Effects of Group Practice of the Transcendental Meditation Program on Preventing Violent Crime in Washington,D.C.: Results of the National Demonstration Project,June--July 1993

This paper reports the results of a prospective experiment in which a group of approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi assembled in Washington, D.C., from June 7 to July 30, 1993. It was hypothesized that levels of violent crime in the District of Columbia would fall substantially during the Demonstration Project, as a result of the group's effect of increasing coherence and reducing stress in the collective consciousness of the District. A 27-member Project Review Board comprising independent scientists and leading citizens approved the research protocol and monitored the research process. Weekly crime data was derived from database records provided by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (DCMPD), which are used in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Statistical analysis considered the effect of weather variables, daylight, historical crime trends and annual patterns in the District of Columbia, as well as trends in neighboring cities. Consistent with previous research, levels of homicides, rapes and assaults (HRA crimes) correlated with average weekly temperature. Robberies approximately followed an annually recurring cycle. Time series analysis of 1993 data, controlling for temperature, showed that HRA crimes dropped significantly during the Demonstration Project, corresponding with increases in the size of the group; the maximum decrease was 23.3% (p < 2 × 10–9) [24.6% using a longer baseline, with 1988--1993 data (p < 3 × 10–5)], coincident with the peak number of participants in the group during the final week of the assembly. When the same period in each of the five previous years was examined, no significant decreases in HRA crimes were found. Robberies did not decrease significantly. However, a model that jointly estimated the effect of the Demonstration Project on both HRA crimes and robberies showed a significant reduction in violent crimes overall of 15.6% (p = 0.0008). Further analysis showed that the effect of the coherence-creating group on reducing HRA crimes could not be accounted for by additional police staffing. The time series analysis for HRA crimes gave results that are highly robust to alternative model specifications, and showed that the effect of the group size was cumulative and persisted after the Demonstration Project ended. Also, calculation of the steady state gain based on the time series model predicted that a permanent group of 4,000 coherence-creating experts in the District would have a long-term effect of reducing HRA crimes by 48%.     

ON ESTIMATING PARAMETERS FOR BETA DISTRIBUTIONS

The purpose of this paper is to comment on and give historical perspective to two methdologies for estimating parameters of beta distributions. Fielitz and Myers [3] [4] developed and advocated a methodology using the method of moments, while Romesburg [20] advocated a methodology usingthe method of maximum likelihood. However, what Fielitz and Myers presented as new research and suggested as an area needing further study is ground already trampled. The authors have prepared a graph to underline the superiority of the maximum likelihood method in fitting beta distributions.     

Transforming sub-Saharan Africa

This article provides an analysis of my personal experience and research on the need for sub-Saharan African economic transformation. It contains relevant references to econometric modeling which are consistent with this analysis. After presenting the causes of African failures, ranging from the alleged role of slavery and colonization, to trade composition and relative decline, to present day problems of governance, low level of foreign investment in Africa, and mass unemployment, the article concludes with an agenda for the transformation of sub-Saharan Africa.     

Does product complexity matter for competition in experimental retail markets?

We describe a first experiment on whether product complexity affects competition and consumers in retail markets. We are unable to detect a significant effect of product complexity on prices, except insofar as the demand elasticity for complex products is higher. However, there is qualified evidence that complex products have the potential to induce consumers to buy more than they would otherwise. In this sense, consumer exploitability in quantities cannot be ruled out. We also find evidence for shaping effects: consumers’ preferences are shaped by past experience with prices, and firms may in principle exploit this to sell more.     

Data skeletons: simultaneous estimation of multiple quantiles for massive streaming datasets with applications to density estimation

We consider the problem of density estimation when the data is in the form of a continuous stream with no fixed length. In this setting, implementations of the usual methods of density estimation such as kernel density estimation are problematic. We propose a method of density estimation for massive datasets that is based upon taking the derivative of a smooth curve that has been fit through a set of quantile estimates. To achieve this, a low-storage, single-pass, sequential method is proposed for simultaneous estimation of multiple quantiles for massive datasets that form the basis of this method of density estimation. For comparison, we also consider a sequential kernel density estimator. The proposed methods are shown through simulation study to perform well and to have several distinct advantages over existing methods.     

