10 Famous American Authors and Their Best Essays †Pro-Academic-Writers.com

10 Famous American Authors and Their Best Essays What comes to your mind when you try to recall famous American writers? The country has introduced several unique genres and interesting topics to the world, stressing the important role of revolution in the history of every nation. We have developed the list of 10 famous American authors, including their famous essays and lessons learned from their writing. GET YOUR PERFECT ESSAY NOW Writing is not a piece of cake. If you have troubles with your school or college homework, do not hesitate to contact professional academic writers online! How to Create Powerful Essays: 10 Famous American Writers List! Charles D’Ambrosio Charles D’ambrosio does not specialize in novels or fiction/non-fiction books; he always positioned himself as a short story essay writer. It was his Portland State University's MFA Program in Creative Writing,  which helped one of the famous American writers develop his essential reading writing skills. Oberlin College was his second place of education. D’Ambrosio never gives up studying English Language, Philosophy (discover how a Philosophy degree may be helpful), History, Literature, and other related humanitarian disciplines. If you want to become popular one day to see your essays published in The New Yorker, Orphans, The Stranger, or A Public Space, observe the works written by Charles D’Ambrosio to absorb valuable lessons. We would recommend starting from â€Å"Documents† and â€Å"Loitering† essays. Lessons learned: Loss and hardships are worth writing about. When you focus on things that make people sad (hate, injustice, depression, war, death), the readers would appreciate your short story/essay for stressing the value of life. Point to the importance of past events in the life of every human. Do not hesitate to share your personal notes, essays, and documents (in this context, documents mean diaries and other important outtakes, which reveals the nature of their owners. Do you need more hints? Ask these expert writers from the field of academic, creative, business writing to help by creating an inspiring literary piece! Benjamin Franklin Every second American President was a great artist. In most cases, the representatives of the US government dedicate their free time to sharing American values, customs, traditions through writing manuals. Franklin is not an exception. One of the most famous American authors is a known historical figure – a Co-Founding Father of the United States depicted on $100 banknote. His activities cover a broad range of different fields, including literature, publishing, politics, science, inventions, civic activity, diplomacy, etc. Benjamin Franklin belongs to the category of the famous American writers with democratic views. He did not release many novels or books; Franklin has established a lot of short stories and essays dedicated to the free, independent land. Since 1776, the moods of the American authors changed to more optimistic and confident. The main purpose of Franklin in his essays was to utilize economic benefits and flee oppressive governmental regimes. Do you need the most distinguished works of Franklin? They contain â€Å"Advice on the Choice of a Mistress†,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams,† and â€Å"The Temple of Learning,  The Whistle.† Lessons learned: Democratic sensibility remains a popular thing to discuss. The American nation is an exceptional ethnic group made of every nationality in the world, all possible customs traditions, and based on the equality, justice, and freedom. The Constitution of the United States is a powerful weapon to discuss. The topic of the changing generations will never lose its relevance. Cynthia Ozick After his death, another representative of the most famous American writers living today, David Foster Wallace, was disqualified because he committed suicide and his latest works were full of pessimistic notes. He has listed local authors who could continue his activity. Wallace mentioned Cynthia Ozick among the most budding and promising contemporary writers, capable of continuing his contribution to the literature world. Along with Cormac McCarthy Don DeLillo, the woman is the US best living fiction story author. By today, Cynthia Ozick has published seven essay collections. She created several works of short fiction and inspiring novels. She does not have a certain field of interest. Ozick likes talking about love, hate, life, death, the American nation, future, and other things preferred by the modern famous American writers, but she covers different topics, without limiting her interests. There is one subject we can frequently notice in her stories. Ozick loves the idea of the Jewish American lens. The best essays of all time include her â€Å"Portrait of the  Essay as a Warm Body,† â€Å"The Shawl,† and Envy† on the list, and students can learn the following lessons: The tendency to favor the Jewish American lens instead of attacking it. Creating a short story with the next characteristics: self-consciousness, sharpness, wittiness, clarity, and life wisdom. Don’t be afraid to seem smarter than people around! If you need more examples of great essays to study, the best place to visit is the online writing service, which offers FREE paper samples. Roger Ebert Another interesting man from the list of the famous American authors. Roger Ebert has an ability to criticize other written works and movies fairly brought his world recognition. Ebert specialized on movie directing, cinematography, history of the world and US in particular, journalism, and screenwriting. He worked in Chicago Sun-Times until 2013. Roger Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. If you have a passion for writing argumentative, persuasive, or critical essays/book reviews, you should find and read the best critical works of Roger Ebert. Watch the popular TV show â€Å"Sneak Previews†. Roger Ebert is different from many contemporary American fellow-writers who focus on the dark sides of our world, often praising the depressive moods. Ebert prefers courage, erudition, humor, and humanism. This enthusiastic writer is capable of reflecting the matter of life death in the most optimistic light. To understand the writer better, read three critical essay collections. The names are â€Å"The Great Movies†Ã‚  (2002),  Ã¢â‚¬Å"The Great Movies II†Ã‚  (2005), and  Ã¢â‚¬Å"The Great Movies III†Ã‚  (2010); pay attention to his most popular work titled â€Å"Go Gentle into That Good Night.† Lessons learned: Never give up; there is always a way out! Ebert’s works full of life optimism can be described in a known phrase said by John Keating in â€Å"Dead Poets Society:† â€Å"Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.† It is important to write more critical essays to become interesting to people. Watch more movie to have several inspiring ideas to discuss in your literary works. Try to cover the never-ending topic of death from the different perspective. Never stop praising this life by pointing to its main values! Zadie Smith Hey, how about including a female essay writer from the United Kingdom on our promising list of the contemporary short story novel authors? We believe the woman who appears in the list of 20 most influential people in British culture deserves to appear on our list of famous writers, even though she is not American. British culture had affected the United States for centuries. Her primary achievement, which predetermined Smith’s further faith as an author, was the degree from the New York University’s Creative Writing Program. She became the professor of the University. In the United States, the novel written by Zadie Smith, â€Å"White Teeth,† joined the Time magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels created since 1923. Smith is a brave author. She may condemn things like disrespect of literature, treatment of art in the modern world, and criticize authors who do not fulfill their literary obligations. This extraordinary female author prefers writing novels. Her most famous essay is â€Å"Fail Better,† full of the following lessons: Never generalize things with the help of â€Å"all† or similar words – narrow down, take a part of the topic to make up a specific subject. There is no such thing as a perfect novel. A writing style is the result of the unique personality of each writer + the way this person views and understands the world. Avoid clichà © – breathe a new life into your writing! HELP WITH MY WRITING F. Scott Fitzgerald â€Å"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.