Islamophobia in the media: a response from multicultural education 1

This paper looks at the media in Germany and Australia in order to focus on the question of how Islam is accepted in both countries, and the extent to which Islamophobia exists. It was discovered that, for the most part, the media in both countries present a somewhat biased view of Muslims and Islam. However, there were some significant differences: (1) a higher acceptance of multiculturalism in the Australian media, which is revealed in the greater number of articles on ordinary, everyday multicultural life; (2) differences in the portrayal of migrants’ roles; and (3) the terminology used to refer to migrants. The paper concludes by outlining the ways in which multicultural education could contribute to a reduction of Islamophobia.     

Geographies of a silent transition: a geographically weighted regression approach to regional fertility differences in Turkey

The fertility decline that Turkey has gone through in the last few decades is characterised by sharp regional inequalities, with western regions representing patterns akin to developed countries and those in the east resembling “third-world” countries, while central regions represent an in-between case. With the help of geographically weighted regression (GWR), this article is an attempt to set up a model of causal relationships that could account for the regional fertility differentials. The results indicate that the fertility decline is not a single and all-embracing process covering all regions. On the contrary, there are regions differentiated qualitatively from each other in terms of the underlying causes of the existing fertility levels.     

Long live Fenerbahçe: The production boosting effects of football

The connection between Turkish industrial production performance and the success of a popular Turkish football team, namely Fenerbahçe, is the central theme of this article. The success of Fenerbahçe is interpreted as a proxy for the workers’ mood or morale. Performing a transfer function analysis on our monthly data set, we reveal positive feedback from Fenerbahçe’s success, which proxies workers’ mood/morale, to economic performance such that the monthly industrial growth rate increases by 0.26% with the number of games won by Fenerbahçe in European cups regardless of where the game is played. Evidence of the effects of games against domestic rivals on industrial performance is not statistically significant.     

A Genetic Algorithm Based Modification on the LTS Algorithm for Large Data Sets

The authors introduce an algorithm for estimating the least trimmed squares (LTS) parameters in large data sets. The algorithm performs a genetic algorithm search to form a basic subset that is unlikely to contain outliers. Rousseeuw and van Driessen (2006 Rousseeuw , P. J. , van Driessen , K. ( 2006 ). Computing LTS regression for large data sets . Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery 12 : 29 – 45 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) suggested drawing independent basic subsets and iterating C-steps many times to minimize LTS criterion. The authors 'algorithm constructs a genetic algorithm to form a basic subset and iterates C-steps to calculate the cost value of the LTS criterion. Genetic algorithms are successful methods for optimizing nonlinear objective functions but they are slower in many cases. The genetic algorithm configuration in the algorithm can be kept simple because a small number of observations are searched from the data. An R package is prepared to perform Monte Carlo simulations on the algorithm. Simulation results show that the performance of the algorithm is suitable for even large data sets because a small number of trials is always performed.     

McDonald's ωt,Cronbach's α, and Generalized θ for Composite Reliability of Common Factors Structures

In the common factor model for subtest scores, several reliability coefficients, including Cronbach's α, have been found to be biased. In this article, we introduce a new coefficient, θ_G, or Generalized θ, which is a generalized version of Armor's θ coefficient and is equal to the true reliability when the dimensions are orthogonal and the measures are parallel. We assessed the McDonald's ω_t, α, and θ_G in terms of mean bias, efficiency, and precision using a Monte Carlo simulation. θ_G outperformed ω_t when the factors were orthogonal or nearly orthogonal with low correlations between them.     

Goodness-of-Fit Tests for Multivariate Distributions

We propose three new statistics, Z _p , C _p , and R _p for testing a p-variate (p ≥ 2) normal distribution and compare them with the prominent test statistics. We show that C _p is overall most powerful and is effective against skew, long-tailed as well as short-tailed symmetric alternatives. We show that Z _p and R _p are most powerful against skew and long-tailed alternatives, respectively. The Z _p and R _p statistics can also be used for testing an assumed p-variate nonnormal distribution.     

Heterogeneous data modeling with two-component Weibull–Poisson distribution

The mixture distribution models are more useful than pure distributions in modeling of heterogeneous data sets. The aim of this paper is to propose mixture of Weibull–Poisson (WP) distributions to model heterogeneous data sets for the first time. So, a powerful alternative mixture distribution is created for modeling of the heterogeneous data sets. In the study, many features of the proposed mixture of WP distributions are examined. Also, the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is used to determine the maximum-likelihood estimates of the parameters, and the simulation study is conducted for evaluating the performance of the proposed EM scheme. Applications for two real heterogeneous data sets are given to show the flexibility and potentiality of the new mixture distribution.     

Decolonising the university in 2020

ABSTRACT

We came together as editors of Decolonising the University through a commitment to understanding the university and our place within it; to examine what else might be possible for us, collectively, in the domain of higher education. Although we do not always agree about the university– or, perhaps more specifically, about the possibilities it contains for intervening effectively in the world– we nonetheless coalesced around an idea of ‘decolonising the university’ as an important strategic mode of engagement. Here, we set out the positions that we come from in relation to the broader debates about the university and its political possibilities and offer responses also to the reviews. These are not our final words on the matter, but words shaped by the political possibilities that present themselves at the outset of 2020 and which, we hope, will contribute to the increasingly necessary dialogues on this topic.     

A reply to Walker’s note: A comment on Taşiran’s ‘Wage and income effects on the timing and spacing of births in Sweden and in the United States’

Walker (1997) criticizes one of the conclusions in my book Tas?\iran (1995), that Heckman and Walker’s very high negative wage rate and positive income effects on Swedish fertility are very sensitive. In this paper, I explain, first, that my results are not only based on the series Walker mentions, but also on other series in both SFS and HUS data sets. Second, the combined aggregate and micro wage series he criticizes is mainly derived with Heckman and Walker. Third, by discussing the points he raises for the combination strategy, I show that his revised results are also supporting my conclusion. Received: 7 June 1996/Accepted: 16 July 1997 I am grateful to Anders Klevmarken, Lennart Hjalmarsson, Bj?rn Gustafsson and Ann Veiderpass for their valuable suggestions and discussions on an earlier version of this paper. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for their comments and to the responsible editor of this journal Klaus F. Zimmermann, for his encouragement and many helpful comments. Any remaining errors are my own. Responsible editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann.