Ridge Analysis 25 Years Later

The response surface technique called ridge analysis was originally introduced by Hoerl (1959) more than 25 years ago. Despite tremendous advantages over more conventional response surface procedures when more than two independent variables are present, ridge analysis has received little attention in the statistical literature since then, although numerous applications have appeared in engineering journals. This situation may be partially due to the fact that this procedure led to the discovery of ridge regression, which has completely overshadowed ridge analysis in the literature since. This discussion will briefly review the mathematics of ridge analysis, its literature, practical advantages, and relationship to ridge regression.     

Exact Statistical Tests for Heterogeneity of Frequencies Based on Extreme Values

Sophisticated statistical analyses of incidence frequencies are often required for various epidemiologic and biomedical applications. Among the most commonly applied methods is the Pearson's χ² test, which is structured to detect non specific anomalous patterns of frequencies and is useful for testing the significance for incidence heterogeneity. However, the Pearson's χ² test is not efficient for assessing the significance of frequency in a particular cell (or class) to be attributed to chance alone. We recently developed statistical tests for detecting temporal anomalies of disease cases based on maximum and minimum frequencies; these tests are actually designed to test of significance for a particular high or low frequency. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate merits of these tests in epidemiologic and biomedical studies. We show that our proposed methods are more sensitive and powerful for testing extreme cell counts than is the Pearson's χ² test. This feature could provide important and valuable information in epidemiologic or biomeidcal studies. We elucidated and illustrated the differences in sensitivity among our tests and the Pearson's χ² test by analyzing a data set of Langerhans cell histiocytosis cases and its hypothetical sets. We also computed and compared the statistical power of these methods using various sets of cell numbers and alternative frequencies. The investigation of statistical sensitivity and power presented in this work will provide investigators with useful guidelines for selecting the appropriate tests for their studies.     

超越世界汉学的哲学黯淡--对莫卡德的一个回应

莫卡德是他所谓的“阅读”行为的倡导者,追求一种对特定文本中特定段落的直接、可持续的阅读方式。在我们的“哲学文本”和几种“哲学翻译”实践中,为了证明这种实践的正当性,我们不但不会排除对这些经典复杂的从文学、历史、语文学,尤其是最近兴起的考古学角度进行的阐释,我们甚至还要充分利用以上的诸种方法。之所以这样是因为我们希望尽可能地领会这些文本最为广博的涵义,以此消弭因我们自身学科或哲学观点带来的限制性的影响。我们借此希望能够推翻哲学界中未予宣布的一种假说———一种危险的倾向于种族主义的假说———这种假说将地理学中的规则,而非哲学规则当作它排斥他者的标准,以此来“忽略”非盎格鲁-欧洲的哲学叙事。与莫卡德不同,我们将永远也不会默许将中国的哲学归结为“思想”而非真正哲学的论断。我们认为最优秀的哲学阅读方式———分析性的、美国式的以及欧洲大陆式的———不但不会使我们贬低这些文本,反而只会丰富我们对它们的阐释。     

St. Clair Drake,the Chicago School,and the Emergence of a New Urban Black Perspective

St. Clair Drake was responsible for a major shift in the way urban sociologists studied cities. While educated by Chicago school scholars in sociology and anthropology, such as Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Drake was one of many Black doctoral students who veered from the dominant perspective of his White teachers on race. His skills in ethnographic research were indebted not only to Park and Burgess, but also to the work of Black scholars who came before him, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier. His unique personal approach to cities and their racial problems transitioned into a more global focus on the Black diaspora, colonialism and the history of African people, and cultures which connected him to a world of social action.     

Shift Restrictions and Semiparametric Estimation in Ordered Response Models

We develop a √n‐consistent and asymptotically normal estimator of the parameters (regression coefficients and threshold points) of a semiparametric ordered response model under the assumption of independence of errors and regressors. The independence assumption implies shift restrictions allowing identification of threshold points up to location and scale. The estimator is useful in various applications, particularly in new product demand forecasting from survey data subject to systematic misreporting. We apply the estimator to assess exaggeration bias in survey data on demand for a new telecommunications service.     

After the transnational turn: Looking across borders to see the hard face of the nation-state

This paper leverages the repressive turn in U.S. migration policy to understand how a cross-border perspective can illuminate the experiences of two different, but contemporaneous second-generation populations: Those whose lives have unfurled in the United States, all the while growing up in internationalized families with ongoing homeland ties; and those whose childhoods began in the United States, but were disrupted as part of the ‘Great Expulsion’, and thus migrated to Mexico, albeit often with U.S. citizenship and almost always with cross-border ties to family members still living in the United States. As the paper demonstrates, looking across borders highlights the importance of the territorial frontier and the continuing power of the national to undermine the forces that produce cross-border connections.     

Toward a DuBoisian theorization of school curricula

After a near century of mainstream academic exclusion, recent efforts in sociology have centered Du Bois as a foundational figure. However, these efforts have overlooked his contributions to theorizing K-12 and college/university formal curricula. Moreover, curricula, teaching, and learning scholarship, already marginalized within mainstream sociology of education, have typically overlooked Du Bois’ theorizations, thus reproducing his marginalization. As a correction, this article centers Du Bois as a key figure in critical curricula theory. Specifically, Du Bois theorized that schools institutionalize formal curricula imbued with race-class ideologies and that said ideologies shape peoples’ subjectivities, identities, and consciousness of social processes. However, Du Bois also theorized how Black schools can serve as meso-level sites for challenging hegemonic ideologies and producing transformative ideologies. In articulating these processes, Du Bois identifies how ideological propaganda, organizational structures, and interpretations of temporal processes maintain and perpetuate racism and capitalism. This article concludes with suggestions for future research in educational sociology that incorporates these insights.     

A risk science perspective on liability/guilt and uncertainty judgements in courts

This article aims to provide new insights about risk and uncertainty in law contexts, by incorporating ideas and principles of contemporary risk science. The main focus is on one particular aspect of the law: its operation in courts where a defendant has been charged with a violation of civil or criminal law. Judgements about risk and uncertainty—typically using the probability concept—and how these relate to the evidence play a central role in such situations. The decision on whether the defendant is liable/guilty or not may strongly depend on how these concepts are understood and communicated. Considerable work has been conducted to provide theoretical and practical foundations for the risk and uncertainty characterizations in these contexts. Yet, it can be argued that a proper foundation for linking the evidence and the uncertainty (probability) judgements is lacking, the result being poor communication in courts about risk and uncertainties. The present article seeks to clarify what the problems are and provide guidance on how to rectify them.