Tiger Mom Essay

In reading â€Å"Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom† by Amy Chua, I was surprised how Chua shared in detail about her life journey as a parent and raising two children. This is a book about Amy Chua’s experiences in raising her two daughters, Sophia and Luisa (Lulu), in what she believes is the â€Å"Chinese mother† style of parenting. She is quick to point out in the first chapter, entitled â€Å"The Chinese Mother,† that she uses the term â€Å"loosely† as it would be ridiculous to try to assume that every mother from China is a like a tiger mom.Just as â€Å"Western parents† would not be an appropriate label to place on every parent from Western countries. In this same chapter she references a study where â€Å"50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers† were polled on the role of parents in children’s academic success; with â€Å"70% of Western mothers believed ‘stressing academic success is not good for t he children’ or ‘parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun’† versus nearly â€Å"0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way.† Although she states there are several studies that support this theory, I would not put too much credence in this particular study since the pool is too small and there are a lot of â€Å"Western American mothers† with different style of parenting. A â€Å"Western American mother† can be from as far west as Hawaii or from as northeast as Maine; then there is everyone in between.She also gives us a list of what a Chinese mother’s belief system entails: â€Å"schoolwork always comes first; an A-minus is a bad grade; your children must be two years ahead of their classmates in math; you must never compliment your children in public; if your child ever disagrees with a teacher or coach, you must always take the side of the teacher or coach; (6) the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those in which they can eventually medal; and that medal must be gold. † This list seems a little extreme to me, but I guess it just depends on what you are brought up to believe is the norm.When you do not know anything different, this is normal, expected and accepted. As I began to read the book, I quickly realized Amy Chua is very pro â€Å"Chinese† parenting style. In chapter four, â€Å"The Chuas,† she described how her and her sisters were to speak only in Chinese in the home; â€Å"drilled math and piano everyday;† and they were not allowed to attend sleepovers at friends’ homes. Yet, she also tells of the time when she forged her father signature in order to apply to a school in the East Coast after her father had already said she was going to attend the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a professor.Here I saw a bit of a rebellion, which she will come to see later in the book with her daughter Lulu. Throughout the book, I saw many examples of how Chua compared â€Å"Chinese† parenting to â€Å"Western† parenting. This is especially true in chapter 10, â€Å"Teeth Marks and Bubbles. † She tells the story of how she had called her eldest daughter, Sophia, garbage for something Chua believed to be â€Å"extremely disrespectful†, although she never mentioned the offense. She says her father had called her the same thing when she was disrespectful to her mother. However, according to her, it did not damage her self-esteem.However, when she retold this story at friend’s dinner party, she was immediately looked upon with disdain and felt shunned by those around her. She goes on stating the three big differences between the mindsets of Chinese and Western parents. First, Western parents worry about a child’s self-esteem and are more concerned with the child’s psyche, whereas Chinese parents don’t. Chinese parents â€Å"assume strength, not fra gility, and as a result they behave very differently. † Second, Chinese parents feel their children should be indebted to them for the sacrifices the parents made on their children’s behalf.Therefore, they â€Å"must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud. † Most Western parents do not feel the need to apply that same pressure on their children. Third, Chua claims Chinese parents believe they know what is best for their children and feel entitled to supersede all of their children’s choices and/or decisions. In this particular instance, I believe a most parents, not only Chinese parents, believe they know what is best for their children. Chinese parents take it a step further and do not allow choices for their children, whereas Western parents do allow their child to have choices.Although Chua argues in favor of the Chinese parenting style, she is merely stating the differences between the two approaches and the one she prefers. She lets us into her world and walks us through her trials and tribulations with the â€Å"Chinese mother† approach she elected to follow. Where this style of parenting had worked with her and her sisters and to some extent her eldest daughter, Sophia, however Lulu was not so accepting. Near the end of the book, specifically in Chapter 31 â€Å"Red Square,† everything comes to a boil as she has, yet, another fight with Lulu at the GUM cafe.After the fight, Chua runs away into the Red Square to be with her thoughts, then has an epiphany and realizes that Lulu was rebelling against her and her â€Å"Chinese mother† style of parenting. When she returns to the cafe, she informs Lulu that she had won and she would be allowed to make her own choices and quit the violin. Do I favor this type of parenting? The style of parenting Chua describes in her memoir is that of an authoritarian parenting style, which â€Å"emphasizes high standards and a tendency to control kids through shaming, the withdrawal of love, or punishments† (http://www.parentingscience. com/chinese-parenting. html).This style I do not agree with. In fact, according to Dr. Gwen Dewar, â€Å"authoritarian parenting is linked with lower levels of self-control, more emotional problems, and lower academic performance. † Dr. Dewar is more in favor of an authoritative parenting that involves the same emphasizes of high standards, but also involves â€Å"parental warmth and a commitment to reason with children† (http://www. parentingscience. com/chinese-parenting. html).There is nothing wrong with wanting the best for your children, wanting them to succeed and instilling a hard-work ethic and providing guidance, however it should not be at the expense of the child’s psychological well being. Even though it looks like Chua’s daughter, Sophia, had benefited from this style of parenting, they may just begin to realize they could have possibly achieved the same results without the extreme harassment. Only time will tell if Chua’s daughters will end up resenting her as her father ended up resenting and detaching himself from his family after disagreeing with his authoritarian mother.Especially Lulu, who was the most difficult one. As stated in the beginning, this is a book on how a â€Å"Chinese mother† style of parenting was used by Amy Chua and the results she had with this style. Although, I may not agree with all of the aspects of this style, it does have its pros; such as wanting your child to the best that they can be and its cons; such as the belittling of a child can never be good. This was never intended to be a â€Å"How to Guide† to parent your children, as Chua stated in an interview after the book was released (http://abcnews. go.com/US/tiger-mother-amy-chua-death-threats-parenting-essay/story? id=12628830).Chua has received a lot criticism from many people, but I agree with her, this is n ot a guide to parent a child. The reason being is that each child is unique in its own way. What may be a good approach for one, it not necessarily good for another. As she acknowledged in her book, â€Å"When Chinese parenting succeeds, there’s nothing like it. But it doesn’t always succeed. † However, at the end of the day you make the decision you feel is right for you and your family and adjust, as needed, as you go along.

Theory Matrix

Many of his 14 points are process-driven, such as breaking down barriers between departments will lead to a reduction of waste, errors, and delay. His idea on constantly improving the system of production and service is customer-driven because it focuses on providing the best possible products to customers. Toyota Curran Focuses on parts of the organization, not whole. He also defined quality as â€Å"fitness for use†, and developed concept of cost of quality.Three basic steps to progress Ten steps to quality improvement The Curran Trilogy Saran's Praetor Principle Curran was an engineer and he firmly believed that quality does not happen accidentally, therefore all of his theories are process driven – organizations deed to determine who its customers are and plan for quality through every step of the process. Quality planning is the first stage of his trilogy and is basically aligning an organization's products and processes with customers' needs.Bausch & Lomb Chickasa ws He focused on user friendly quality control and emphasized the internal customer. Cause and effect diagram (fishbone diagram) Quality circles He emphasized on the internal customer, meaning that during each step in the creation of a product or service, the department will need to treat the ext department as a â€Å"customer†, so that quality is controlled at every step. This is how Jigsaw's method is process-driven because every process is tightly connected to the next.His quality requirement is customer-driven because he pushed for the concept of company wide quality control that called for continued customer service. He believe that management should not merely focus on improving a product's quality, and insisted that quality improvement can always go one step further. Nippon Telephone & Telegraph used quality circles. Crosby He coined the phrase â€Å"quality is free† and introduced the concept of zero defects. He also believed in team building approach that is o rganization wide.Four absolutes of quality management Idea of zero defects He believes in the process of educating the entire workforce about quality principles, so when each failure is well-documented, management can institute formal programs to redesign faulty production processes. His view of how quality is not some vague concept of â€Å"goodness†; you can't have quality that is good enough, he wants zero defect and it's customer driven because e said specifications must be set according to customer needs and wants. Glenn L. Martin Company (1912-1961) Figment He introduced the concept of total quality control, which has 40 steps.He promoted the idea of a work environment in which both management and employees have a total commitment to improve quality, and people learn from each others successes. Total quality control in 40 steps (also termed â€Å"company-wide quality control†), which was later known as Total Quality Management. It is process driven because he bel ieved that quality must be actively managed and have the usability at the highest levels of management, therefore, it is important that each employee does his part correctly so the whole process is correct, and quality might become nobody job.

