Hogging the road

This essay examines how aesthetic, corporate and cultural formations have radically altered. motorcycling and its image over the past two decades as a means to highlight more general changes in cultural politics, citizenship and governing through culture. The essay begins with the Guggenheim's The Art of the Motorcycle exhibit, treated. as a means for shaping and governing thought and conduct about and on motorcycles. The essay then addresses numerous articulations between aesthetic criteria and economic practices that have benefited. corporate and professional entities at the expense of long-time motorcyclists. Lastly, the essay formulates genealogical criteria for assessing attempts to represent culture in the hopes of more actively engaging in struggles over not just representation, but the activation of modes of thought, conduct and citizenship.     

Expert Systems

Summary

Expert systems are computer programs which embody the expertise of a human expert in order to consult and advise on a specific problem. It is now becoming feasible to apply expert systems technology to problems in the human services. This article describes what expert systems technology is and how it may be applied in human service practice. Finally, some of the promises and pitfalls of this new technology are addressed.     

The Chinese writer as empty signifier: a corpus-based analysis of the English-language reporting of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature

This study examines the English-language reporting of the award in 2012 of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the Chinese author, Mo Yan. Through the corpus-based analysis of news reporting in four countries, the study found that Mo was discursively produced as an “empty signifier” through which significant cultural-political work was done in an attempt to make sense of and manage a resurgent China. Specifically, the global cultural event of the Nobel Prize in Literature was used in the USA, Australian, and French news media largely to reproduce the dominant human rights discourse in which China's dissidents were highly prominent and highly valued. In the news media of the more culturally proximate India, the literary achievement was given greater prominence. The study's keyword and concordance analyses found a high degree of commonality in the linguistic strategies through which China was represented. The findings revealed that the English-language reporting of the Nobel Prize was characterized by narrow cosmopolitanism, in which “they” were invited to become part of “our” free world.     

A brief proof on the generalized variance bound of the relative efficiency in statistics

In this paper, we obtain a brief proof on the generalized varance bound of the relative efficiency that was simultaneously given by Bloomfield and Watson(1975) and by Knott (1975).     

Limit theorems for dependent Bernoulli variables with statistical inference

We consider a class of dependent Bernoulli variables where the conditional success probability is a linear combination of the last few trials and the original success probability. We obtain its limit theorems including the strong law of large numbers, weak invariance principle, and law of the iterated logarithm. We also derive some statistical inference results which make the model applicable. Simulation results are exhibited as well to show that with small sample size the convergence rate is satisfying and the proposed estimators behave well.     

A probabilistic approach to Wallis’ formula

We present an alternative proof of Wallis’ formula from the probabilistic point of view. Based on the classical central limit theorem, some discrete distributions with additive property, such as binomial, negative binomial, Poisson and multinomial distributions, are considered to derive π/2.     

Applications of quadrivariate exponential distribution to a three-unit warm standby system with dependent structure

Two-unit warm standby systems have been elaborately dealt within the literature. However, the study of standby systems with more than two units, though very relevant in state-of-the-art practical situations, has received little attention because of mathematical intricacies involved in analyzing them. Also, such systems have been studied assuming: (i) the lifetime or repair time of the units to be exponential, or (ii) the lifetime and repair time to be independent. The present contribution is an improvement in the state-of-the-art in the sense that three-unit warm standby system with dependent structure is shown to be capable of comprehensive analysis.     

A process capability index with reliable confidence intervals

A well-know process capability index is slightly modified in this article to provide a new measure of process capability which takes account of the process location and variability, and for which point estimator and confidence intervals do exist that are insensitive to departures from the assumption of normal variability. Two examples of applications based on real data are presented.     

The Joint Distribution of the Sum and the Maximum of IID Exponential Random Variables

The authors establish the joint distribution of the sum X and the maximum Y of IID exponential random variables. They derive exact formuli describing the random vector (X, Y), including its joint PDF, CDF, and other characteristics; marginal and conditional distributions; moments and related parameters; and stochastic representations leading to further properties of infinite divisibility and self-decomposability. The authors also discuss parameter estimation and include an example from climatology that illustrates the modeling potential of this new bivariate model.