† F. Scott Fitzgerald, â€Å"The Great Gatsby† Who else but The Great Gatsby, a good old fellow who tried to show the world the importance of love, life, and family values, and who was rejected for being too humanistic? Fitzgerald knew how important love is from his personal experience. â€Å"The Great Gatsby† appeared in the result of the feelings one of the most famous American writers shared with the love of his life, Zelda. Fitzgerald blamed the American people for underestimating the beauty of this life. He tried to recall the significant values in his novels, short stories essays. In Hollywood, Fitzgerald did his best. He developed scenarios scripts for the future films. His popular â€Å"Gatsby† has been filmed several times, having the brilliant modern version starring Leo DiCaprio as the last successful attempt to interpret the way Fitzgerald viewed our world. Not all of his works were good; â€Å"Tender Is the Night† did not obtain wide recognition. The author became overwhelmed and depressed during the last years of life. The most known list of his essays includes "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz," "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," and "The Camel's Back." Lessons Learned: Love is the only thing, which matters in the life of each person. American society is full of snobs who underestimate the role of love, undervalue the significance of friendship, and do not appreciate this life the way they should. Money has no value when you are lonely. Edward Hoagland Another man who wrote several famous essays is Edward Hoagland. He was born in 1932; this enthusiastic young man from New York revealed his passion for reading writing since the early age. He stated he would like to become a world’s known novelist to his parents. The two preferred genres were a novel and a short story; the two favorite topics he discussed were traveling nature. Hoagland did not want to cover dirty, filthy topics, so he decided to focus on describing the beauty of nature instead of discussing the way society changes and its never-ending conflicts. The list of top famous essays written by Edward Hoagland includes â€Å"The Big Cats,† â€Å"The Soul of the Tiger,† â€Å"Why This Extra Violence,† and â€Å"A World Worth Saving and Christmas Observed.† Lessons learned: Focus on depicting the beauty of nature. If you write about the human qualities, develop one short story dedicated to two strongest feelings that make us humans – love friendship. The world is full of violence; avoid going deep into this topic to give people hope. Ernest Hemingway The list of the most famous American authors of all time has a name of Ernest Hemingway no matter which genre of literature is discussed. Teachers do not find his works suitable for the school/college program. Spend some time on reading his top works to learn valuable life writing lessons from this distinguished man with the rich history. He was curious about studying the way people behave under pressure, the way their moods change. Children will misunderstand the words of the author. It is better to start reading his literary works at the teen or grown-up age to understand Hemingway’s main ideas. Hemingway did not focus on the complicated, strange topics. He wrote about the things men love (e.g., bullfighting, fishing, hunting, and friendship). Papa Hemingway’s list of famous essays is made of the following titles: â€Å"The Old Man and the Sea,† â€Å"The Sun Also Rises,† and â€Å"For Whom the Bell Tolls.† Lessons learned: Symbolism is the best way to interpret your philosophical thoughts. Try establishing such features as the lean writing style, original sense of humor, and try showing the life based on your personal experience. Avoid literary allusions. Virginia Woolf A little is known about this mysterious female writer. She is another female author on the list coming from the United Kingdom. Woolf is the foremost modernist of the XX century + a pioneer in the stream of consciousness (a narrative tool). The girl visited the King’s College London and became the early reformer of women’s higher education. The top short stories created by this known female essayist involve â€Å"Death of the Moth,† â€Å"Eclipse of the Heart,† and â€Å"Devil in False Colors.† You may have watched a film â€Å"Hours† based on Woolf’s story. Her essays teach several lessons. Write how important the life is through the lens of survival evanescence. Apply simple comparisons to make the writing style lucid. Do not hesitate to change from the optimistic voice to melancholic moods in the middle of your essay; the life is black-and-white, and it makes no sense sharing only positive/negative moments. Edgar Allan Poe Who loves detective stories? During the romantic period in the US history literature, a world’s known Edgar Allan Poe appeared with his mystic stories. The man was a writer, editor, and literary critic in one face. Poe is listed among the cofounders developers of the short story essay genres, providing innovative ideas such as making stories gloomy, dark, and mysterious. He developed many popular detective/science fiction works. Poe focused on the things like spirit, organic development, the significance of art, and motivation/inspiration. Start reading his â€Å"Philosophy of Furniture,† â€Å"The Raven,† or â€Å"The Black Cat† to be acquainted with his works. Lessons learned: There is nothing scary about being gloomy in your writing. People like reading about things they find dark and mysterious; it makes them value life more and start believing in the things they can’t see with the naked eye. How to Become the Author of World’s Famous Essays? We hope this list of the best American authors, their top preferred literary works, and the lessons shared between the lines of their stories would help with your writing career. Do you have any questions? If you need a professional writing help, the best thing you can do is to place an order with the time-tested and trusted US/UK academic service, which offers affordable prices!

What Mobile Phone Do Consumers Prefer

What Mobile Phone Do Consumers Prefer Free Online Research Papers The purpose of the present study is to identify the association of age group regarding preference of a particular cellular service. In the era of globalization and information society, the fundamental role of telecommunication technologies cannot be underestimated. Pakistan’s mobile Industry is a dynamic and highly competitive market. Pakistan has the highest mobile penetration rate in the region. Cellular service subscribers are at 91.44 million growing @ 0.5%, and Cellular Mobile Density is 56.80 as of March 2009. As a result of unstable political situation and weakening macroeconomic indicators the growth in cellular segment has considerably slowed down. Thus, it is of growing concern to look at consumer buying decision process and shed light on the factors that finally determine consumer choices between different cellular services brands. For the purpose of our study five cellular service companies in Pakistan namely Mobilink, Ufone, Warid, Telenor, and Zong are selected. The findings provide that preference of a particular cellular service by a consumer is not independent of age group and it is concluded that there is some association exist i.e. preference of a particular cellular service by a consumer is dependent on age group. Literature Review: The last decade of the 20th century has been witness to remarkable technological developments in the area of wireless communication technologies. Telecommunication Industry has one of the most turbulent market environments today due to increased competition and change. Thus, it is of growing concern to look at consumer buying decision process and shed light on the factors that finally determine consumer choices between different cellular services brands. (Karjaluoto, H., Karvonen, J., Kesti M., Koivumki T., Manninen M., Pakola J., Ristola A., Salo J., 2005) argue that the choice of a mobile phone is a subjective choice situation, there are some general factors that seem to guide the choices. They also found that while technical problems are the basic reason to change mobile phone among students; price, brand, interface, and properties are the most influential factors affecting the actual choice between brands. (Ondrus, J. and Pigneur, Y., 2007) presents a study that unveils the technological and organizational preferences of various industries towards mobile payment developments in Switzerland. They argue that card based solutions are still preferred to mobile phone based solutions from an industry point of view. (Siau, K. and Shen, Z., 2003) examines issues in providing services via wireless technologies, i.e. mobile services. They discuss the challenges facing by mobile services, such as changes in business strategies, investment risk, limitations in mobile devices, networking problems, infrastructure constraints, security concerns, and user distrust in mobile applications. The authors also discuss the research issues, such as killer applications, usability, user interfaces, mobile access to databases, and agent technologies. (Leppaniemi, M. and Karjaluoto, H. 2005) presents the study which investigates the consumers willingness to accept mobile advertising. First, they study the factors that influence the acceptance of mobile advertising from both industrys and consumers point of view. Second, based on a review of previous studies in the field, the authors propose a conceptual model of consumers willingness to accept mobile advertising. Their findings provide several conceptual and managerial insights into the role of mobile advertising today and in the near future. Pakistan’s Experience with Telecommunication Industry: In the era of globalization and information society, the fundamental role of telecommunication technologies cannot be underestimated. Pakistan’s mobile Industry is a dynamic and highly competitive market. Cellular mobile telecommunication services – An Overview: Cellular mobile telecommunication services were introduced in Pakistan in 1990 and now Pakistan stands as one of the largest telecom subscriber with the cheapest calling rates in the region. Our Industry already has LL (Local