Reviewing Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection Essay

Starting with a critical outline of the global patterns and designs in communication, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s seminal work Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection attempts at a critical examination of the widespread principle of worldwide associations lingering almost everywhere. While Tsing explicates that her work â€Å"is not a history of philosophy but rather an ethnography of global connection (Tsing, 2004, p. 1)†, she also unravels a tight regard for the seemingly presented connections among the various sections of the society. Apparently, one of the book’s main concerns is to obtain the movement patterns wherein various types of knowledge and culture collide against or with each other. This, perhaps, is the logical and obvious contention behind the book.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The initial section of Friction probes into the notion of ‘richness’ or prosperity through an examination of the numerous sides of capitalism. The first part also seeks an exploration of the events that lead to capitalism and its corresponding effects from a bigger viewpoint. While putting down into understanding the significant concepts needed to have a better comprehension of the foundations and modern expressions of capitalism, the first part also brings into light quite a few matters surrounding the delicate and complicated ties from all over the globe. This section introduces the part where the Tsing will subsequently interlock the discussion about the worldwide political environment which encompasses the Indonesian society including the local communities.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Tsing’s seminal work also makes the plain observation that the population increase or boom has equally led to a rapid disproportion in the environment as resources would then have to be consumed or used in a larger scale or degree. Because capitalism is one of the book’s primary concerns, it attempts to showcase the definitive function of capitalism in this imbalance which is largely amplified by the increase in population in the modern years. Tsing further observes that proliferation is also a crucial principle that indicates the expansion or spread of capitalism (Tsing, 2004, p. 27). This results to the presumption that the population expansion—with the combination of capitalist expansion—is a measure of proliferation. In return, the proliferation generates the setting of frontiers which are not mere edges but more importantly specific forms of edges â€Å"where the expansive nature of extraction comes into its own (Tsing, 2004, p. 27).†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Generally, the opening parts of the book, including the first chapter, are initially segmented into two sections: the first section deals with the concept of frontier and the resources which consist it founded on the ethnographic observations during the middle parts of the 1990s; the second section probes the consequences of the predicaments during 1997 when â€Å"frontier-making spiraled out of control (Tsing, 2004, p. 28).†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The second main section of Friction explores the concept of Natural Universals with respect to the various contexts in the whole world. Friction inevitably draws the parallels between universality of a supreme being which is God and the universality of nature through the environment for generating the link between Nature and God. While the chapter probes into the â€Å"universality of capital-N Nature† which is the â€Å"awe-inspiring, lawlike systematicity of the cosmos of and of life on earth† (Tsing, 2004, p. 88), the book also inevitably draws the essential link between Nature and the rest of the world.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Friction also notes the presumption that generalizations are where â€Å"small details support great visions and the universal is discovered in particularities (Tsing, 2004, p. 89)†. This presupposes the notion that â€Å"generalization to the universal requires a large space of compatibility among disparate particular facts and observations (Tsing, 2004, p. 89).† It also translates into the idea that â€Å"tentative and contingent collaborations† among incongruent seekers of knowledge as well as their incongruent â€Å"forms of knowledge† can create compatible facts and observations from incongruent ones (Tsing, 2004, p. 89). These observations discussed in the book brings us face to face with the core of what the author is presupposing: the idea that mere generalizations are just as they are without getting hold of the particulars that comprise them. If put altogether like a single unit, these very particularities will compose the bigger picture where the rest of Nature and of the world function as a unified force. The second chapter further tries to ascertain the supposition that one can start to take action on the idea of ‘thinking globally’ through the awareness of a present generalization among things. That is, the realization of the commonality among the various elements and entities in the world through their predominant generalities helps us overcome the barriers that hinder us from thinking on a large scale and attain the end of global connections.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The author steadfastly formulates this position by affirming that â€Å"as long as facts are apples and oranges, one cannot generalize across them; one must first see them as ‘fruit’ to make general claims (Tsing, 2004, p. 89).† This makes the book even more mind rousing as it nears its middle part. As Friction exposes certain critical observations such as the inability or failure of individuals to realize the common general thread which holds people together as one, it also brings into consciousness the possible means of surmounting the test of realizing the more general claims.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In addition, Friction reiterates the idea that â€Å"cultural analysis thrives on the description of specificity† given that it is the paramount scheme for us to get hold of â€Å"a critical distance from the common-sense platitudes and everyday assumptions of our lives† and â€Å"the powerful ideologies that keep us in their thrall† (Tsing, 2004, p. 122). Friction reasserts the position that omitting the comprehension about the particulars disarms one with the capacity to approach and comprehend the more evident actuality in the rear of our common-sense perception of the globe.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   â€Å"Nature Loving† further makes manifest as well as supports the belief that the assorted interactions concerning different categories of knowledge and culture are unyielding factors in investigating universal claims. Using the Indonesian rainforest as an example, the book reiterates the belief that people have always been in contact with nature. One example to this is the fact that there are ‘nature lovers’ who are â€Å"devoted to outdoor activities such as camping, mountain climbing, rafting, and scuba diving (Tsing, 2004, p. 122)†. These individuals merely consist of a little fraction of the bigger populace whose daily lives involve contact with Nature such as the Indonesians.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Friction penetrates deep into the analysis by putting side by side the observations of the poet Kristiandi Tanumihardja with the observations of individuals from the scientific community to the masses. The cornerstone of these observations from the book relates the idea that nature has its own way of communication which is evidently unique in its own mysterious ways. As Friction talks about the human endeavors to disclose the mysteries behind the way Nature communicates not only by the scientific community but also by the world of literature, it also hopes that â€Å"even with such limited understanding† the attempts â€Å"might bring us closer to knowing how to live in a multispecies world† (Tsing, 2004, p. 172). Friction further concretizes an observation in the chapter â€Å"A History of Weediness† where the author explores â€Å"the interdependence of species† by reflecting on â€Å"the beasts and flowers, not just as symbols and resources, but as co-residents and collaborators† (Tsing, 2004, p. 172). This corresponds to the presumption that there should be ‘respect’ in the manner which human beings deal with the environment. The book reveals the outlines upon which the societies have significantly transformed—and, to a certain extent, revolutionized—across generations which largely contributed to the major changes in Nature. More importantly, Friction tries to reveal the assessment that Nature and the cultural processes have been normally delegated with various disjunctions and differences as well as with the heterogeneous factors which intertwine along the way—it is the part in which people ordinarily refer to as the concept of ‘globalization’.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The final chapter â€Å"Freedom† in Friction commences with the belief that â€Å"travel changes the way we imagine our home places (Tsing, 2004, p. 213)† which leads us towards the idea that ‘movement’ should be present for us to acquire a consistent and unyielding comprehension and appreciation of Nature and the global environment. It is only through this movement can a broader understanding of the global connections existing take place. More importantly, these movements are paramount or equivalent to the different social movements and upheavals in more recent times. These include the various social movements among the community of civilians consistently engaging with the environment.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Friction’s final chapter further broadens the kinds of collaborations where â€Å"political gains and compromises† can be assessed â€Å"through constant attention to these kinds of collaborations and their effects† (Tsing, 2004, p. 268). While aggregating the general contentions of Friction in studying global interconnections and the many particularities involved in comprising the larger whole, the book also places a special emphasis on Indonesia’s environmental status. Friction reports facts about the principal subject matters in investigating the ethnography of global connections and the findings by earlier generations as well as the contemporary ones which ascertain what people comprehend as signs of globalization. References Indonesia: Environmental Issues. (2004).  Ã‚   Retrieved November 2, 2007, from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/indoe.html Tsing, A. L. (2004). Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yarrow, T. (2006). Book Review: riction: An Ethnography of Global Connection By Anna Lowenhaupt  Ã‚   Tsing. Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 29(2), 291-296.

Marketing research leads to analysis paralysis Essay

Marketing research leads to analysis paralysis - Essay Example For example, Benz cars are one of the costly vehicles in the world. So it can be successfully implemented in developed or developing countries whereas it might not be an ideal choice for the people of underdeveloped countries. Consider Benz is trying to introduce their expensive vehicles in Indian market. In India, different geographical regions have different type of economies and Benz need to account for these geographical economical and cultural differences before formulating their marketing strategies. Sachin Tendulkar might be a better brand ambassador for Indian conditions whereas he may not be the same in Chinese conditions. Thus marketing is a complicated task which needs lot of researches and analysis for the successful movement of the product in a particular region or market. Millions of dollars spent for the market research and analysis by the marketers which lead towards a situation; analysis paralysis. Primary market research is based on the data collected directly from the market. It is classified into two categories; qualitative and quantitative based on the characteristics of the data collected. ‘Gathering of descriptive information, usually representing verbal or narrative data through open-ended interviews or focus groups usually come under qualitative data whereas gathering of numerical information that can be analyzed statistically through surveys come under quantitative data’(Small business notes, 2009) Open interviews composed of descriptive questions often used to collect qualitative data. The probability of answers like ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ would be avoided while formulating questions for collecting qualitative data through interviews. The interviewees would be forced to open their minds and to answer questions with more details if the questions are designed correctly. The greatest benefit of qualitative research is its ability gather dat a about the common trends, emotional motivators, and general likes and dislikes of the

Demonstrations in Middle East Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Demonstrations in Middle East - Essay Example Bearing in mind that many countries in the Middle East have been suffering from bad governance, it is pertinent to find out how these countries that experience these demonstrations in the Middle East are affected and impacted. My interest in the topic was spurred by the dominant news and reports of these protests and demonstrations in the Middle East. Being a very recent issue, it is important for me to carry out investigations in this area and come up with new and substantial findings that can factually explain the motivation behind the uprising in the Middle East and their impacts. To this day, various countries in the Middle East such as Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia have seen their rulers forcibly evicted from power. Other countries such as Syria and Bahrain have been experiencing serious civil uprisings that have brought about numerous impacts to them. Major and minor protests have erupted in some Middle East countries, with the major ones being experienced in regions such as Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq and minor ones in Saudi Arabia and Oman. These wars, riots, protests and demonstrations have been christened the Arab Spring (Phares 34). This topic is fairly new because it is involves new and recent o ccurrences. I plan on moving from this broad interest to formulate a narrow topic and thesis by focusing on a single aspect of the Middle East demonstrations that interests me the most. In this particular instance, I intend on focusing on the role of these protests and demonstrations in attaining democracy in the Middle East. These demonstrations in the Middle East are landmark revolutions that have shown the rest of the world that citizens can unite and oppose bad governance and poor leadership. My thesis and primary focus will be on the impact and roles of these demonstrations in bringing about democracy in the Middle East. Countries in the Middle East

Summry for the outcasts united witten by Warren St. John Essay

Summry for the outcasts united witten by Warren St. John - Essay Example That same small Southern town also becomes the home to Luma Mufleh --- a Jordanian woman who establishes soccer teams to unite the children of refugee families. This woman, who was educated in the U.S., along with her players, names the team Fugees, short for refugees (St. John 31-2). The tone of the story is based on the non-consent of this small American town to be a social experiment, with the story revolving around the lives of the refugee children, their families, and their coach Luma. The author accounts the lives of these young people as they unite to form a team against the backdrop of a fading American town that is having a hard time welcoming the new arrivals. In the middle of all the struggles and hardships encountered by the members of the team and their families, Coach Luma passionately pushes her players towards success on the field. In general, the book is an inspiring narrative of the happenings that turn a small town into a global community, and the many different wa ys people convert an alien world into what they could call home. The story narrates how Luma, while driving through Clarkston, sees this group of refugee boys playing soccer. She had been a soccer coach before with very little compensation, and she eventually becomes the coach for these young refugee boys. Besides her story, the book also depicts the horrors that the refugee families went through in their escape from their war-trodden nations, the difficult adjustments they have to swallow as they try to settle in Clarkston, the issues regarding poverty, clashes with the new culture, and the high-crime rates. To make things worse, older inhabitants of the suburb town look at the situation with disinterest and contempt. The drastic changes that everyone goes through --- both the refugees and the older inhabitants --- make it difficult for them to compromise what they had been all used to. One of the exceedingly touching and wonderful moments in the story is when Coach Luma calls toge ther her teams of young soccer players, with everyone showing up looking raggedy --- one wearing ankle-high boots, one in socks, some in jeans, and almost all without proper footwear. These players compose three teams of mixed age ranges who, along with their families, endured unthinkable horrors to still be able to stand on that field that day. Yet despite the kids’ unimaginable backgrounds, coach Luma maintains her disciplinarian approach towards them --- laying down the rules that she expects everyone to follow seriously if one is keen on staying with the team. The kids are expected to come to practice twice a week despite the fact that only a few of these kids’ families have cars. The boys will miss a game for every practice missed and will be kicked off the team if the rules are not followed. Luma even makes the boys sign a contract regarding the rules that run from being usual to obscure. None of these rules is negotiable. With all the talk about bringing about s ocial change through sports, the Fugees are still able to offer an extraordinary and touching example. In one scene narrated in the book, without anyone else telling them so, the boys offer one Muslim and one Christian prayer just prior to a game event. This shows how the boys are opening up to the accommodation of their differences in order to enjoy a common goal, while at the same time learning

