A natural conjugate prior for the nonhomogeneous poisson process with an exponential intensity function

This article presents a natural conjugate prior for the nonhomogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) with an exponential intensity function, for modeling the failure rate of repairable systems. The behavior of the conjugate prior distribution with respect to its parameters is studied, and the use of this prior in Bayesian estimation is compared to two other estimation approaches (the use of independent prior distributions, and the bivariate normal distribution). The use of the conjugate prior proposed here facilitates Bayesian statistical analysis of aging. In particular, the proposed prior allows us to explicitly account for dependence between the initial failure rate and the aging rate. This is a significant improvement over the assumptions made in most prior work (either the assumption that the aging rate is known, or the assumption that the initial failure rate and the aging rate are independent). Monte Carlo simulation shows that Bayesian estimation using the proposed prior generally performs at least as well as Bayesian estimation using independent priors for the initial failure rate and the aging rate,except in the case where the prior distribution underestimates both the initial failure rate and the aging rate.     

Originary différance: “A quantum vitalism”

Review of Alexander Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science: unifying physical and social ontology (2015).     

To ITV or Not to ITV: A Comparison of Hybrid and Web-enhanced Approaches to Teaching a Macro-course in Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Hybrid education includes an online component and interaction between students and teacher by televised sound and image. This approach contrasts dramatically with traditional face-to-face teaching and classroom teaching modalities enhanced by Web-based tools. Should educators in “human behavior and the social environment” (HBSE) use hybrid technologies? This study explores the differences and similarities in student satisfaction and learning outcomes between a hybrid and a face-to-face Web-enhanced macro-course in HBSE. Results suggest that hybrid and Web-enhanced course delivery methods do not differently impact student learning. Students did report greater satisfaction with some but not all aspects of the hybrid sections.     

Whatever happened to “bureaucracy”: Empirical studies of the 1970s

Problems with defining the structure of the organization are the topic of this research. At the beginning of the seventies Hage and Aiken wrote: “Characteristics of organizations do not occur randomly; they are found together in definite patterns.” The purpose of this paper is to begin to make these non‐random patterns explicit. Such a task involves three steps: (1) defining “the” characteristics of organizations, (2) examining the empirical relationships of these characteristics, and (3) summarizing the findings. This paper focuses on step one. The structural elements of organizations as they appeared in the empirical studies of the 1970s as published in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Pacific Sociological Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, and The Academy of Management Journal are presented. Based upon these findings implications for steps two and three above are suggested.     

Preferences and the price of stability in matching markets

This paper studies welfare tradeoffs in two-sided, one-to-one matching markets. We begin by providing theoretical upper bounds on a utilitarian price of stability, and show that these bounds vary with the composition of participants’ ordinal preference lists. We then turn to simulation experiments to describe how changes in basic characteristics of agents’ preferences can increase or decrease the average price of stability as measured by both utilitarian and Rawlsian welfare criteria. Our results indicate that markets featuring moderate degrees of correlation and positive intercorrelation in the preferences of participants exhibit the steepest tradeoffs between stability and utilitarian welfare and between stability and Rawlsian welfare.     

Measuring trends in child well-being: an evidence-based approach

This paper first reviews the goals of the founding documents of the social indicators and quality-of-life movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It next describes the current state of knowledge with respect to the founding goals of this field. The focus then turns to the topic of measuring changes in child and youth well-being in the United States over the past few decades. In particular, the evidence-based approach used in the construction of the recently developed composite Child and Youth Well-Being Index (CWI) is described. Some findings from the CWI regarding changes in child and youth well-being in the period 1975–2004 are reported. Trends in the CWI then are compared with data on trends in subjective well-being of high school seniors – similarities of trends in these two series provide validating support for the interpretation of the CWI as an index of changes in the quality-of-life of children and youth. Using data on some additional indicator series, most of which were initiated in the 1990s, an Expanded CWI is then described. The qualitative pattern of change in the expanded CWI is shown to be similar to that of the basic CWI, except that the expanded CWI shows a more pronounced decline in the early-1990s and a slower rate of improvement into the early-2000s. The paper concludes with some possible directions for future work. Revision of a paper presented at the Measuring Child Well-Being: The Pros and Cons of Composite Indices Session, American Statistical Association Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, August 7–11, 2005. We thank Kristin Moore for useful comments. The research on the Child and Youth Well-Being Index reported herein was supported by a grant from the Foundation for Child Development.