Loop), WLL (Wireless Local Loop), LDI (Long distance and International), and ISP (Internet Service Provider) players and WiMax; 3G cellular systems are expected be a part of this Industry soon. Market Players: The major players of Pakistani Cellular mobile telecommunication service Industry are Mobilink by Orascom, Ufone by PTCL, Telenor from Norway, Warid by Abu Dhabi group and Zong by China Mobile. According to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Mobile subscribers are 91.44 million as on March 2009. Mobilink continues to lead the market with 28.24 million subscribers having (30.88%) market share, followed by Telenor with 19.98 million (21.86%), Ufone 19.61 million (21.45%), Warid 17.37 million (19%), Zong 5.98 million (6.54%) and Instaphone 0.25 million (0.27%). At present Mobilink has the largest coverage network across the nation, covering more than 10,000 locations. Telenor claims it is now acquiring more than 20,000 new subscribers every day, whereas Ufone claims to cover over 4536 key destinations. Current Scenario: (Rafiq, A., 2008) argues that a tough competition is expected as in the present scenario existing players are having a price war to attract existing and new users. Mostly the audience is subjected to deceptive advertisements and misleading offers which directly impacts consumer purchase decision. Objective: The aim of this study is to identify the association of age group regarding preference of a particular cellular service. We would like to investigate that whether the preference of users for a particular cellular service is dependent on different age group or not. Hypothesis: Ho: Preference of a particular cellular service is independent of age group. H1: Preference of a particular cellular service is not independent of age group. Methodology: For this research the Survey method is used. The data is collected through questionnaire technique in which responses from 200 respondents were collected through 19 questions which include general information as well as factors which motivates the people to prefer a particular cellular service. All the data was provided by the teacher to perform analysis as per the course requirement. Analysis: The analysis was performed by the using the software called SPSS and the variable and test used are mentioned below: Variables under study: Following are the variables which are used in the analysis. 1. Cellular service 2. Age group Both above-mentioned variables are categorical. Cellular service with 6 levels Age group with 2 levels Test Statistic: The Chi square test is used to test the hypothesis in this research. Chi-square is a statistical test which is commonly used to test the; Goodness of Fit Test Test of Attributes/ test of association/ test of independence The Chi – Square distribution is a positively skewed distribution therefore we use one tail critical region for the test. It is a positively skewed distribution lie between zero and upper value. Numerical and categorical variables are used and the critical region will always come in the right side. It is denoted by ?2 and its degree of freedom is n-1, where n = Number of categories Goodness of Fit Test: Chi-Square goodness of fit test is used when the distribution is non-normal and the sample size is less than 30, so the chi-square goodness of fit test determines whether the distribution follows uniform distribution or not. Test of Attributes / Association / Independence: It is used to measure the relationship between two attributes. In test of attributes we check the hypothesis that, is there any dependency exist amongst the attributes or not. For our research we are testing the association between cellular service and age group. Out Put: Summary: The N value 200 shows the total number of respondents or observations. 100% shows that all 200 respondents have responded and there is no missing value or observation. Summary: Cross tabulation is used to examine the variation in the categorical data, it is a cross measuring analysis. Above we are cross examine the Different age groups and Cellular Service used by the consumers. We take Cellular Service used in the column and Different age groups of the consumers in row, and we have totaled 200 observations. From the above-mentioned Cross tabulation table we can see that; The most number of people in the sample of 200 respondents are using Mobilink cellular service. Out of total two hundred respondents 90 are using Mobilink. Of which 38 users are in the age group of between 18 to 24 while 52 users are in the age group of between 25 to 30. Similarly if we analyze the Telenor and Ufone cellular services we can see that although Ufone cellular service users in total = 50 which are more then Telenor cellular service users in total = 38. But Telenor is more successful in capturing the consumers having age group between 18 to 24 with 28 users while Ufone has keep up with only 24 users. The results also show that Warid has a very low consumer base with overall users are only 22 with 10 users are in age group between 18 to 24 while 12 users are in the age group between 25 to 30. Analysis: The above table gives the test results for the chi-square test for independence or association. The first row labeled Pearson Chi-Square shows that the value of ?2 is 10.966 with 3 degree of freedom. The two-tailed p-value is shown as 0.012, which is less than 0.05, so we can reject our null hypothesis which means that the attributes are not independent and there is some dependency exists between attributes and concludes that the preference of a particular cellular service is not independent of age group. Conclusion: The test results are statistically significant at 5% level of significance and the data provide sufficient evidence to conclude that the preference of a particular cellular service is not independent of age group, and we are almost 100% confident on our decision and the rejection of the null hypothesis. Recommendation: From the above-mentioned Pie Chart it is evident that Mobilink cellular service has the largest market share and is most preferred by consumers or cellular service users of both age groups (i.e. between 18 to 24 and between 25 to 30) (see Table-2). The results of our analysis also show that preference of a particular cellular service by a consumer is not independent of age group which means that there is some association exist i.e. preference of a particular cellular service by a consumer is dependent on age group. In this respect we recommend that Cellular Service companies like Mobilink (market leader) and Ufone, Telenor and Warid (followers) should understand and closely monitor the changing attitudes of different age groups and formulate their marketing strategies accordingly. Reference: Karjaluoto, H., Karvonen, J., Kesti M., Koivumki T., Manninen M., Pakola J., Ristola A., Salo J., (2005) â€Å"Factors Affecting Consumer Choice of Mobile Phones: Two Studies from Finland†, Journal of Euro marketing, Vol. 14(3), The Haworth Press, Inc. Ondrus J. and Pigneur Y., (2007) â€Å"Cross industry Preferences for Mobile Payments Development in Switzerland†, Electronic Markets The International Journal, Vol.17, No.2. Siau, K. and Shen, Z., (2003) â€Å"Mobile communications and mobile services†, International Journal of Mobile Communications, Volume 1, Number 3. Leppaniemi, M. and Karjaluoto, H. (2005) â€Å"Factors influencing consumers willingness to accept mobile advertising: a conceptual model†, International Journal of Mobile Communications, Volume 3, Number 3, p. 197-213 Rafiq, A. (2008) â€Å"The telecommunication industry Growth prospects†, Pakistan Research Telecom Sector update, Khojas Capital Management (Pvt.) Ltd Mobile Cellular Services: at pta.gov.pk retrieved on: [Tuesday, May 12, 2009] Research Papers on What Mobile Phone Do Consumers PreferBionic Assembly System: A New Concept of SelfMarketing of Lifeboy Soap A Unilever ProductInfluences of Socio-Economic Status of Married MalesPETSTEL analysis of IndiaOpen Architechture a white paperThe Project Managment Office SystemIncorporating Risk and Uncertainty Factor in CapitalResearch Process Part OneMoral and Ethical Issues in Hiring New EmployeesDefinition of Export Quotas

Answer the following macroeconomic questions Assignment

Answer the following macroeconomic questions - Assignment Example It is important for management to understand the various factors like risk management, risk diversification, market supply demand etc before making important investments. One of the major factors which led the mortgage crisis in the U.S. is the failure of the regulations in the U.S. mortgage and derivative markets. Actually, the regulations contribute to prudent lending or encourage excessive risk taking by increasing the confidence level of investors in the system which is highly controlled and regulated. However, the old regulations have become ineffective in the current global financial system and there is a need to bring change in the old regulations by introducing new ones. The incompetent and dishonest players are harming the consumers and mortgage broking sector and very few barriers have been made to keep them out of this industry. Therefore, through regulations, the competent and incompetent participants need to be distinguished so that a strong and stable system could be bu ilt. This will surely encourage the investors to take risks and increase their confidence in the industry.