Instructional presentation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Instructional presentation - Essay Example Jim Fay’s (1995) discussion of three major teaching styles reminders readers that feedback sends not only the overt message of the words used but the covert messages of tone, actions and general body language. Of the three teaching styles - helicopter, drill sergeants, and consultants – it is the consultant teacher who embodies the overt and covert â€Å"messages of personal worth, dignity, and strength† (Fay & Funk, 1995, p. 197). When looking to the strategies employed by consultant teachers, it becomes obvious that these can be used with all teaching styles to provide corrective feedback in a whole instruction setting. First, educators should make sure the questions being asked are of appropriate difficulty and cognitive levels while being stated as clearly as possible. Schroeder (n.d.) suggests that questions dealing with new material should be such that 80% of the responses given are correct and 90+% for review materials. Educators may find that low-level questions that ask what, where, and who are best for this. Such pedagogical procedures will promote self-esteem as well as momentum needed to progress with instructional activities. Students will then be more willing to work for answers to higher order questions dealing with the why and how. Secondly, teachers should react to responses in such a way as to encourage student answers. Quick, certain responses that are correct need only affirmation that they are indeed correct. Correct but hesitantly given responses need the affirmation of correctness as well as praise and perhaps a short review of why the response is correct. Incorrect responses that are due to a careless error need only a quick reference to the error and time for the student to be allowed to provide the correct answer. Incorrect answers based on a lack of knowledge should be met with prompts and hints that may engage the needed information. Clarifying, rephrasing, or even changing the

Letter to C.S.Lewis - A Grief Observed Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Letter to C.S.Lewis - A Grief Observed - Essay Example I would like to raise significant insights after reading your apologetic writing â€Å"A Grief Observed† some weeks ago (Lewis 1). This is because the descriptions of incidents in the text inspired strong reactions in me. Furthermore, the writing stimulated my thinking consequently motivating me to have a conversation with you. This is because I admit that grieving after the demise of a friend or a loved one is a horrible experience for persons universally. I also admit that love causes peoples behavior to transform for better and occasionally to their detriment than any aspect of peoples life (Parrish & Parrish 61). However, my response to the text concerns offering information about people’s reaction to bereavement and their faith during such situations in my culture. Furthermore, I would like to offer information basing on how love currently adapts while faced with various challenges in the historical moments. Descriptions offered in the text â€Å"A Grief Observedà ¢â‚¬  regarding love presents some similarities and inconsistencies in my culture (Lewis 3). The bereavement as observed by the text is a challenge to love and loved ones. The demise of a loved one currently makes people in my culture feel worse off because life becomes uninteresting after such a scenario. In the present time, people can remarry after losing partners (Eldredge 117). As the author of this text, you did not consider remarrying to minimize your suffering caused by the demise of your partner. Furthermore, remaining unmarried is socially dangerous as depicted by how people treated you thereafter. It is commendable that even though you already assumed a confirmed bachelor title then at fifty six years you opted to marry a divorcee. Furthermore, you married someone you knew suffered from bone cancer a clearly risky decision. These happened because of the love that you had for Helen. Although, you attempted to assume the absence of Helen arguing that â€Å"love is not the whole of a man’s life† realities hit and your memories sprung back to her (Cassidy & Shaver 49). This shows that true love is extremely strong that it becomes exceedingly hard to forget a love one even after the demise. Presently, love adapts to such horrific incidents through remarriage and overwhelming love that people around victims offer. While applauding your courage to venture into marriage at that later date, I have to question your motive for doing so (Lewis 6). This is because I have never seen anyone marry at that age in my culture. Persons tend to find partners in much earlier ages. The love that God offers man remains unquestionable though you initially discredited this during your bereavement. The love for the welfare of other people, which God indeed has for persons he calls his children existed in you (Howell 54). The demise of Helen does not connote the absence of God’s love upon you. This is because God does not only show the love that he has ov er people by making them live continuously. Persons in my culture presently comprehend that the demise of their close partners is only a way that God fulfils his promises. The descriptions offered in the text regarding the availability of God necessarily emerge from the bereavement and the feeling that God neglects you. The text argues that seeking God in happiness with appreciation and commendation then he gladly

Morality and Immorality and Holy Willie's Prayer and Tam O Shanter Research Paper

Morality and Immorality and Holy Willie's Prayer and Tam O Shanter - Research Paper Example There are two particular poems that he wrote which clearly exemplify the sarcastic and humorous tone of his style. These are Holy Willie’s Prayer and Tom O’ Shanter. What makes this poem important though is not just that these are prime examples of Burns’ humor-laden writing style. The said poems also provide proof of Burns’ personal perspectives on morality and immorality, as well as the role of religion these matters. The background of Holy Willie’s Prayer alone would already provide a glimpse of how Burns despised hypocrisy, especially if this is committed by men who belong to the church or the ‘kirk’ in 18th century Scotland. The poem is about a real character named William Fisher, a leader of the local church in Mauchline where Burns had stayed. Fisher, with whom Burns shared mutual hate, is described as a â€Å"bigoted elder of the Kirk, who with considerable eloquence and the conceit of the humorless, exposes himself as a cantin g hypocrite† (Head 527). The title of the poem dedicated to him by Burns is already one that actually reeks of sarcasm. The emphasis on the word ‘holy’ comes as a paradox because at the end of the poem, Fisher is portrayed to be asking God to punish his detractors with the lines that disregards the basic Christian concepts of mercy and forgiveness. Lord, in Thy day o’ vengeance try him, Lord, visit them wha did employ him, And pass not in Thy mercy by them, Nor hear them their pray’r, But for Thy people's sake destroy them, An’ dinna spare. Holy Willie’s Prayer actually paints a picture of a man, who is expected by many to set the example of how Christians should treat each other, turn out to be just as sinful and immoral as those he may have despised. It is clear that Burns disliked so much how Fisher had behaved as a churchman, whom the parishioners consider to be near infallible and holy when he is actually committing the same immora lities that he preaches against. There are lines in the poem that actually described Fisher’s own improprieties. O Lord! yestreen, Thou kens, wi’ Meg --   Thy pardon I sincerely beg --   O, may’t ne’er be a living plague   To my dishonour!   An’ I'll ne’er lift a lawless leg   Again upon her.   Burns, however, does not criticize Fisher for committing these human frailties. In a very sarcastic tone, he highlights the fact that despite these shortcomings, Fisher still managed to pray that he be forgiven for these ‘minor’ infractions. While he asks mercy, Fisher instead prays to God that his detractors are spared from it and are punished for persecuting him. As it turns out, Willie Fisher’s prayer is basically a portrayal of how a man of the church treats God as a superior that would listen to his pleas more because he is part of the church hierarchy and not for its merits or demerits. The poem provides a picture of Fisher â€Å"down on his knees, praying to his God, whom he addresses familiarly as if God were a senior official in the church† (Gerrard 384). Without putting it into words, Burns depicts a situation where the church is actually isolated from the rest of the people, including its laity. The isolation stems from the notion that those who are part of the church hierarchy are not equal with those outside of it, even if they are Christians too. The concept presented in the poem is that God is prone to be more

Industry Analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Industry Analysis - Research Paper Example When we mention drugs, there are those specifically targeted to help smokers, for example ginseng. Many of its effects are similar to those of nicotine, for example the herb lowers stress levels while boosting energy. The immune system is also boosted using this herb which is normally prepared by brewing it into tea (Charles, Marianne 2009). Kava is another herb that mimics the effects of nicotine such as relieving of anxiety and stress. It also acts as an anti-convulsant as well as a mild anesthetic. By using this herb, smokers do not miss the effects of tobacco as they gradually stop smoking and adapt to taking Kava (Peter, Clive 2006). Lobelia, also known as Indian tobacco, has nicotine-like properties such as acting as a relaxant and a stimulant. This herb offers great help by reducing cravings. It also offers much assistance to smokers during withdrawal of nicotine by providing mild antidepressant effects (Melvyn, Edward 1991). Other products that help smokers are seen in terms of lifestyle. Smokers are advised to eat healthily while taking lots of water. This helps reduces craving and improves resistance to triggers. Let us not forget that having lots of sleep is also good for those planning to quit smoking (Peter, Clive 2006). There are gums that help smokers quit their habit. A good example is the nicotine gum. This helps the smokers to quit smoking gradually and is helpful by reducing the passage of dangerous particles to the lungs. Thus the smoker saves himself or herself from the risks of lung or throat cancer. The nicotine patch is also helpful to smokers to help them quit their smoking habit. Meditation is another form of self enhancement technique that would prove valuable to smokers in a bid to help them quit their habit. This helps them focus their energy from cravings and channel it to self improvement meditation (David 2011). There is the naval spray that contains nicotine that smokers

Key Success Factors Essay Example for Free

Key Success Factors Essay Number of Rivals Wal-Mart’s primary competitors were Kmart and Target. Wal-Mart also competed against category retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City in electronics, Toy â€Å"R† Us in toys, Kohl’s and Goody’s in apparel; and Bed, Bath, and Beyond in household goods. It also competed against warehouse club segment like Costco Wholesale, Sam’s Clubs and BJ’s Wholesale Club. Internationally, Wal-Mart‘s biggest competitor was Carrefour. Scope of RivalryWal-Mart operates nationally, but its principal interests are in the urban centers of United States. Internationally, its interests are mainly in Mexico, Japan, United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada and China. Number of BuyersAs a discounted retailer, Wal-Mart’s customer base is the consumer making individual purchases, and is therefore fragmented and with no appreciable power. Degree of Product DifferentiationThe product is wide product selection and a mix of both name-brand and private-label merchandise, and therefore, a commodity with some minor differentiation available on price, selection and quality. However, Wal-Mart had successfully pursued a low-cost leadership strategy which could provide everyday low prices for their customers Product InnovationWal-Mart provides multiple store formats to attract and satisfy customers’ needs: Wal-Mart discount stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and Sam’s Clubs. Wal-Mart should expect it to become a common feature as rivals attempt to copy their success. Supply/Demand ConditionsWal-Mart was the biggest customer of virtually all of its 66,000 suppliers. It allowed it to bargain power with suppliers and get their bottom prices. In 1992 Wal-Mart began establishing standards for its suppliers. Pace of Technological ChangeMore sophisticated means of managing the supply chain, to include EPC/RFID systems mentioned in the case, suggest that new means of reducing costs are presenting opportunities for retailers to obtain an advantage over one another. Vertical IntegrationThe presence of suppliers indicates that the industry is not perfectly integrated. However, Wal-Mart and its competitor each maintain extensive warehousing and transportation assets, suggesting that there is a considerable degree of integration in the industry. Economies of ScaleGiven that the product is a commodity provided by suppliers, economies of scale would be essential in this industry.

