An Improved Boxplot for Univariate Data

The boxplot is an effective data-visualization tool useful in diverse applications and disciplines. Although more sophisticated graphical methods exist, the boxplot remains relevant due to its simplicity, interpretability, and usefulness, even in the age of big data. This article highlights the origins and developments of the boxplot that is now widely viewed as an industry standard as well as its inherent limitations when dealing with data from skewed distributions, particularly when detecting outliers. The proposed Ratio-Skewed boxplot is shown to be practical and suitable for outlier labeling across several parametric distributions.     

Constructing an Accounting Journal Website

Abstract

To increase the effectiveness and efficiency of searches for information, accounting students, researchers, practitioners, and regulators could benefit from a Website devoted to the electronic access to journals. The site described here addresses such a need in the business discipline of accounting. On the site, the titles of over 470 journals are listed and categorized by topical areas within accounting. Then, within each accounting category, the journals are grouped according to their Internet accessibility. To provide the user with quick access to the various journals, the site provides links to the homepages of the various journals. Serials Review 2002; 28:201–205.     

Functional sliced inverse regression analysis

Most of the usual multivariate methods have been extended to the context of functional data analysis. Our contribution concerns the study of sliced inverse regression (SIR) when the response variable is real but the regressor is a function. In the first part, we show how the relevant properties of SIR remain essentially the same in the functional context under suitable conditions. Unfortunately, the estimation procedure used in the multivariate case cannot be directly transposed to the functional one. Then, we propose a solution that overcomes this difficulty and we show the consistency of the estimates of the parameters of the model.     

Trends in the History of Vocational Guidance

In this article, the relationships between vocational guidance and vocational education, employment counseling, career guidance, and career counseling are explored. Also examined are the wide‐ranging federal and state policies that have stimulated and shaped the professional history of vocational guidance, vocational policy, and contemporary terms.     

THE ARCHIVE STATE AND THE FEAR OF POLLUTION: FROM THE OPIUM WARS TO FU-MANCHU

This article considers the relationship between the production of a British imperial archive on China and the global politics of empire over the last century and a half. Drawing upon the theoretical work of Bruno Latour, Gayatri Spivak and Thomas Richards,the archive is explored as a coherent set of material practices designed to decode and recode China and other colonized territories. Imagined as an interface between knowledge and the state, the British archive required the establishment of an epistemological network designed to generate knowledge on China. The knowledge so produced was then used to manipulate local scenes and to provide intelligence in ‘the Great Game’, the continuing contest with Russia over domination in Central Asia. Because of its desire for comprehensive knowledge of other peoples and places, the archive also generated its own phantasms, ones which threatened to undermine and destroy empire. This process of self-haunting is explored through the figure of Fu-Manchu, a discernible mutation of epistemological empire, and linked to the cold war which emerged on the Eurasian landmass after 1945.     

Stories of (Social) Distress: Applied Narrative Analysis and Public Policy for the Homeless

Recent attention to the use of social science research in the formation of social policy highlights the role of narratives in the mediation of the relationships between research and practice, science and policy. This paper demonstrates the value of applied narrative analysis in revealing the function of narratives in this mediation. Public debate over a universal “right to shelter” for homeless persons in Washington D. C. is the central case study. The results illustrate the usefulness of applied narrative analysis in the study of social distress and in the forging of new links between research and policy.