Hills like White Elephants Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Hills like White Elephants - Coursework Example The setting is in Spain, and the fact that the man speaks Spanish puts him in a decidedly advantageous position compared to the girl. Jig has to rely on the American while they are in Spain; or, it is likely, she had to rely on him in all the places they visited. Their relationship is one of imbalance and inequality. Jig is dependent on the American, and obviously she feels compelled to abide by his decision to abort their child, even though the man places the moral responsibility upon the woman (he pushes insistently on the operation being simple, but purports to go through the operation only if she wished). Hemingway meant for the setting to contribute to the central theme, which is Jig’s dilemma of undergoing the abortion. The symbolism is clear that the setting contrasted the barrenness of â€Å"this side† with the fruitfulness of â€Å"the other side.† The station is midway between the two. These are evident in the lines: â€Å"Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.† The setting is a symbolism for Jig being midway in deciding whether to have the abortion (barrenness) or having her child (fruitfulness). The shadow of the cloud moving across the field of grain shows that she may have considered that deciding to keep her child has become a dim prospect, in the face of the American’s insistence that the abortion is â€Å"an awfully simple operation.† The hills appearing like white elephants symbolizes the child they would have, which is now far off in the distance. The white elephant in Thailand is both blessing and curse – blessing because it is rare and considered valuable, curse because it may not be put to work and thus is fed and cared for

Developing and Non-Developing Economies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Developing and Non-Developing Economies - Essay Example Kenya is emerging as a strong economy both in Africa and also in the world, due toseveral factors. First, the geographical location of the country is favorable, since the country serves as the gateway to the East African region, with a total population of 140 million consumers (Ho, n.p.). Coupled with the free trade agreement in the East African and the South African region that the country has entered into, it has access to a total of 600 million consumer markets, making the country account for 40% of the total East African GDP (Ho, n.p.). Further the country has surprised the world with its technological capabilities and innovations that have seen the major global technology giants such as Facebook, IBM, Google and General Electric enter the country looking for technological investment opportunities (Ho, n.p.). The technological innovativeness of the country has been contributed by its highly educated English speaking youthful workforce that constitutes 65% of the country’s total population. On the other hand, Malawi is ranked the poorest and the least developing economy in Africa and also among the poorest countries in the world, according to the latest World Bank rankings. This is occasioned by the fact that Malawi has a very high unemployment rate, with a very small economy having a GDP per capita of $267. The situation has also been worsened by the overreliance of the Malawian population on government to offer jobs and subsidies for all goods, while remaining less innovative businesswise (Yakobe, n.p.)

Comparing Leadership Styles | Effect of Leadership Styles of Business

Comparing Leadership Styles | Effect of Leadership Styles of Business Any organization can not survive without a sound management system. The management and how to manage the company from an overall aspect is mainly established by a core person in this company and he/she is called the leader of this company. It is wide accepted that no company can be successfully without effective management and without a competent leader. Therefore, the leader of the company plays a vital role for the organization. Different leaders with different natures and characteristics may bring up completely different management theory to the company, which will also decide the developing model of the company and determine the success of failure of the company. The leadership style will greatly decide the companys development for the future. It is a careful decision who to be hired or selected to be in charge of the company and guide the strategy of the company. Therefore, in order to analyze how the role of leader plays in an organization, two different leaders have been selec ted in this report. The objective of this report is to analyze leadership styles by selecting two leaders from two companies. One is Carly Fiorina with HP Company, and the other one is Michael T. Duke with Wal-Mart Company. These two different leaders are different in their leadership in many ways and the differences between their leadership approaches are demonsrtated in the critical analysis section. In the end the conclusion of the effectvie leadership is made based on the findings of the two cases. 2.0 Introduction As to the development of a company, the importance of the leader is obvious to the whole company. With reference to each successful enterprise, it is obvious that there is an outstanding leader guiding an excellent team, such as Jack Welch with GM Corporation America and Chinese Zhang Ruimin, leader of Haier Company and so on. Therefore, whether a company will be successful or not is greatly connected with who is leading the company. As the leadership topic is mentioned, this report is going to focus on the leadership in an organization. In this report, two famous leaders have been chosen and discussed from HP and Wal-Mart Companies in terms of their ways of leading the company and the major characteristics they have which may affect their ways regarding managing the team and the company. Based on the findings of the case study, comparison and contrast of both leaders with respect to their managing styles and leader style will be analyzed. At last, reasonable and information-based co nclusion related to leader management will be drawn. 3.0 Leader 1 Carly Fiorina with HP Company Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. which is HP company for short and established in United States in 1939, is a company specialized in developing and manufacturing computers, printers, software and other digital fields. HPs Corporate Objectives which was written by co-founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard have guided the company for decades. The objective is It is necessary that people work together in unison toward common objectives and avoid working at cross purposes at all levels if the ultimate in efficiency and achievement is to be obtained. HP Company has been developed very fast in technology areas and expanded to the worldwide. In anywhere you can see HP logo and its products in everywhere. HPs development and success can not be real without excellent leaders. Here Carly Fiorina as one of the excellent and competent CEOs is selected to analyze for the purpose of explaining the relation between a leader and company success. Carly Fiorina was born in 1954 and graduated from Stanford University. In 1999, she was presented as the CEO of HP company and ended as the CEO role in 2005. Carly Fiorina is a very competent leader. Before she took the CEO position, HP Company was encountering years of depressing time, especially in the years of 1997 and 1998, the company faced the unprecedented difficulties and the sales income was far behind its expectations. Fiorina started her career in business as a receptionist, but later she jumped very fast to the positions of management and leadership. Fiorina is also a very excellent communicator and her speech is convincing the same as the Ex-president Bill Clinton. Carly Fiorina was the first female CEO in HPs history (Carlys biography, 2010). During her stay with role of CEO in HP, she has developed comprehensive skills in leadership which include planning, delegating, decision making, coordinating and communication. She brought a lot of changes to HP and turned the HP ways into the Carly way (Forsyth, 2006). Carly Fiorina is characterized with board decision making and brave in taking actions. When made the merger with Compaq Company with a 25 billion USD in 2001, it was a broad step for taking. In terms of leadership style, Carly Fiorina could be determined as authoritarian in controlling and regulating policy, procedures within the company. Besides this leadership feature, she should also be concluded to be equipped with democratic leadership style (Sprenger, 2010). Carly Fiorinas leadership styles are most cultivated by her personalities. She is very diligent and hard working at the same time she is also good at selling. She stands very calm in any situation and is good at calculating and thinking. She is very dedicated to the pursuit of goals that she thinks that it is well-intentioned. She is very persistent with things. In Fiorinas view, every person is capable of far more than they realize. Fiorina holds this view in her life and applies it into her management. She is capable of digging and encouraging her teams ability. Some of her team workers feel very thankful to her, because she gave the chance to them to realize who they were and what they could do and where the y could reach in the future. With this characteristic, it is good to gather people and make them work hard to achieve the goal. Fiorina likes to engage activities personally which is another factor contributing to her successful leadership (Sadler, 2003). After she took the position as CEO, she started her trips to anywhere the HP covers and to investigate the problems and potentials there. She is very responsible for her position. She is persistent in doing the right things, for the right reasons and the right way, most of the time; it will turn out all right. When she was with HP Company, she will never give up what she thinks is a right choice or decision and she will lead her team to go for it. Thanks to Carly Fiorinas effective leading approach, HP Company has grown and developed very fast and achieved with the most important merger in HP history. During the period she took the leadership in HP Company, HP expanded very quickly to the world and its market share has grown. Compared with the developing and expanding and profit making situation before Fiorina as CEO, HP has made great success in terms of both self-development and its fast expansion to overseas markets. However, although Carly Fiorinas leadership has brought HP benefits in a range of areas, she was still not welcomed by all people within the company. Her leading behavior was not always appreciated by HP board (House and Price, 2009). Carly Fiorina holds her direction was right for HPs development for long term; however, other HP board worried about the direction of HP under Fiorinas leading. And also because Fiorina is a female leader, to some extent, most males are not really accepted the fact of being manage d or controlled by a female. Plus Fiorina is a relatively authorized person with respect to management. Therefore, in 2005, Carly Fiorina finished her CEO life within HP Company. 4.0 Leader 2 Michael T. Duke with Wal-Mart Company Wal-Mart as one of the worlds largest retailers has developed and expanded very fast. It has now expanded to many other countries and has occupied a relatively large retail market share there. Wal-Mart has thousands of products where consumers can find their various needs. The company now is continuing to broaden and accelerate its global efforts on sustainable development and responsible sourcing and opportunities. Until April this year, Wal-Mart has established businesses in 14 countries besides its businesses in United States. There are more than 4000 stores running around the world. Compared with the finance statement in 2009, the sales incomes in overseas markets have broken through 100 billion US dollars (Charles, 2009). Mike Duke is the president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. As CEO, Mike leads a strong management team that is focused on keeping Walmarts mission of saving people money so they can live better relevant to every customer, every day. Mike Duke joined Walmart in 1995. Mike has taken various positions in Wal-Mart before he reached his current position as the leader of Wal-Mart. He has led the divisions of logistics, distribution and administration. He was capable and active in developing and executing corporate strategy. Duke is a low-key person which is very consistent with Wal-Mart style. He does not like to flaunt. The only leisure hobby of Duke is to play Golf. Duke is the fifth CEO of Wal-Mart. He is appointed by the previous CEO, Scot Lee. Lee appreciates Duke very much. Some people comment that Lee and Duke are very similar in their personalities and management. The most distinguished difference is Duke is better at social relations with people. From Dukes colleagues view, he is a considerate person as loyal to friendship and helpful to others. As a senior manager of Wal-Mart, Duke is very clear when to start a fight for Wal-Mart business growth. One retail analyst has commented that Duke is very ambitious. The development strategy held by Duke is that Wal-Mart must occupy the leading position in the retail industry. Therefore, Duke made decision to withdraw Wal-Mart from Germany and South Korea where the sales are not desirable. And also he decided to hold 95.1% of stake from the previous 50.9% of its subsidiary Japanese company Seiyu Department Store. At that time, every one warned that it might be a very high-risk decision, but Duke believed that as long as Wal-Mart gets more control stake, it will make things different. As a successful leader, you must be competent in the areas you exert in. The competence areas such as envision, involving and goal-oriented. Duke is experienced in the management field. Before he joined Wal-Mart, he was an executive at Federated and May Department Stores for 23 years. And before he took CEO role, he was engaged in various sectors in Wal-Mart, which enabled him the wide knowledge about the whole operation in the Wal-Mart. And also from the change perspective speaking, leaders should have the ability of responding to and managing the external changes. When Duke saw Wal-Marts poor sales in Germany, he made the broad step to withdraw from the Germany market. Personal characteristics and behaviors also contribute to be a successful leader or not. Duke gives his colleagues an impression of friendly and kind and easy-going, which does not mean he is not strict or decisive. On the contrary, Duke has the talent of gathering his employees and also has a clear direction where the company shall develop into. Duke made commitment that in order to make up the bad sales in American local market; Wal-Mart would fasten its pace in expanding to other potential overseas markets. He said to his employees that the anticipation is to attract more consumers and set up more stores world widely and accelerate Wal-Mart global expansion. For Wal-Mart, Dukes presence as the CEO is like change blood to Wal-Mart. Firstly, it was the very right time for Duke to take the position after the depressing year in 2008. Secondly, due the change of the political leader in United States, Wal-Mart had to choose a different CEO the represent a different Wal-Mart to the whole America Society. Because the political environment sounds not advantageous to Wal-Mart since Democratic Party won the election. In the previous years , Wal-Mart was supporting the Republic Party with its 85% amount of political capital went to Republican and just 15% left to Democratic Party. Duke may have to transfer its political policy within the organization for seeking a better development in its local market. Therefore, Despite Dukes leadership style will probably bring a bright future to Wal-Mart; Duke will definitely meet new challenges in this position. Under Dukes leading, because Duke is paying highly attention to his employee staff, it will be easy to gather and establish competent team. Also due to Dukes rich experience working the stores Company and his working experience in various sector of Wal-Mart for years, Duke has a very comprehensive view over the overall company developing. However, everything has its two sides. Although Wal-Mart may have the potential of grasping a good chance to develop and expand under Dukes leading approach, there are also potential challenges or disadvantages posed to its development. 5.0 Critical analysis-comparison and contrast between the two leaders with respect to their leadership styles 5.1 Differences in personal characteristics Carly Fiorinas characteristics: Somebody was born to a competitive, such as Carly. She has extraordinary passion, confidence, courage and endurance. In order to achieve goals that can endure hard to imagine the enormous pressures and challenges, even troubled, still self-improvement and never give up. Carly is an insightful strategist, led by her customers and makes the management of excited and kind, but also to carry out different tactics to ensure the smooth realization of goals. Carlys distinct personality made her very difficult to achieve harmonious, peaceful way to deal with things, so she makes many people feel hurt. While she was taking the reforms of HP Company, she also encountered difficulties in the realization of the merger plan. Carlys extraordinary will and unyielding personalities support her to become successful in her career. But at the same time, most of her colleagues do not agree with her in terms of the direction of the development etc. Thus in 2005, company board has fired her as CEO of HP. Michael T. Dukes personal characteristics Duke is a Georgia man, in his spare time; he and his wife did a lot of charity work. For example, they have been taken care of an orphan until finally found the orphan with an adoptive family. He is a low-key person. This moderate character is very easy to integrate into the Wal-Marts way of treating its employees and Wal-Marts humane enterprise culture. Although Duke has been regarded as a good and kind person in the industry, this does not mean his is not a strict man. Actually his work style of being slightly conservative but strategic is very good and helpful for promoting the smooth development of Wal-Mart. The difference in character between these two leaders is obvious, Carly positive attitude is very positive in work. Her enthusiasm for work is the key to her success in her career. However, being sometimes too tough and persistent and anxious to be successful often cause great resistance to the development. Carly belongs to the authoritarian leadership style. For HP Company during its depressing time before Carly took the CEO position, this passionate characteristic was very helpful for the company. Duke is moderate and communicative; Duke more belongs to the emotional intelligence leader type. He is easy-going and listening to others. He is the type of leader who affects his employees by emotionally. 5.2 Different in their reforming pace as leaders of the companies. Carlys reform of the HP, focused on control of the company, focused on adjusting strategy and simplifying the companys structures. Company just needs to keep useful functional departments. She made HP into four groups, which improved work efficiency a lot. Employees felt the sense of urgency in doing their jobs. Carly emphasizes on efficiency. She firmly believed that if she could correct the mistakes of HP made in the past few years, the company will become strong and competitive again. She led HP to the pursuit of speed and passion, and meanwhile to distinguish HP from other competitors in the characters. During her remodeling process for Hewlett-Packard, other senior managers and ordinary employees did not show their disputes openly, but actually some disagreement was originated. Besides continuing implementing the past successful business strategies, Duke made several marketing strategies aiming to survive from the global financial crisis. These strategies, such as improving consumers shopping experiences, more special products included, are attracting more and more consumers. But compared to HP Company, Wal-Mart reforming is relatively conservative. 5.3 Team organization capability Carly has a remarkable ability to communicate. She is good at communicating with her employee personally. She always travels to visit HP worker in different places. And this communication is very essential for the establishing an effective team. However due to Carlys strict and sometimes tough personalities, it is not very easy for her to establish a loyal team. Especially in the reforming period, most of people do not like changes at the same time, gender is another unfavorable factor contributing to her difficulties in managing an effective team. Many people, especially for male workers, it is very uncomfortable to work under a female manager. In the Dukes eyes, the future of employees is Wal-Marts future. He emphasizes this point to his staff that Wal-Mart will continue to work to build a better life. Duke is very popular and respected by his employees. His attitude towards life and relationship with workers gains support from his employees. So for Duke, he is more capable of organizing an effective team. 6.0 Conclusion In conclusion, leader is the most important figure in an organization. When a person is hired as the leader of a company, he/she becomes the core part of the whole company. The way he/she adopts for leading the company will greatly affect the companys development. The leaders leadership approach is greatly influenced by his/her personal characteristics, her/his competencies and his/her culture values as well. Different leaders to manage a company may turn the company into a completely different one in terms of its developing direction, its company values or culture and so on. In this report, two different leaders with different companies have been introduced and analyzed regarding to their personalities, leadership styles. Through their respective contribution made to their companies, we can conclude that effective leader is very crucial for the development and direction of the company. In the comparing and contrasting part, the two leaders differences with respect to their leadershi p have been addressed and proper reasons have been investigated regarding the differences. The leadership styles can also affected from the organization variables. The leadership style will be affected by the external environmental changes, such as in the case of leader 2. The change of the leadership is to some extent forced by the economic times and political environment changes.