The collapse of Enron Essay Example for Free

The collapse of Enron Essay The collapse of Enron seems to be rooted in a combination of the failure of top leadership, a corporate culture that supported unethical behavior, and the complicity of the investment banking community. In the aftermath of Enron’s bankruptcy filing, numerous Enron executives were charged with criminal acts, including fraud, money laundering, and insider trading. Ben Glisan, Enron’s former treasurer, was charged with two-dozen counts of money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy. During the plea negotiations, Glisan described Enron as a â€Å"house of cards. † Andrew Fastow, Jeff Skilling, and Ken Lay are among the most notable top-level executives implicated in the collapse of Enron’s â€Å"house of cards. † Andrew Fastow, former Enron chief financial officer (CFO), faced 98 counts of money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy in connection with the improper partnerships he ran, which included a Brazilian power plant project and a Nigerian power plant project that was aided by Merrill Lynch, an investment banking firm. 2. How did the top leadership at Enron undermine the foundation values of the Enron Code of Ethics? Enron’s ethics code was based on respect, integrity, communication, and excellence. Kenneth Lay, former chairman and (CEO) of Enron Corp. , once quoted as saying: â€Å"I was fully exposed to not only legal behavior but moral and ethical behavior and what that means from the standpoint of leading organizations and people. † In an introductory statement to the revised Enron Code of Ethics issued in July 2000, Lay wrote: â€Å"As officers and employees of Enron Corp. Its subsidiaries, and its affiliated companies, we are responsible for conducting the business affairs of the companies in accordance with all applicable laws and in a moral and honest manner. † Lay went on to indicate that the 64-page Enron Code of Ethics reflected policies approved by the company’s board of directors and that the company, which enjoyed a reputation for being fair and honest, was highly respected. Enron’s ethics code also specified that â€Å"An employee shall not conduct himself or herself in a manner which directly or indirectly would be detrimental to the best interests of the Company or in a manner which would  bring to the employee financial gain separately derived as a direct consequence of his or her employment with the Company. † 3. How did Enron’s corporate culture promote unethical decisions and actions? Enron has been described as having a culture of arrogance that led people to believe that they could handle increasingly greater risk without encountering any danger. According to Sherron Watkins, â€Å"Enron’s unspoken message was, ‘Make the numbers, make the numbers, make the numbers—if you steal, if you cheat, just don’t get caught. If you do, beg for a second chance, and you’ll get one. ’† Enron’s corporate culture did little to promote the values of respect and integrity. These values were undermined through the company’s emphasis on decentralization, its employee performance appraisals, and its compensation program. Each Enron division and business unit was kept separate from the others, and as a result very few people in the organization had a â€Å"big picture† perspective of the company’s operations. Accompanying this emphasis on decentralization were insufficient operational and financial controls as well as â€Å"a distracted, hands-off chairman, a compliant board of directors, and an impotent staff of accountants, auditors, and lawyers. † Jeff Skilling implemented a very rigorous and threatening performance evaluation process for all Enron employees. Known as â€Å"rank and yank,† the annual process utilized peer evaluations, and each of the company’s divisions was arbitrarily forced to fire the lowest ranking one-fifth of its employees. Employees frequently ranked their peers lower in order to enhance their own positions in the company. Enron’s compensation plan â€Å"seemed oriented toward enriching executives rather than generating profits for shareholders† and encouraged people to break rules and inflate the value of contracts even though no actual cash was generated. Enron’s bonus program encouraged the use of non-standard accounting practices and the inflated valuation of deals on the company’s books. Indeed, deal inflation became widespread within the company as partnerships were created solely to hide losses and avoid the consequences of owning up to problems. (p29-31) Weiss, Joseph W. (2009). Business Ethics: A Stakeholders Issues Management Approach

The Sand Creek Massacre

The Sand Creek Massacre Although the American general public in the 1860s believed that Native American Indians were nothing more then savages, there are a few cases where the general public were sympathetic to Native Americans. The Sand Creek Massacre is the most public example of where the United States government mistreated Indians, as well as an ideal example of where the public was outraged at the handling of Indians. The Sand Creek Massacre occurred on the 29th of November 1864 forty-two miles away from Fort Lyon Colorado, on this day friendly Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians were attacked by a group of Colorado militia led by a man called Colonel John Chivington. (History.com, n.d.) The Sand Creek Massacre was a horrific tragedy in which many terrible war crimes were committed. Important People Colonel Chivington is one of the most prominent figures of the Sand Creek Massacre. Colonel Chivington was the commanding officer of the Colorado Militia. Chivington was born in 1821; he later became a Methodist minister in 1844 who preached against slavery. When the Civil War started he signed on for a fighting commission, in 1862 Chivington had worked his way to the position of Major in the Colorado Volunteer Regiment. He was herald as a military hero for his role in battle of Glorietta Pass. (THE WEST, 2001) Tensions between whites and Indians were approaching its climax in the middle of Chivington political career. He openly opposed the idea of having peace talks with Native Americans. (THE WEST, 2001) Chivington was a known bigot, who was known to have said I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under Gods heaven to kill Indians. (A Closer Look, 2002) In August of 1864, he declared that the Cheyennes will have to be roundly whipped or completely wiped out before they will be quiet. I say that if any of them are caught in your vicinity, the only thing to do is kill them. (THE WEST, 2001) On November 29 of 1864 Colonel John M. Chivington lead a group of Colorado Militia of around 700-750 to attack the peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian reservation, that had approximately only 500 men, women, and children. (Documents on the Sand Creek Massacre, 1864-1865) Colonel Chivington, in the interrogation by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War had reported that there were about eleven (11) or twelve (12) hundred Indians: of these about seven hundred were warriors, and the remainder were women and children. (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, 1865) When Chivington was questioned by the Committee on the Conduct of the War about the number of Indians killed including women and children killed he responded by saying I judge there were five hundred or six hundred Indians killed, and From all I could learn, I arrived at the conclusion that but few women or children had been slain. (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, 1865) However the actual numbers are more likely around 105 women and children and 28 men, as well as mutilating the dead and wounded. (A Closer Look, 2002) Chivington was asked for what reason did he commit the attack and what led he believe that Black Kettles Cheyenne Indians were aggressive towards whites. To wh ich he replied My reason for making the attack on the Indian camp was, that I believed the Indians in the camp were hostile to the whites. That they were of the same tribes with those who had murdered many persons and destroyed much valuable property on the Platte and Arkansas rivers during the previous spring, summer and fall was beyond a doubt. (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, 1865) In his testimony, Chivington was asked if he had any reason to suspect that Black Kettle and the Indians with him had been peaceful. Chivington responded by saying I had no reason to believe that Black Kettle and the Indians with him were in good faith at peace with the whites. (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, 1865) This is in fact a boldfaced lie because several witnesses testified that Captain Soule and Lieutenant Cramer led a large contingency of Fort Lyon soldiers that confronted Chivington and told him that Black Kettle had surrendered. (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives , 1865) Eventually Chivington was court marshaled for his part in the massacre, nothing came of it because he was no longer part of the Army, and hence no charges were ever made. He did however lose his military and political power in Colorado, he moved back to Ohio where he attempted to run for a state legislature seat but was quickly shut out. He then moved to Denver where he became a deputy sheriff until his death in 1892. (THE WEST, 2001) Black Kettle was the Chief of the Southern Cheyenne. Black Kettle lived on an enormous area of land that reached from western Kansas to eastern Colorado which was given to the Indians on the conditions of the signing of Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty defined territory for each tribal group in order to end intertribal rivalry and it permitted travelers and railroad workers on the Platte River Road. (Nd.gov,) However this treaty was broken after the discovery of gold at Pikes Peak in 1859. Instead of removing the unlawful settlers, the U.S. government forced the Southern Cheyenne to sign a new treaty forfeiting most of their lands, with the exception of the Sand Creek reservation. Even though the Sand Creek reservation was inhabit, not able to grow crops and not close to any herds of buffalo, Black Kettle was fearful of the United States Massive Military power and what would happen if they refused. Due to the lack of food and supplies, younger male Indians started to raid settlers and wagon trains. In the spring of 1864 a Colorado Militia group attacked a group of peaceful Cheyenne Indians. This horrid incident sparked Indian uprisings all over the Great Plains region. Black Kettle knowing that even with the Civil War going on the whites still had a vastly superior military power, so in order to secure his tribes survival, Black Kettle went to Fort Weed, Colorado, where he was promised th at his tribe would be safe as long as they stayed on the Sand Creek reservation. (Black Kettle, 2001) Colonel Chivington however, attacked the Sand Creek reservation, by some miracle Black Kettle and his wife both survived the attack. Even having lived though the carnage at Sand Creek he continued to advocate peace with the U.S. After being moved to another reservation, Black Kettle signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, which moved his people onto two smaller reservations in modern day Oklahoma. History tends to have a way of repeating itself. On the 27th of November 1868, just two days shy of the fourth anniversary. On this fateful day Lieutenant Colonel Custer attacked Black Kettles village and both Black Kettle and his wifes luck had run out and they were killed. (Black Kettle, 2001) The Battle of Sand Creek The Battle of Sand Creek, as the Rocky Mountain News called it, was stated that it was Among the brilliant feats of arms in Indian warfare, the recent campaign of our Colorado volunteers will stand in history with few rivals, and none to exceed it in final results. (Rocky Mountain News, p.1) Although Colonel Chivington portrayed the attack on the Sand Creek reservation as a battle in which there were, at the time of the attack, about eleven (11) or twelve (12) hundred Indians: of these about seven hundred were warriors (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, 1865). However in truth there were only about 500 men, women and children according to John Smith in the village. (Smith, 1865) The Indians were in fact peaceful and tried to surrender. When the Indians first saw the soldiers, they rushed to go and get the United States Indian interpreter and special Indian agent John S. Smith who was stationed in the village in order to get intelligence on the Indians. Black Kettle ran this American flag up to the top of his lodge, with a small white flag tied right under it, as he had been advised to do in case he should meet with any troops out on the prairies. (Smith, 1865) That is a crystal clear picture of a peaceful group of Indians, the white flag of truce or peace is a near universal symbol. Regardless of this the soldiers attacked with artillery and then foot soldiers swept the Creek bed, killing every Indian they could find, often hunting down fleeing children. Kill them big and small, (Smith, 1865) Chivington was reported saying. After six hours, about 150 Indians, a quarter of the camps population, lay dead. The soldiers took three prisoners, all children. A doze n soldiers were killed, some apparently by friendly fire in the frenzy. (Smith, 1865) Much less then what Chivington who estimated that between three and four hundred of the savages got away with their lives, and taking into account the huge exaggeration of about eleven (11) or twelve (12) hundred Indians: of these about seven hundred were warriors at the camp. (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, 1865). Atrocities The Sand Creek Massacre was packed full with scores of despicable atrocities. The Sand Creek Massacre in itself was horrific, more women and children were killed then actually warriors. Out of 150 dead Indians more than 70 percent were women and children. Seventy dead bodies lying there; the greater portion women and children. There may have been thirty warriors, old and young; the rest were women and small children of different ages and sizes. (Smith, 1865) This was said by John Smith a Native American interpreter in his congressional testimony. Furthermore there was massive mutilation to the corpses of the deceased Indians. In John Smiths testimony he declared I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces, worse mutilated than any I ever saw before; the women cut all to pieces. (Smith, 1865) When asked how they were cut? Smith replied With knives; scalped; their brains knocked out; children two or three months old; all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors. (Smith, 1865) Even Mr. Smith half-breed son was not spared, even though several officers thought that the kid could be handy as a translator and guide. (Smith, 1865) Those are the more extreme, of course there was the usually spoils of war, or looting depending on who you ask. The Repercussions The Sand Creek Massacre forced the United States government to reconsider the treatment of Native Americans. Many members of congress started to look into the mistreatment of Indians and stated To maintain peace with the Indian, let the frontier settler treat him with humanity, and railroad directors see to it that he is not shot down by employees in wanton cruelty. In short, if settlers and railroad men will treat Indians as they would treat white men under similar circumstances, we apprehend but little trouble will exist. (New Directions, 1868) After the Sand Creek Massacre there were two major conflict category events that involved Indians happened, the Battle of Little Big Horn and the Wounded Knee Massacre. Many people in the United States do not know that the Sand Creek Massacre was a major turning point in the treatment of Native Americans. This is due to the Civil War that was in full swing at this point in time. Because of the Civil War the Indian problem, this is including the treatment and the general racism against Indians, took a backseat in favor of the issue of racism towards African Americans. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the issue of Indian mistreatment to Congresses front door. Sand Creek massacre History.com This Day in History 11/29/1864. (n.d.). History.com History Made Every Day American World History. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/-sand-creek-massacre (History.com, n.d.) PBS. (n.d.). PBS THE WEST John M. Chivington. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved December 5, 2012, From http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/chivington.htm (THE WEST, 2001) Davis, S. L. (n.d.). Sand Creek Massacre: A Closer Look. BUFFALO SOLDIERS INDIAN WARS . Retrieved December 5, 2012, from http://www.buffalosoldier.net/SandCreekMassacre.htm (A Closer Look, 2002) Great Battle With Indians! The Savages Dispersed! 500 Indians Killed Our Loss 9 Killed, 38 Wounded Full Particulars, . (1864, December 14). ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, p. 1. (Rocky Mountain News, p.1) Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). PBS THE WEST Documents on the Sand Creek Massacre (1864-1865). PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/four/sandcrk.htm (Documents on the Sand Creek Massacre, 1864-1865) U.S., Congress, House of Representatives (1865) Massacre of the Cheyenne Indians, (Report on the Conduct of the War, 38 Cong., 2 sess.,p.101-108) Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865 Retrieved from http://www.kclonewolf.com/History/SandCreek/sc-documents/sc-2JCCW.html (U.S., Congress, House of Representatives, 1865) Tribal Historical Overview The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty. (n.d.). ND Studies. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from http://www.ndstudies.org/resources/IndianStudies/standingrock/1851treaty.html (Nd.gov, ) Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). PBS THE WEST Black Kettle. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/blackkettle.htm (Black Kettle, 2001) Congressional Testimony of Mr. John S. Smith. (1865, March 14). UH Digital History. Retrieved December 5, 2012, from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3psid=1150 (Smith, 1865)

Depression Essay -- essays research papers

One of the scariest emotional experiences a person can ever suffer during their lifetime is to experience a form of depression. Over one in five Americans can expect to get some form of depression in their lifetime. Over one in twenty Americans have a depressive disorder every year. Depression is one of the most common and most serious mental health problems facing people today. However, depression is often not taken seriously because of the large use of antidepressant drugs and the large number of sufferers. Depression is a serious illness and should be taken as so. Contrary to the popular misconceptions about depression today, it is a serious and deadly disorder.1   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Depression in its various forms (insomnia, fatigue, anxiety, stress, vague aches and pains, etc.) is the most common complaint heard in doctors’ offices. There are three primary forms of depression. Major depression, like the flu, has a beginning, middle, and an end. Major depression often lasts for months. Left untreated, it tends to reoccur. Each reoccurrence tends to last longer and is more debilitating than the one before. Chronic depression is a low grade, long-term depression that can go on for years. Some people have had it most of their lives. Long term, low-grade depression is also known as dysthymia. Dys, meaning disorder, and thymia meaning mood. Dysthmia is then a disorder of ones mood. The last type is manic depression. The lows of this depression can alter with days or weeks of maniaextreme feelings, unreasonable thoughts, and inappropriate, sometimes destructive behavior. The manic-depressive person fluctuates from one emotional pole to anoth er, often in rapid swings. 3   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are many symptoms of depression. Symptoms can include persistent sad or â€Å"empty† mood, loss of interest or pleasure in ordinary activities, including sex, decreased energy, fatigue, being â€Å"slowed down†, Sleep disturbances such as insomnia, early morning wakes or oversleeping, eating disturbances such as loss of appetite and weight, or weight gain, difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions, feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, thoughts of death or suicide, suicide attempts, irritability, excessive crying, or chronic aches and pains that don’t respond to treatment. Many people who have clinical depression can feel down, sad, ... ...gloominess, pessimism, introversion, self-criticism, deep feelings of inadequacy, and excessive brooding and worrying. People who regularly behave in dependent, hostile, and impulsive ways appear at greater risk for depression. Psychologists also believe that stressful experiences can trigger depression in people who are predisposed to the illness. About 20 percent of women experience an episode of depression after having a baby; this is called postpartum depression. Also, people who experience child abuse appear to be more vulnerable to depression than others.1   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Depression affects people all around the world and takes over many lives. It is a detectable disease. Most every case of depression is very personal, and usually has it’s own specifications and circumstance. By speaking with people who have depression in their families and being a sufferer of the disease myself, I’ve realized that it’s not the end of the world and there are ways to get help. Treatment for depression is relativity inexpensive but whatever the cost; it is more than made up for an increased productivity, efficiency, physical health, improved relationships, and enjoyment of life.

C-Section Essay -- Cesarean Section Pregnancy Birth Birthing Methods

Over the years birthing methods have changed a great deal. When technology wasn’t so advanced there was only one method of giving birth, vaginally non-medicated. However, in today’s society there are now more than one method of giving birth. In fact, there are three methods: Non-medicated vaginal delivery, medicated vaginal delivery and cesarean delivery, also known as c-section. In the cesarean delivery there is not much to prepare for before the operation, except maybe the procedure of the operation. A few things that will be discussed are: the process of cesarean delivery, reasons for this birthing method and a few reasons for why this birthing method is used. Also a question that many women have is whether or not they can vaginally deliver after a cesarean delivery, as well as the risks and benefits if it. Delivering a child by a c-section also has a few advantages and disadvantages for both the mother and child; this will also be discussed in more depth a bit late r.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Unlike vaginal birth delivery, the process of a cesarean delivery is quite different, but just as safe as giving vaginal birth (Taylor, 1). When delivering a baby using the cesarean method, there are two ways anesthetic can be used. The women can be put into an unconscious state using the anesthetic, therefore she will be asleep during the entire operation and her coach may not be present. The other way for the anesthetic to be used would be in an epidural or spinal block to temporarily numb the woman from her waist down. In this case the mother will be awake and her coach may be present to give her extra support. Once the anesthetic is working, an incision is made in the abdomen either horizontally or vertically, depending on the reason for the cesarean delivery. A vertical incision is made when the baby is in trouble and needs to be out as quickly as possible, when there is more time the horizontal incision is used. The baby is then lifted out of the uterus and gone for the APGAP procedure. The placenta is then removed and the mother’s reproductive organs are examined before closing the incision (Taylor, 1).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Cesarean birthing method can be voluntary as well as involuntary. When a cesarean is chosen in advance it is usually because the mother has a history of infection, which could be transmitted to the baby when it is delivered through the birth canal; the mother has severe to... ...as than others. The oldest source was the textbook Infants and Children. The other three sources were from the Internet written in 1996. Doctors wrote two of the articles and the other one was from the health information for Lenox Hill Hospital. I believe that overtime birthing methods have changed and have alternative ways to proceed, however, the cesarean delivery is pretty much the same procedure and cannot really be changed in any way, which means that the information given will be basically the same. Cesarean delivery is not as complicated as many people may think. The process is very safe and quick. It is most commonly used in emergency situations and when vaginal delivery is not option. When it’s planned in advance it’s in the best interest for the mother and baby. Vaginal birth after cesarean is possible if the incision made was a horizontal cut, but there are still risks to be considered. There are advantages and disadvantages to the baby and mother, that does not mean the procedure is not safe. The disadvantages are not life threatening and are minor issues that time will heal. Next to vaginal non-medicated birth I believe that cesarean delivery is the next best thing.

The Hole in My Heart :: Personal Narratives Health Medical Essays

The Hole in My Heart When I was younger, I loved to play sports. Basketball was my favorite and I was always one of the best on the team. I could jump high to get rebounds, I could use my long arms to steal many balls, I had a great shot and I did it all with grace. It was a beautiful thing and probably the only time I ever felt completely included in a group of people. Even though I was a valuable asset to the teams I played on, I was never the best. I missed many practices because I was too tired to play. I missed some games because I was sick, and I could never run as long or hard as any one else. My parents, teachers and friends reduced me to a lazy hypochondriac and by the power of suggestion, I almost believed it. At the end of the eighth grade, I could not do it anymore. I needed to sleep all afternoon, and sharp pains stabbed my legs with every step I took. Furthermore, I had just realized that I was a lesbian and the stress was causing me to be excessively distracted. How could I have existed wi th something so powerful living in my body for so long and not know it until now? I guess society’s expectations had blinded me. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20; as I reexamined my life as of that far, I could see that it had always been with me. So with the fatigue, stress, pain and illness I called it quits just a few games before the end of the season. During the next few years, I slowly limped around school, and slept through many hours of the day. I had already finished growing, so it made no sense that I slept as much as I did. I already knew why I limped; I have an extra spine bone that puts pressure on my sciatic nerve causing the sharp pains in my lower body, but there was a new unexplained weakness in my hips. It was not until a trip to Las Vegas when I definitely knew there was something wrong. I was eating dinner with my mom and sister when the skin on my wrists turned puffy and I had a strange feeling in my body and my mouth like what it feels like to touch a cotton ball with wet hands.

Statistics homework

Consider the percent change in housing values over a five-year period for regions of the United States, as shown In the following table. Draw a box plot. Percent change In housing values over five years for U. S. Regions. Region Percent Change Percent Change New England Region 54. 5% West 29. 5 North Central 38. 3% pacific Middle Atlantic 35. 3 48. 9 East North Central 33. 6 East South Central 26. 0 Mountain West South Central 32. 0 South Atlantic 34. 2 4. Two events are mutually exclusive, one with probability 0. 38 and the other with arability 0. 54. A. Find the probability that the first event happens given that the second event happens.O b. Find the probability of the union of these two events. 0. 38+0. 54=0. 92 5. Your store is interested in learning more about customers' purchasing patterns and how they relate to the frequency of store visits. The probability that a customer's visit will result In a purchase Is 0. 35. The probability that a customer has been to the store wealth the past month Is 0. 20. Of those who did not buy anything, 12% had been there within the past month. A. Find the probability of making a purchase given that the customer had been to the store within the past month. O. 1 b. What percent of customers are frequent shoppers, defined as making a purchase and having been to the store within the past month? O. 122 6. Keep Cool Pity Ltd manufactures window alarm-conditioners In both a deluxe model and a standard model. An auditor engaged in a compliance audit of the firm is validating the sales account for April. She has collected 200 invoices for the month, some of which were sent to wholesalers and the remainder to retailers. Of the 140 retail invoices, 28 are for the standard model. Of the wholesale invoices, 24 are for the standard model.If the auditor selects one invoice at random, find the following probabilities: a. The Invoice selected Is for the deluxe model. 0. 74 invoice selected is either a wholesale invoice or an invoice for the standard model. 0. 44 d. Is ‘invoice for deluxe model' independent of Wholesale invoice? No Model Wholesale Total Deluxe Standard 24 148 52 Otto 200 Retail 112 28 140 7. The finance director of a hardware wholesaler has asked the accountant to ring all customers five days before their account payments are due, as a means of reducing the number of late payments.

Lululemon Athletica

Last week I read a story about yoga clothes-maker/fashion brand Lululemon and their fairly blatant disregard for any sort of overweight or plus-size consumers. In short, they admitted that selling to women who wear size 12 and smaller is an important business strategy for them, and that it's based on â€Å"design, capacity and operational perspective. † That video seems to only anger some customers more. One wrote in response, â€Å"On one hand you are bashing us for being fat and on the other hand bashing us for maybe trying to do something about it.Should my fat ass' squeeze nto a small size Just so I can say I own a pair†¦ no! † In a video, Chip Wilson, the founder of athletic label Lululemon has apologized for suggesting that women's fat thighs were to blame for a line of yoga pants being recalled for being too sheer lululemon has released the video statement below from CEO Chip Wilson. It's Just shy of a minute, and if you were expecting an apology, this isn't it. The message is confusing, and â€Å"I'm really sad for the repercussions of my actions† seems like an apology to lululemon employees, not the consumers.He closes with a cryptic request o â€Å"stay in the conversation. † What do you think? Are you buying it? So he ended up blaming the customer for the quality control problem within the company, and that's what enraged the customers So, the media spoke to lulu enthusiasts and the customers went right ahead and said we have no interest in buying lulu products any more. Lululemon doesn't have the obligation to manufacture yoga pants but blaming customers for their defective see through pants wasn't cool either. The rules: 1 . A second chance comes after one error, not several. 2. You don't turnNamaste into nasty unless you want a serious time out. 3. Never blame mommy's thighs for anything, ever. Just how bad things can get when you refuse to own up to mistakes and choose to blame and insult others instead. Wilson's eyes appear slightly moist, his voice shaking. He seems to be apologizing to his colleagues and appealing for calm, but fails to address any of his controversial comments specifically. The glitches cost the company millions of dollars, damaged its reputation and depressed its share price. The recall continues to weigh on the company's performance, resulting in late deliveries. Lululemon Athletica Last week I read a story about yoga clothes-maker/fashion brand Lululemon and their fairly blatant disregard for any sort of overweight or plus-size consumers. In short, they admitted that selling to women who wear size 12 and smaller is an important business strategy for them, and that it's based on â€Å"design, capacity and operational perspective. † That video seems to only anger some customers more. One wrote in response, â€Å"On one hand you are bashing us for being fat and on the other hand bashing us for maybe trying to do something about it.Should my fat ass' squeeze nto a small size Just so I can say I own a pair†¦ no! † In a video, Chip Wilson, the founder of athletic label Lululemon has apologized for suggesting that women's fat thighs were to blame for a line of yoga pants being recalled for being too sheer lululemon has released the video statement below from CEO Chip Wilson. It's Just shy of a minute, and if you were expecting an apology, this isn't it. The message is confusing, and â€Å"I'm really sad for the repercussions of my actions† seems like an apology to lululemon employees, not the consumers.He closes with a cryptic request o â€Å"stay in the conversation. † What do you think? Are you buying it? So he ended up blaming the customer for the quality control problem within the company, and that's what enraged the customers So, the media spoke to lulu enthusiasts and the customers went right ahead and said we have no interest in buying lulu products any more. Lululemon doesn't have the obligation to manufacture yoga pants but blaming customers for their defective see through pants wasn't cool either. The rules: 1 . A second chance comes after one error, not several. 2. You don't turnNamaste into nasty unless you want a serious time out. 3. Never blame mommy's thighs for anything, ever. Just how bad things can get when you refuse to own up to mistakes and choose to blame and insult others instead. Wilson's eyes appear slightly moist, his voice shaking. He seems to be apologizing to his colleagues and appealing for calm, but fails to address any of his controversial comments specifically. The glitches cost the company millions of dollars, damaged its reputation and depressed its share price. The recall continues to weigh on the company's performance, resulting in late deliveries.

