This succinct and practical reference/text presents statistical reasoning and interpretational techniques to aid in the decision making process when faced with engineering problems-emphasizing the use of spreadsheet simulations and decision trees as important tools in the practical application of decision making analyses and models to improve real-world engineering operations. Offers new insight into the realities of high-stakes engineering decision making in the investigative and corporate sectors by optimizing engineering decision variables to maximize payoff. What Every Engineer Should Know About DECISION MAKING UNDER UNCERTAINTY presents new paradigms for engineering decision making covers customer-focused engineering decision making details spreadsheet simulation methods to help avoid bias and habitual behavior discusses continuous quality improvement versus business reengineering processes illustrates information value in decision making during uncertainty analyzes capital budgeting discusses the accuracy of sample estimates presents practical case studies from various engineering disciplines and shows how to tailor the illustrated methods to different applications Predicting outcomes of engineering decisions through regression analysis, this reference will benefit mechanical, civil, electrical and electronics, materials, chemical, mineral, cost, quality, reliability, industrial, product development, safety, forensic, and consulting engineers; architects; engineering managers; and project and program managers; and is an essential text for upper-level undergraduate, graduate, and continuing-education students in these disciplines.

This book presents a novel decision-making support system based on paraconsistent annotated evidential logic, which directly handles imprecise, incomplete and contradictory data. The authors offer insights into areas such as engineering and biomedicine, as well as related fields. Decision analysis is useful in making choices when the consequences of actions are uncertain, like in business administration, where it assists in making investment decisions, and in health care, Decision analysis is also valuable when the possible actions may lead to conflicting consequences. A fundamental tenet of decision analysis is that even though the available information is incomplete, a decision must be made. Thus, analyses often contain assumptions about or estimates of missing data. The contribution that this method can provide to professionals and companies has significant relevance in terms of the impact of information systems on productivity and quality of the companies; the lack of training companies for proper planning and management of information systems; and the need for interdisciplinary treatment of several sectors of almost all related scientific areas. This book is a valuable resource for professionals seeking a competitive edge in their performance.

Containing contributions from well-respected international researchers into decision making, the book examines the nature of the psychological processes underlying decision making, and addresses a range of topics including the role of emotions, coping with uncertainty, time pressure, and confidence in decisions. "Decision Making" first places the process approach to decision research in a historical and theoretical context, providing a critical evaluation of its principal research methods. The contributors then consider various influences upon decision making, risk and uncertainty; a final section examines time pressure, the effects of past decisions, and post-decision processes. Decision making is regarded as an interaction between the decision maker, problem and context, and is thus placed in a social environment.

This book provides a hands-on introduction to Machine Learning (ML) from a multidisciplinary perspective that does not require a background in data science or computer science. It explains ML using simple language and a straightforward approach guided by real-world examples in areas such as health informatics, information technology, and business analytics. The book will help readers understand the various key algorithms, major software tools, and their applications. Moreover, through examples from the healthcare and business analytics fields, it demonstrates how and when ML can help them make better decisions in their disciplines. The book is chiefly intended for undergraduate and graduate students who are taking an introductory course in machine learning. It will also benefit data analysts and anyone interested in learning ML approaches.

Writing is essential to learning. One cannot be educated and yet unable to communicate one's ideas in written form. But, learning to write can occur only through a process of cultivation requiring intellectual discipline. As with any set of complex skills, there are fundamentals of writing that must be internalized and then applied using one's thinking. This guide focuses on the most important of those fundamentals.

A prominent scholar once noted that lotteries in politics and society-to break vote ties, assign students to schools, draft people into the military, select juries-are "at first thought absurd, and at second thought obvious." Lotteries have been part of politics since the Greek and Roman times, and they are used frequently in American politics today. When there is a two-to-two vote tie for prospective school board members, officials will often resort to flipping a coin (as happened recently in California). And in military drafts, the conventional wisdom is that random selection is far more just than non-lottery drafts. Northerners rioted against the perceived injustice of the non-random draft during the Civil War, and Americans by and large believed that student deferments subverted the justice of the draft during the Vietnam War. Over the years, people who study and practice politics have devoted considerable effort to thinking about the legitimacy of lotteries and whether they are just or not under certain circumstances. Yet they have really only focused on lotteries on a case-by-case basis, and no one has ever developed a substantial and comprehensive political theory of lotteries. In The Luck of the Draw, Peter Stone does just that. Examining the wide range of arguments for and against lotteries, Stone comes to the startling conclusion that lotteries have only one crucial effect relevant to decision-making: they have the "sanitizing effect" of preventing decisions from being made on the basis of reasons. Stone readily admits that this rationale might sound absurd to us, but contends that in many instances it is vital for people to make decisions without any reasoned rationale to compel them. Sometimes, justice can only be carried out through random selection-a fundamental principle of the practice of lottery that Stone comes to call "The Just Lottery Rule." By developing innovative ways for interpreting this pervasive form of political practice, Stone provides us with a foundation for understanding how to best make use of lottery when making political decisions both large and small.