Knowledge Discovery in Databases: An Overview Essay -- Data Mining

Knowledge Discovery in Databases: An Overview Abstract In the past, the term Data Mining was, and still is, used to designate the activity of pulling useful information from databases. Now, this term is recognized to apply but to one activity in a very large process to extract knowledge from opaque databases. The overall process is known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases, (KDD). This process is comprised of many subprocesses which when linked together provide a firm foundation for knowledge acquisition from large databases. Many tools, techniques, and disciplines come together under the umbrella of KDD. Introduction Today, the topic of data mining has much interest in government, business, and research circles. With the growth of computer use within these areas has also come a greater desire to let the computers do the work that used to be done by humans. The problem, nowadays, is that the data that needs to be analyzed has become too large and cumbersome for one person or even teams of people to envision tackling without help from computers. These computers are no longer mere crunchers of numbers but now they find the patterns that the humans used to find. From this growth has arisen a vast body of knowledge concerned with this process of data analysis. As with much other information, the Internet is employed to make available the ever-growing body of information on this topic. Many general sources of information [a,b,c] are now online. These are updated and expanded upon almost a constant basis. The use of the Internet to disseminate and collect information is itself a consideration in this fi eld. The amount of information is expanding at such a rate that old methods of information disposal, such as paper journals and b... ...11) R. Lippman, "An Introduction to Computing with Neural Networks", IEEE ASSP Magazine: 4:2 (1987), pp.4-22. 12) C. Murphy, G. Koehler & H. Fogler, "Artifical Stupidity", The Journal of Portfolio Management: 23:2 (Winter 1997) pp.24-29. 13) J. Quinlan, "Induction of Decision Trees", Machine Learning: 1:1 (1986), pp.81-106. Hyperlinks a) http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~anp/TheDataMine.html b) http://www.gmd.de/ml-archive c) http://info.gte.com/~kdd/ d) http://info.gte.com/~kdd/corporate.html e) http://info.gte.com/~kdd/datasets.html f) http://info.gte.com/~kdd/siftware.html g) http://www.almaden.ibm.com/stss/ h) http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/datamine/ i) http://www-aig.jpl.nasa.gov/kdd95/ j) http://www-aig.jpl.nasa.gov/kdd96/ k) http://www.neuronet.ph.kcl.ac.uk/ l) http://www.ics.uci.edu/AI/ML/Machine-Learning.html

Web Mining Homework

A Recommender System Based On Web Data Mining for Personalized E-learning Jinhua Sun Department of Computer Science and Technology Xiamen University of Technology, XMUT Xiamen, China [email  protected] edu. cn Yanqi Xie Department of Computer Science and Technology Xiamen University of Technology, XMUT Xiamen, China [email  protected] edu. cn Abstract—In this paper, we introduce a web data mining olution to e-learning system to discover hidden patterns strategies from their learners and web data, describe a personalized recommender system that uses web mining techniques for recommending a student which (next) links to visit within an adaptable e-learning system, propose a new framework based on data mining technology for building a Web-page recommender system, and demonstrate how data mining technology can be effectively applied in an e-learning environment.Keywords–Data mining; web log,;e-learning; recommender readily interpreted by the analyst. A virtual e-learnin g framework is proposed, and how to enhance e-learning through web data mining is discussed. II. RELATED WORK I. INTRODUCTION With the rapid development of the World Wide Web, Web data mining has been extensively used in the past for analyzing huge collections of data, and is currently being applied to a variety of domains [1]. In the recent years, e-learning is becoming common practice and widespread in China.With the development of e-Learning, massive amounts of learning courses are available on the e-Learning system. When entering e-Learning System, the learners are unable to know where to begin to learn with various courses. Therefore, learners waste a lot of time on e-Learning system, but don’t get the effective learning result. It is very difficult and time consuming for educators to thoroughly track and assess all the activities performed by all learners.In order to overcome such a problem, the recommender learning system is required. Recommender systems are used on ma ny web sites to help users find interesting items [2], them predict a user's preference and suggest items by analyzing the past preference information of users, e-learning system is applied on the basis of the method. The user’s learning route is given and then provides the relevant learners useful messages through dynamically searching for the appropriate learning profile.This paper recommends learners the studying activities or learning profile through the technology of Web Mining with the purpose of helping they adopt a proper learning profile, we describe a framework that aims at solution to e-learning to discover the hidden insight of learning profile and web data. We demonstrate how data mining technology can be effectively applied in an e-learning environment. The framework we propose takes the results of the data mining process as input, and converts these results into actionable knowledge, by enriching them with information that can beThe route where the learner brow ses through the web pages will be noted down in Web log, carries on the technology of Web mining through Learning Profile and Web log, and analyzes from the materials related to association rule. It can be found the best learning profile from this information. These learning profiles combine with the Agent and put them on the learning website. Furthermore, the Agent recommends the function of learning profiles on learning website. Therefore, the learner will acquire a better learning profile.This chapter briefly illustrates the relevant contents including: e-Learning, Learning Profile, Agent, Web Data mining and Association rule. A. E-learning E-learning is the online delivery of information for purposes of education, training, or knowledge management. In the Information age skills and knowledge need to be continually updated and refreshed to keep up with today’s fastpaced study environment. E-learning is also growing as a delivery method for information in the education fiel d and is becoming a major learning activity. It is a Web-enabled system that makes knowledge accessible to those who need it.They can learn anytime and anywhere. E-learning can be useful both as an environment for facilitating learning at schools and as an environment for efficient and effective corporate training [3]. B. A Glance at Web Data Web usage mining performs mining on web data, particularly data stored in logs managed by the web servers. All accesses to a web site or a web-based application are tracked by the web server in a log containing chronologically ordered transactions indicating that a given URL was requested at a given time from a given machine using a given web client (i. e. browser).As shown in table 1, Web log contains the website â€Å"hit† information, such as visitor’s IP address, date and time, required pages, and status code indicating. The web log raw 978-1-4244-4994-1/09/$25. 00  ©2009 IEEE data is required to be converted into database f ormat, so that data mining algorithms can be applied to it. TABLE I. WEB LOG EXAMPLES Web logs 172. 158. 133. 121 – – [01/Nov/2006:23:46:00 -0800] â€Å"GET /work /assignmnts/midterm-solutions. pdf HTTP/1. 1†³206 29803 2006-12-14 00:23:56 209. 247. 40. 108 – 168. 144. 44. 231 GET /robots. txt – 200 600 119 125 HTTP/1. 0 www. a0598. com ia_archiver – – sefulness and certainty of a rule respectively [5]. Support, as usefulness of a rule, describes the proportion of transactions that contain both items A and B, and confidence, as validity of a rule, describes the proportion of transactions containing item B among the transactions containing item A. The association rules that satisfy user specified minimum support threshold (minSup) and minimum confidence threshold (minCon) are called strong association rules. D. Web Mining for E-learning Learning profile help learner to keep a record of their current knowledge and understanding of e-learn ing and elearning activities.Web mining is the application of data mining techniques to discover meaningful patterns, profiles, and trends from both the content and usage of Web sites. Web usage mining performs mining on web data, particularly data stored in logs managed by the web servers. The web log provides a raw trace of the learners’ navigation and activities on the site. In order to process these log entries and extract valuable patterns that could be used to enhance the learning system or help in the learning evaluation, a significant cleaning and transformation phase needs to take place so as to prepare the information for data mining algorithms [6].Web server log files of current common web servers contain insufficient data upon which to base thorough analysis. The data we use to construct our recommended system is based on association rules. E. Recommendation Using Association Rules One of the best-known examples of data mining in recommender systems is the discove ry of association rules, or item-to-item correlations [7]. Association rules have been used for many years in merchandising, both to analyze patterns of preference across products, and to recommend products to consumers based on other products they have selected.Recommendation using association rules is to predict preference for item k when the user preferred item i and j, by adding confidence of the association rules that have k in the result part and i or j in the condition part [4]. An association rule expresses the relationship that one product is often purchased along with other products. The number of possible association rules