International Movie Revenues: Determinants and Impact of the Financial Crisis

Institute of Economic Studies Faculty of Social Sciences Charles University in Prague Empirical Project Assignment — Econometrics II Due on Friday, 13 January 2012, 11. 00 International movie revenues: determinants and impact of the financial crisis Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Table of Contents Abstract Keywords Introduction Literature survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data analysis variables used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion References primary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . secondary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . data sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix Descriptive statistics for the dependent variables model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Residuals versus ? tted values plot . . . . . Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity . model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Residuals versus ? tted values plot . . . . . . Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity . The correlation matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 4 6 6 6 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 10 11 11 12 13 13 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 1 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Abstract This empirical project examines the determinants of international box o? ce revenues for movies produced in United States during 2006 – 2010. Our sample consists of 424 ? lms released in this period. We also test the hypothesis if the world ? nancial crisis had any signi? can t impact on the international box o? ce revenues. Keywords the ? ancial crisis, movie international box o? ce revenue, movies produced in the United States, budget, rating, Academy Awards, Introduction When choosing a topic of our empirical paper we were considering di? erent suggestions. As we both are pretty much interested in movies we ? nally decided to exit a viewer seat for a while and perform an empirical study on the movie industry. While being newcommers in sophisticated movie data analysis, we needed ? rst to get acquainted with important theoretical concepts and empirical papers concerning this topic. Literature survey When going down the history, [Litman, 1983] was the ? st who has attempted to predict the ? nancial success of ? lms. He has performed a multiple regression and found a clear evidence that various independent variables have a signi? cant and serious in? uence on the ? nal success of a movie. Litemans work has been gradually getting developed, [Faber & Oâ₠¬â„¢Guinn, 1984] tested the in? uence of ? lm advertising. They proved, that movie critics and word-of-mouth are less important then movie previews and excerpts when explaininng movie succes after going on public. [Eliashberg & Shugan, 1997] explored the impact of restricted-rating labeled movies on their box o? e performance. [Terry, Butler & De’Armond, 2004] analysed the determinants of movie video rental revenue, ? nding Academy Award nominations as the dominant factor. [King, 2007] followed their research and used U. S. movie data to ? nd the connection between the criticism and box o? ce earnings†¦ Many other authors has extended the initial work of [Litman, 1983], but none of them has focused on the key factors of the international box o? ce revenues as we planned to. So we ? nally decided to use [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] as our primary source. Their object of interest is very much similar to our resarch.Therefore we studied their metodology the most and we u se their results in the analytical part as a primary resource of comparison. Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 2 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Data We got quickly stucked realising that the strong majority of movie data on the internet are not free available. It was quite a surprise because there are many movie-oriented sites with seemingly endless data access. But when there is a need of more profound, well structured and complete set of random data everything gets little bit tricky.After hours of searching, we luckily got to a 30 days free access to this kind of databases [opusdata. com] and got the core data for our analysis. Then we wanted to add some interesting or usefull variables just as the movie rating or the number of AcademyAwards to complete our dataset. It has been done using well known and free accessed databases [imdb. com], [numbers. com] and [boxo? cemojo. com]. Thanks to our literature survey we discovered a model which we have thought would be interesting to test on di? erent or new data. The most interesting would be to test it on our domestic data but these are quite di? ult to obtain (as explained before). Anyway, it would be possible to get data for the highest grossing ? lms but that would violate the assumption of random sample. Therefore we decided to use data from U. S. and Canada which we considered the most likely to obtain. We also wanted to test whether the ? nancial crisis have had an impact on movie box o? ce revenues and whether the world ? nancial crisis made people less likely to go to the cinema. Model We considered several models and in the end we used two models. The ? rst one is just the same as the one used in paper [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010], but it is slightly modi? d by using di? erent data plus setting the crisis variable. We considered it as a dummy variable, which was 1 if the movie was released during crisis (2008-2009), otherwise it is equal to zer o. As it was proposed before, this model has been used as a comparison to the original model [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] wihle we wanted to test whether their inference holds up with slightly di? erent and newer data. In the second model we tried to use a slightly di? erent approach. We used a time series model with year dummies and we also used all the variables which we obtained and were statistically signi? ant. Our ? rst model is basic linear regression with cross-sectional data. Our data are a random sample thanks to [opusdata. com] query which was capable of selecting a random sample of movies. We have tested all the variables for multicollinearity with the correlation matrix and there is no proof for multicollinearity in our used variables. The only high collinearity is between domestic and budget variables, which is about 0. 75. After running the regressions we have used the Breusch-Pagan test for heteroscedasticity and the chi squared was really high therefore showing s igns of strong heteroscedasticity.Even after looking at the graph of residuals against ? tted values it was clear that the heteroscedasticity is present. Therefore we had to run the regressions with the heteroscedasticity robust errors. We therefore tested in both models for presence of these: †¢ the variables which have an impact on movie international box revenues †¢ any signi? cant impact of ? nancial crisis on these revenues Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 3 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Data analysis Here we list all the used variables in both models and their a description. ariables used academy awards . . . . . . . . . number of Academy Awards a ? lm earned action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in action genre animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in animation production method budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the estimated pr oduction and promotion cost of a movie comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in comedy genre crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dummy variable for movies released during crisis domestic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . omestic box o? ce earnings horror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in horror genre international . . . . . . . . . . . . international box o? ce earnings kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies for children rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . average user rating from the [imdb. com] source ratingR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is a categorical variable for movies with a restricted rating romantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in romantic genre sequel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies derived from a previously released ? lm y06 ? y10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dummy vari able for movies released in a year The list of variables is followed by both model equations and reggression table comparism, while model 1 and model 2 mean the original [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] model and our new model respectivelly. model 1 international = ? 0 + ? 1 domestic + ? 2 action + ? 3 kids + ? 4 ratingR+ + ? 5 sequel + ? 6 rating + ? 7 academy awards + ? 8 budget + ? 9 crisis model 2 international = + + ? 0 + ? 1 academy awards + ? 2 budget + ? 3 domestic + ? 4 sequel + ? horror + ? 6 romantic + ? 7 comedy + ? 8 action + ? 9 ratingR + ? 10 animation + ? 11 y06 + ? 12 y07 + ? 13 y08 + ? 14 y09 Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 4 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Table 1: Model comparison model 1 domestic action kids rating R sequel rating academy awards budget crisis horror romantic comedy animation y 06 y 07 y 08 y 09 Constant Observations t statistics in parentheses ? model 2 1. 025 (13. 31) -18. 56? (-2. 29) 1 . 028 (12. 70) -13. 43 (-1. 79) 48. 33? (2. 10) 5. 922 (1. 52) 26. 91? (2. 06) 0. 309 (1. 42) 6. 978? (2. 33) 0. 68 (5. 48) -5. 320 (-1. 01) 9. 259? (2. 36) 28. 74? (2. 16) 7. 097 (2. 59) 0. 508 (4. 73) -9. 867? (-2. 23) 13. 41 (1. 79) -17. 77 (-3. 31) 52. 02 (2. 87) -7. 962 (-1. 24) 1. 182 (0. 17) -6. 748 (-1. 01) -11. 79 (-1. 30) -43. 25 (-3. 05) 424 -15. 11? (-2. 41) 424 p < 0. 05, p < 0. 01, p < 0. 001 Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 5 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Results model 1 After running the ? rst regression we get quite similar results as [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010], so their inference holds up even under our data.The similar results we get are that one dollar in revenues in US makes $1. 02 in international revenues, therefore succesful movie in US is likely to be similarly succesful in international theatres, if movie is a sequel it adds to revenues about $26 mil. , every academy award adds about $7 mil. and every additional dollar spent on budget adds about $0. 57 so there is about 57% return on budget. We also have similarly insigni? cant variables which are whether is movie rated as restricted and how great or poorly is movie rated by critics or other people.That means that international audience is not in? uenced by age restrictions and critical movie ratings. When we look at our and theirs results regarding the genres then we get quite di? erent results. They say that when a movie is of an action genre then it adds about $26 mil. whereas we obtained results that revenues for an action movie should be lower about $13 mil. and our result for children movies is two times larger and it says that a children movie should make about $48 mil. more. It could be explained that movie genre preferences shifted in the last two years.But more likely explanation is the di? erence in our data in labeling the movies. In our data we have had more detailed labeling and movies which they had labe led as action movies, we had labeled adventure movies etc. Therefore the strictly action movie genre is not so probable to make money as it would seem. Action movies are usually of low quality and many of them could be labeled as B-movies which usually are not very likely to have high revenues. The children movies could be getting more popular and taking children to the movies could be getting more usual thing.Our last and new variable is the crisis dummy which is not signi? cant and therefore we have no proof that the ? nancial crisis had any e? ect on movie revenues. Our model has quite high R2 which is about 0. 83, that is even higher then [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] have. But the main reason behind this high R2 is that most of the variation in data is explained by US revenues. If we regress international revenues on domestic alone we still get high R2 which is about 0. 59. model 2 In our time series model we get quite similar results as in the ? rst one. We have there ? e ne w variables which are genres comedy, romantic and horror, animation dummy, which tells us whether the movie is animated or not and year dummies. Our model implies that when a movie is a comedy it will make about $17 mil. less in revenues, when horror about $10 mil. less, when romantic about $13 mil. more and when animated it will add about $52 mil to its revenues. The restricted rating is now also statistically signi? cant and it should add to the revenues about $9 mil. which is quite unexpected. Y ear dummies are statistically non-signi? cant and even when we test them for joint signi? ance they are jointly non-signi? cant. Therefore even in this model there appears no reason to believe that the ? nancial crisis or even year makes di? erence in the movie revenues. Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 6 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Conclusion The inferences from our models are quite like we expected. We expected that people ar e more likely to go to cinema to see movies that had won academy awards, that were succesful in U. S. theatres and that are some kind of sequel to previous succesful movies. The resulting e? cts of di? erent movie genres could be quite puzzling but these e? ects depend highly on quality of the movies released these years and on the mood and taste of current society. If we had had larger sample with data from many years then it is possible that we would have seen trends in the di? erent movie genres. The insigni? cance of the ? nancial crisis on movie revenues was also likely because the severity of the crisis and impact on regular citizen has not been so large that it would in? uence his attendence of movie theatres. Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 7 of 14International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Reference primary [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] Terry, Neil, John W. Cooley, & Miles Zachary (2010). The Determinants of Foreign Box O? ce Reven ue for English Language Movies. Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies, 2 (1), 117-127. secondary [Eliashberg & Shugan, 1997] Eliashberg, Jehoshua & Steven M. Shugan (1997). Film Critics: In? uencers or Predictors? Journal of Marketing, 61, 68-78. [Faber & O’Guinn, 1984] Faber, Ronald & Thomas O’Guinn (1984). E? ect of Media Advertising and Other Sources on Movie Selection.Journalism Quarterly, 61 (summer), 371-377. [King, 2007] King, Timothy (2007). Does ? lm criticism a? ect box o? ce earnings? Evidence from movies released in the U. S. in 2003. Journal of Cultural Economics, 31, 171-186. [Litman, 1983] Litman, Barry R. (1983). Predicting Success of Theatrical Movies: An Empirical Study. Journal of Popular Culture, 16 (spring), 159-175. [Ravid, 1999] Ravid, S. Abraham (1999). Information, Blockbusters, and Stars: A Study of the Film Industry. Journal of Business, 72 (4), 463-492. [Terry, Butler & De’Armond, 2004] Terry, Neil, Michael Butler & D e’Arno De’Armond (2004).The Economic Impact of Movie Critics on Box O? ce Performance. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 8 (1), page 61-73. data sources [opusdata. com] Opus data – movie data through a query interface. 30-days free trial. http://www. opusdata. com/ [imdb. com] The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The biggest, best, most award-winning movie site on the planet. http://www. imdb. com [numbers. com] The numbers. Box o? ce data, movies stars, idle speculation. http://www. the-numbers. com [boxo? cemojo. com] Box o? ce mojo. Movie web site with the most comprehensive box o? ce database on the Internet. ttp://www. boxofficemojo. com Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 8 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Appendix Descriptive statistics for the dependent variables Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 9 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis model 1 Regr ession of the original model published in [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 10 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Residuals versus ? tted values plotBreusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 11 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis model 2 Regression of our model Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 12 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Residuals versus ? tted values plot Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 13 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis The correlation matrix Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 14 of 14 International Movie Revenues: Determinants and Impact of the Financial Crisis Institute of Economic Studies Faculty of Social Sciences Charles University in Prague Empirical Project Assignment — Econometrics II Due on Friday, 13 January 2012, 11. 