practices with which it has been confused, such as selectivity and positive action, can only be understood in terms of basic canons of social or distributive justice. Having established the moral standing of positive discrimination, the paper goes on to examine arguments that attempt to “justify” it either in terms of justice itself or of utility, and to identify the circumstances in which its use might be “justified” in Britain. The questions that surround its proper use are identified as being in large measure moral dilemmas.