On the Breslow–Holubkov estimator

Breslow and Holubkov (J Roy Stat Soc B 59:447–461 1997a) developed semiparametric maximum likelihood estimation for two-phase studies with a case–control first phase under a logistic regression model and noted that, apart for the overall intercept term, it was the same as the semiparametric estimator for two-phase studies with a prospective first phase developed in Scott and Wild (Biometrica 84:57–71 1997). In this paper we extend the Breslow–Holubkov result to general binary regression models and show that it has a very simple relationship with its prospective first-phase counterpart. We also explore why the design of the first phase only affects the intercept of a logistic model, simplify the calculation of standard errors, establish the semiparametric efficiency of the Breslow–Holubkov estimator and derive its asymptotic distribution in the general case.     

The birthday problem

Happy Birthday! If it is not your birthday today, it may well be the birthday of someone in your office, or in your class at school. Possibly, it is the birthday of two people in your office or your class. Just how big does a group have to be before its members are likely to share a birthday? Mario Cortina Borja and John Haigh explain the birthday problem.     

H-likelihood: problems and solutions

In recent issues of this journal it has been asserted in two papers that the use of h-likelihood is wrong, in the sense of giving unsatisfactory estimates of some parameters for binary data (Kuk and Cheng, 1999; Waddington and Thompson, 2004) or theoretically unsound (Kuk and Cheng, 1999). We wish to refute both these assertions.     

Naturing the Nation: Aliens,Apocalypse, and the Postcolonial State

The purpose of this study is to understand how the British Canadian Frank Schofield transformed himself into an established missionary scholar and nobleman in Korea. The study employs its framework from the structure of cultural exchange itself in its survey of Schofield's career. It examines the relevant aspects of Korean and Western cultures, and the characteristics of Schofield who linked them. The case, including themes significant both to Korean and Western cultures, such as the importance of spirituality, an emphasis on education, and the ideals of justice and love, explains reasons for his success as a cultural mediator between Korea and the West. It reveals that the flow of information and ideas between Koreans and Schofield illustrates the ability of intercultural contact to influence the initiating as well as receiving culture. It suggests that such a distinction between sender and receiver may carry little ultimate significance. Finally, it argues that individuals of different cultures can convey information and ideas effectively only if the conveyer learns about the target individuals for the information and ideas, and communicates on the basis of that knowledge, as intercultural communications occur between the individuals of different cultures.     

Reflections on liberalism,policulturalism, and ID-ology: citizenship and difference in South Africa

How do nation-states in the twenty-first century, nation-states increasingly forced to come to terms with the ethnic heterogeneity of their citizens, deal with the problem of cultural difference? How, in particular, does the Constitution of post-apartheid South Africa — widely believed to be the most enlightened in the contemporary world, the most tolerant of diversity — strike a balance between the ‘One Law’ of ‘The Nation’ and the plurality of customary beliefs sustained, as a matter of right, by the various peoples who make up this postcolony? What happens, in the course of everyday existence, when Constitution and Custom appear to contradict one another — and to do so in such a manner as to raise questions of basic human rights, of freedom of belief, even of life-and-death? These questions are addressed in the paper through a critical, broadly situated analysis of the confrontation between the Constitution of South Africa and the Kingdom of Custom that continues to prevail in one of its provinces, the North West. By exploring a complicated case that drew the State, via its Human Rights Commission, into open conflict with a Tswana chiefdom — a case about death rituals argued, before a high court judge, in the lexicon of modern jurisprudence — it shows how a ‘living constitution’, tolerant of everyday ambiguity, is being forged in the space of strategic engagement opened up by the alternative languages and cultures of legality that exist in this ‘policultural’ postcolony. And in others like it.