00 International movie revenues: determinants and impact of the financial crisis Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Table of Contents Abstract Keywords Introduction Literature survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data analysis variables used . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion References primary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . secondary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . data sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix Descriptive statistics for the dependent variables model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Residuals versus ? tted values plot . . . . . Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity . model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Residuals versus ? tted values plot . . . . . . Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity . The correlation matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 4 6 6 6 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 10 11 11 12 13 13 14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 1 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Abstract This empirical project examines the determinants of international box o? ce revenues for movies produced in United States during 2006 – 2010. Our sample consists of 424 ? lms released in this period. We also test the hypothesis if the world ? nancial crisis had any signi? can t impact on the international box o? ce revenues. Keywords the ? ancial crisis, movie international box o? ce revenue, movies produced in the United States, budget, rating, Academy Awards, Introduction When choosing a topic of our empirical paper we were considering di? erent suggestions. As we both are pretty much interested in movies we ? nally decided to exit a viewer seat for a while and perform an empirical study on the movie industry. While being newcommers in sophisticated movie data analysis, we needed ? rst to get acquainted with important theoretical concepts and empirical papers concerning this topic. Literature survey When going down the history, [Litman, 1983] was the ? st who has attempted to predict the ? nancial success of ? lms. He has performed a multiple regression and found a clear evidence that various independent variables have a signi? cant and serious in? uence on the ? nal success of a movie. Litemans work has been gradually getting developed, [Faber & Oâ₠¬â„¢Guinn, 1984] tested the in? uence of ? lm advertising. They proved, that movie critics and word-of-mouth are less important then movie previews and excerpts when explaininng movie succes after going on public. [Eliashberg & Shugan, 1997] explored the impact of restricted-rating labeled movies on their box o? e performance. [Terry, Butler & De’Armond, 2004] analysed the determinants of movie video rental revenue, ? nding Academy Award nominations as the dominant factor. [King, 2007] followed their research and used U. S. movie data to ? nd the connection between the criticism and box o? ce earnings†¦ Many other authors has extended the initial work of [Litman, 1983], but none of them has focused on the key factors of the international box o? ce revenues as we planned to. So we ? nally decided to use [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] as our primary source. Their object of interest is very much similar to our resarch.Therefore we studied their metodology the most and we u se their results in the analytical part as a primary resource of comparison. Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 2 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Data We got quickly stucked realising that the strong majority of movie data on the internet are not free available. It was quite a surprise because there are many movie-oriented sites with seemingly endless data access. But when there is a need of more profound, well structured and complete set of random data everything gets little bit tricky.After hours of searching, we luckily got to a 30 days free access to this kind of databases [opusdata. com] and got the core data for our analysis. Then we wanted to add some interesting or usefull variables just as the movie rating or the number of AcademyAwards to complete our dataset. It has been done using well known and free accessed databases [imdb. com], [numbers. com] and [boxo? cemojo. com]. Thanks to our literature survey we discovered a model which we have thought would be interesting to test on di? erent or new data. The most interesting would be to test it on our domestic data but these are quite di? ult to obtain (as explained before). Anyway, it would be possible to get data for the highest grossing ? lms but that would violate the assumption of random sample. Therefore we decided to use data from U. S. and Canada which we considered the most likely to obtain. We also wanted to test whether the ? nancial crisis have had an impact on movie box o? ce revenues and whether the world ? nancial crisis made people less likely to go to the cinema. Model We considered several models and in the end we used two models. The ? rst one is just the same as the one used in paper [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010], but it is slightly modi? d by using di? erent data plus setting the crisis variable. We considered it as a dummy variable, which was 1 if the movie was released during crisis (2008-2009), otherwise it is equal to zer o. As it was proposed before, this model has been used as a comparison to the original model [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] wihle we wanted to test whether their inference holds up with slightly di? erent and newer data. In the second model we tried to use a slightly di? erent approach. We used a time series model with year dummies and we also used all the variables which we obtained and were statistically signi? ant. Our ? rst model is basic linear regression with cross-sectional data. Our data are a random sample thanks to [opusdata. com] query which was capable of selecting a random sample of movies. We have tested all the variables for multicollinearity with the correlation matrix and there is no proof for multicollinearity in our used variables. The only high collinearity is between domestic and budget variables, which is about 0. 75. After running the regressions we have used the Breusch-Pagan test for heteroscedasticity and the chi squared was really high therefore showing s igns of strong heteroscedasticity.Even after looking at the graph of residuals against ? tted values it was clear that the heteroscedasticity is present. Therefore we had to run the regressions with the heteroscedasticity robust errors. We therefore tested in both models for presence of these: †¢ the variables which have an impact on movie international box revenues †¢ any signi? cant impact of ? nancial crisis on these revenues Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 3 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Data analysis Here we list all the used variables in both models and their a description. ariables used academy awards . . . . . . . . . number of Academy Awards a ? lm earned action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in action genre animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in animation production method budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the estimated pr oduction and promotion cost of a movie comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in comedy genre crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dummy variable for movies released during crisis domestic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . omestic box o? ce earnings horror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in horror genre international . . . . . . . . . . . . international box o? ce earnings kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies for children rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . average user rating from the [imdb. com] source ratingR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is a categorical variable for movies with a restricted rating romantic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies in romantic genre sequel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . categorical variable for movies derived from a previously released ? lm y06 ? y10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dummy vari able for movies released in a year The list of variables is followed by both model equations and reggression table comparism, while model 1 and model 2 mean the original [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] model and our new model respectivelly. model 1 international = ? 0 + ? 1 domestic + ? 2 action + ? 3 kids + ? 4 ratingR+ + ? 5 sequel + ? 6 rating + ? 7 academy awards + ? 8 budget + ? 9 crisis model 2 international = + + ? 0 + ? 1 academy awards + ? 2 budget + ? 3 domestic + ? 4 sequel + ? horror + ? 6 romantic + ? 7 comedy + ? 8 action + ? 9 ratingR + ? 10 animation + ? 11 y06 + ? 12 y07 + ? 13 y08 + ? 14 y09 Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 4 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Table 1: Model comparison model 1 domestic action kids rating R sequel rating academy awards budget crisis horror romantic comedy animation y 06 y 07 y 08 y 09 Constant Observations t statistics in parentheses ? model 2 1. 025 (13. 31) -18. 56? (-2. 29) 1 . 028 (12. 70) -13. 43 (-1. 79) 48. 33? (2. 10) 5. 922 (1. 52) 26. 91? (2. 06) 0. 309 (1. 42) 6. 978? (2. 33) 0. 68 (5. 48) -5. 320 (-1. 01) 9. 259? (2. 36) 28. 74? (2. 16) 7. 097 (2. 59) 0. 508 (4. 73) -9. 867? (-2. 23) 13. 41 (1. 79) -17. 77 (-3. 31) 52. 02 (2. 87) -7. 962 (-1. 24) 1. 182 (0. 17) -6. 748 (-1. 01) -11. 79 (-1. 30) -43. 25 (-3. 05) 424 -15. 11? (-2. 41) 424 p < 0. 05, p < 0. 01, p < 0. 001 Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 5 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Results model 1 After running the ? rst regression we get quite similar results as [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010], so their inference holds up even under our data.The similar results we get are that one dollar in revenues in US makes $1. 02 in international revenues, therefore succesful movie in US is likely to be similarly succesful in international theatres, if movie is a sequel it adds to revenues about $26 mil. , every academy award adds about $7 mil. and every additional dollar spent on budget adds about $0. 57 so there is about 57% return on budget. We also have similarly insigni? cant variables which are whether is movie rated as restricted and how great or poorly is movie rated by critics or other people.That means that international audience is not in? uenced by age restrictions and critical movie ratings. When we look at our and theirs results regarding the genres then we get quite di? erent results. They say that when a movie is of an action genre then it adds about $26 mil. whereas we obtained results that revenues for an action movie should be lower about $13 mil. and our result for children movies is two times larger and it says that a children movie should make about $48 mil. more. It could be explained that movie genre preferences shifted in the last two years.But more likely explanation is the di? erence in our data in labeling the movies. In our data we have had more detailed labeling and movies which they had labe led as action movies, we had labeled adventure movies etc. Therefore the strictly action movie genre is not so probable to make money as it would seem. Action movies are usually of low quality and many of them could be labeled as B-movies which usually are not very likely to have high revenues. The children movies could be getting more popular and taking children to the movies could be getting more usual thing.Our last and new variable is the crisis dummy which is not signi? cant and therefore we have no proof that the ? nancial crisis had any e? ect on movie revenues. Our model has quite high R2 which is about 0. 83, that is even higher then [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] have. But the main reason behind this high R2 is that most of the variation in data is explained by US revenues. If we regress international revenues on domestic alone we still get high R2 which is about 0. 59. model 2 In our time series model we get quite similar results as in the ? rst one. We have there ? e ne w variables which are genres comedy, romantic and horror, animation dummy, which tells us whether the movie is animated or not and year dummies. Our model implies that when a movie is a comedy it will make about $17 mil. less in revenues, when horror about $10 mil. less, when romantic about $13 mil. more and when animated it will add about $52 mil to its revenues. The restricted rating is now also statistically signi? cant and it should add to the revenues about $9 mil. which is quite unexpected. Y ear dummies are statistically non-signi? cant and even when we test them for joint signi? ance they are jointly non-signi? cant. Therefore even in this model there appears no reason to believe that the ? nancial crisis or even year makes di? erence in the movie revenues. Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 6 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Conclusion The inferences from our models are quite like we expected. We expected that people ar e more likely to go to cinema to see movies that had won academy awards, that were succesful in U. S. theatres and that are some kind of sequel to previous succesful movies. The resulting e? cts of di? erent movie genres could be quite puzzling but these e? ects depend highly on quality of the movies released these years and on the mood and taste of current society. If we had had larger sample with data from many years then it is possible that we would have seen trends in the di? erent movie genres. The insigni? cance of the ? nancial crisis on movie revenues was also likely because the severity of the crisis and impact on regular citizen has not been so large that it would in? uence his attendence of movie theatres. Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 7 of 14International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Reference primary [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] Terry, Neil, John W. Cooley, & Miles Zachary (2010). The Determinants of Foreign Box O? ce Reven ue for English Language Movies. Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies, 2 (1), 117-127. secondary [Eliashberg & Shugan, 1997] Eliashberg, Jehoshua & Steven M. Shugan (1997). Film Critics: In? uencers or Predictors? Journal of Marketing, 61, 68-78. [Faber & O’Guinn, 1984] Faber, Ronald & Thomas O’Guinn (1984). E? ect of Media Advertising and Other Sources on Movie Selection.Journalism Quarterly, 61 (summer), 371-377. [King, 2007] King, Timothy (2007). Does ? lm criticism a? ect box o? ce earnings? Evidence from movies released in the U. S. in 2003. Journal of Cultural Economics, 31, 171-186. [Litman, 1983] Litman, Barry R. (1983). Predicting Success of Theatrical Movies: An Empirical Study. Journal of Popular Culture, 16 (spring), 159-175. [Ravid, 1999] Ravid, S. Abraham (1999). Information, Blockbusters, and Stars: A Study of the Film Industry. Journal of Business, 72 (4), 463-492. [Terry, Butler & De’Armond, 2004] Terry, Neil, Michael Butler & D e’Arno De’Armond (2004).The Economic Impact of Movie Critics on Box O? ce Performance. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 8 (1), page 61-73. data sources [opusdata. com] Opus data – movie data through a query interface. 30-days free trial. http://www. opusdata. com/ [imdb. com] The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). The biggest, best, most award-winning movie site on the planet. http://www. imdb. com [numbers. com] The numbers. Box o? ce data, movies stars, idle speculation. http://www. the-numbers. com [boxo? cemojo. com] Box o? ce mojo. Movie web site with the most comprehensive box o? ce database on the Internet. ttp://www. boxofficemojo. com Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 8 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Appendix Descriptive statistics for the dependent variables Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 9 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis model 1 Regr ession of the original model published in [Terry, Cooley & Zachary, 2010] Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 10 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Residuals versus ? tted values plotBreusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 11 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis model 2 Regression of our model Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 12 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis Residuals versus ? tted values plot Breusch-Pagan test for heteroskedasticity Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 13 of 14 International movie revenues : Determinants and impact of the ? nancial crisis The correlation matrix Marek Kre? mer, Jan Mati? ka c c Page 14 of 14