How do educators build High Reliability Schools (HRS) and boost academic achievement? By implementing interdependent systems of operation and performance assessment for student-centered learning. A critical commitment to becoming an HRS is the PLC at Work(TM) process of collaborative learning and teaching. This user-friendly teaching resource focuses on: (1) a safe and collaborative culture, (2) effective teaching in every classroom, (3) a guaranteed and viable curriculum, (4) standards-referenced reporting of student progress (standards-based grading), and (5) a competency-based system. Marzano, Warrick, Rains, and DuFour will help you: Increase school effectiveness through a focus on student-centered learning and the implementation of research-based leading indicators of operation. Monitor effective practices through the use of lagging indicators and quick data sources. Explore the three big ideas associated with the PLC at Work(TM) process to implement student-centered learning, collaborative teaching strategies, and data-driven instruction. Engage in periodic reflection on effective school leadership and instructional coaching practices. Understand how to balance and achieve school and district goals using data to improve students' academic achievement and college- and career-readiness skills. Contents: Foreword Introduction Chapter 1: High Reliability Organizations and School Leadership Chapter 2: Safe and Collaborative Culture Chapter 3: Effective Teaching in Every Classroom Chapter 4: Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum Chapter 5: Standards-Referenced Reporting Chapter 6: Competency-Based Education Chapter 7: District Leadership in High Reliability Schools Appendix References and Resources Index

The quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our thinking. The quality of our thinking, in turn, is determined by the quality of our questions, for questions are the engine, the driving force behind thinking. Without questions, we have nothing to think about. Without essential questions, we often fail to focus our thinking on the significant and substantive. When we ask essential questions, we deal with what is necessary, relevant, and indispensable to a matter at hand. We recognize what is at the heart of the matter. Our thinking is grounded and disciplined. We are ready to learn. We are intellectually able to find our way about. To be successful in life, one needs to ask essential questions: essential questions when reading, writing, and speaking; when shopping, working, and parenting; when forming friendships, choosing life-partners, and interacting with the mass media and the Internet. Yet few people are masters of the art of asking essential questions. Most have never thought about why some questions are crucial and others peripheral. Essential questions are rarely studied in school. They are rarely modeled at home. Most people question according to their psychological associations. Their questions are haphazard and scattered. The ideas we provide are useful only to the extent that they are employed daily to ask essential questions. Practice in asking essential questions eventually leads to the habit of asking essential questions. But we can never practice asking essential questions if we have no conception of them. This mini-guide is a starting place for understanding concepts that, when applied, lead to essential questions. We introduce essential questions as indispensable intellectual tools. We focus on principles essential to formulating, analyzing, assessing, and settling primary questions. You will notice that our categories of question types are not exclusive. There is a great deal of overlap

This book presents a consistent methodology for making decisions under uncertain conditions, as is almost always the case. Tools such as value of information and value of flexibility are explored as a means to make more complex and nuanced decisions. The book develops the complete formalism for assessing the value of acquiring information with two novel approaches. Firstly, it integrates the fuzzy characteristics of data, and secondly develops a methodology for assessing data acquisition actions that optimize the value of projects from a holistic perspective. The book also discusses the formalism for including flexibility in the project decision assessment. Practical examples of oil- and gas-related decision problems are included and discussed to facilitate the learning process. This book provides valuable advice and case studies applicable to engineers, researchers, and graduate students, particularly in the oil and gas industry and pharmaceutic industry.

Richard Pettigrew offers an extended investigation into a particular way of justifying the rational principles that govern our credences (or degrees of belief). The main principles that he justifies are the central tenets of Bayesian epistemology, though many other related principles are discussed along the way. These are: Probabilism, the claims that credences should obey the laws of probability; the Principal Principle, which says how credences in hypotheses about the objective chances should relate to credences in other propositions; the Principle of Indifference, which says that, in the absence of evidence, we should distribute our credences equally over all possibilities we entertain; and Conditionalization, the Bayesian account of how we should plan to respond when we receive new evidence. Ultimately, then, this book is a study in the foundations of Bayesianism. To justify these principles, Pettigrew looks to decision theory. He treats an agent's credences as if they were a choice she makes between different options, gives an account of the purely epistemic utility enjoyed by different sets of credences, and then appeals to the principles of decision theory to show that, when epistemic utility is measured in this way, the credences that violate the principles listed above are ruled out as irrational. The account of epistemic utility set out here is the veritist's: the sole fundamental source of epistemic utility for credences is their accuracy. Thus, Pettigrew conducts an investigation in the version of epistemic utility theory known as accuracy-first epistemology. The book can also be read as an extended reply on behalf of the veritist to the evidentialist's objection that veritism cannot account for certain evidential principles of credal rationality, such as the Principal Principle, the Principle of Indifference, and Conditionalization.

Wallowing in Mediocrity: Or Rising Above the Dismal State of Education provides a comprehensive comparative look at educational programs in several key countries across the globe. The myriad advantages of these countries' programs are counterpoised to the many fault lines in education as practiced in the United States. To offset these problematic areas, this book takes a critical look at how the United States could rectify the many problems associated with its system of education, especially concerning inefficient and unsustainable practices at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Examples include the lack of universally-accepted parameters for admission to most schools of higher education; the lack of exit exams from both secondary and post-secondary schools; the illogical repetition of propaedeutic courses the first two years at the university; the misdirection of community colleges, forcing them to make up for the shortfall of too many students not prepared for acceptance to a 4 year university; the shenanigans associated with for-profit schools, which, for the most part, prey on veterans and those seeking a better job through education; and the almost preposterous system in place for students to finance their education. Most of these shortcomings concerning the American educational system are not part and parcel of systems across the globe. For one, the Bologna Process unified degrees among participants, providing a logical means for member states to collaborate and, most important, to provide students the opportunity to transfer from one institution to another without penalty. Several countries do not charge any tuition whatsoever; others have established a fair and logical means for repayment.

In the decades following World War II, the science of decision-making moved from the periphery to the center of transatlantic thought. The Decisionist Imagination explores how "decisionism" emerged from its origins in prewar political theory to become an object of intense social scientific inquiry in the new intellectual and institutional landscapes of the postwar era. By bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, this volume illuminates how theories of decision shaped numerous techno-scientific aspects of modern governance-helping to explain, in short, how we arrived at where we are today.