grows exponentially with the number of products in a rule, but constraints on confidence and support, combined with algorithms that build association rules with item sets of n items from rules with n-1 item sets, reduce the effective search space.Association rules can form a very compact representation of preference data that may improve efficiency of s torage as well as performance. In its simplest implementation, item-to-item correlation can be used to identify â€Å"matching items† for a single item, such as other clothing items that are commonly purchased with a pair of pants. More powerful systems match an entire set of items, such as those in a customer's shopping cart, to identify appropriate items to recommend. The web data is massive since the visitor’s every click in the website will leave several records in the tables.This also allows the website owner to track visitors’ behavior details and discover valuable patterns. C. Data Mining Techniques The term data mining refers to a broad spectrum of mathematical modeling techniques and software tools that are used to find patterns in data and user these to build models. In this context of recommender applications, the term data mining is used to describe the collection of analysis techniques used to infer recommendation rules or build recommendation model s from large data sets.Recommender systems that incorporate data mining techniques make their recommendations using knowledge learned from the actions and attributes of users. Classical data mining techniques include classification of users, finding associations between different product items or customer behavior, and clustering of users [4]. 1) Clustering Clustering techniques work by identifying groups of consumers who appear to have similar preferences. Once the clusters are created, averaging the opinions of the other consumers in her cluster can be used to make predictions for an individual.Some clustering techniques represent each user with partial participation in several clusters. The prediction is then an average across the clusters, weighted by degree of participation. 2) Classification Classifiers are general computational models for assigning a category to an input. The inputs may be vectors of features for the items being classified or data about relationships among th e items. The category is a domain-specific classification such as malignant/benign for tumor classification, approve/reject for credit requests, or intruder/authorized for security checks.One way to build a recommender system using a classifier is to use information about a product and a customer as the input, and to have the output category represent how strongly to recommend the product to the customer. 3) Association Rules Mining Association rule mining is to search for interesting relationships between items by finding items frequently appeared together in the transaction database. If item B appeared frequently when item A appeared, then an association rule is denoted as A B (if A, then B).The support and confidence are two measures of rule interestingness that reflect III. WEB DATA MINING FRAMEWORK FOR E-COMMERCE RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS A. A Visual Web Log Mining Architecture for Personalized E-learning Recommender System In this section, we present A Visual Web Log Mining Architec ture for e-learning recommender to enable personalized, named V-WebLogMiner, which relies on mining and on visualization of Web Services log data captured in elearning environment. The V-WebLogMiner is such a odel: with the mining technology and analysis of web logs or other records, the system could find learners’ interests and habits. While an old learner is visiting the website, the system will automatically match with the active session and recommend the most relevant hyperlinks what the learner interests. As shown in Figure1, V-WebLogMiner is a multi-layered architecture capable to deal with both Web learner profiles and traditional Web server logs as input data. It maintains three main components: data preprocessing module, Web mining module and recommendation module. ) Web Mining Module The Web mining module discovers valuable knowledge assets from the data repository containing learners' personal data by executes the mining algorithms, tracked data of learners' perfor mance and behavior, automatically identify each learner’s frequently sequential pages and store them to recommend database. When the learner visit the site next time, hyperlinks of those pages will be added so that the learner could directly link to his individual pages being remembered.The major component of Web mining module is Web data mining which acts as a conductor controlling and synchronizing every component within the module. The Web data mining module is also responsible for interfacing with the storage. The learning profile evaluation component provide profiling tool to collect personal data of learner and tracking tool to observe learners' actions including like and dislike information. For personalization applications, we apply rule discovery methods individually to every learner’s data.To discover rules that describe the behavior of individual learner, we use various data mining algorithms, such as Apriori [8] for association rules and CART (Classificatio n and Regression Tress) [9] for classification. 3) Recommendation Module The recommendation module is a recommendations engine; it is in charge of bulk loading data from course database, executing SQL commands against it and provides the list of recommended links to visualization tools.For the recommendation module, recommendations engine is responsible for the synchronizing process indexing and mapping, is a component for storing and searching recommend assets to be used in the learning process. The recommendation engine considers the active learners in conjunction with the recommended database to provide personalized recommendations, it directly related to the personalization on the website and the development of elearning system. The task of the recommendation engine is to determine the type of the learner online and compute recommendations based on the recent actions of that learner.The decision is based on the knowledge attained from the recommended database. The recommender en gine is activated each time that the learner visits a web page. First, if there are clusters in the recommended database, then the engine has to classify the current learner to determine the most likely cluster. We have to communicate with the engine to know the current number of pages visited and average knowledge of the learner. Then, we use the centroid minimum distance method [10] for assigning the learner to the cluster whose centroid is closest to that learner.Finally, we make the recommendation according to the rules in the cluster. So, only the rules of the corresponding cluster are used to match the current web page in order to obtain the current list of recommended links [11]. 4) The Visualization tools Visualization tools should be used to present implicit and useful knowledge from recommendations engine, Web services usage and composition. Data can be viewed at different levels Figure 1. A visual web mining architecture for Personalized E-learning Recommender System ) Da ta Preprocessing Module The data preprocessing module is set of programs used to prepare data for further processing. For instance: extraction, cleaning, transformation and loading. This module uses Web log files and learner profile files to feed the data repository. The data preparation component is used to parse and transform plain ASCII files produced by a Web server to a standard database format. This component is important to make the architecture independent from the Web server supplier. of granularity and abstractions as patrolled coordinate’s graphs [12, 13].This visual model easily shows the interrelationships and dependencies between different components. Interactively, the model can be used to discover sensitivities and to do approximate optimization, etc. B. The Procedure of the Data is Explained As show in figure 1, the beginning learner, that is to say the earliest one, will study in the e-Learning teaching platform. The course materials of Web studying system c ome from the course database. The data of learner’s learning profiles may be recorded in the learner profile files and Web log files.Then next step is to find out the best learning profile from the proceeded data of Web log through web mining to proceed with Association rule and others data mining algorithm. These learning profiles need to be classified—every field has relevant courses and better learning profiles. The recommender engine will offer the list of recommended links when learners study the courses. With the above information and learning profiles, when the future learners study in Web, recommender engine offers related link lists according to recommend database. However, these link lists may not be suitable for all learners.Therefore, after finishing recommendation every time, there are systems of assessing. The learner (n +1) evaluates the learning profiles that are recommended. Because the profiles analyzed by system may not be perfect, if there are adjus tments of evaluation would make the recommendation conform to learners’ asks more. These suggestions can help learners navigate better relevant resources and fast recommend the on-line materials, which help learners to select pertinent learning activities to improve their performance based on on-line behavior of successful learners.IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK There are some possible extensions to this work. Research for analyzing learners’ past studying pattern will enable to detect an appropriate. Furthermore, it will be an interesting research area to effectively judge session boundaries and to improve the efficiency of algorithms for web data mining. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial subsidy provided by the Xiamen Science and Technology Bureau under 3502Z20077023, 3502Z20077021 and YKJ07013R project. REFERENCES [1] [2] D. J. H and, H. Mannila, and P. Smyth.Principles of Data Mining. MIT Press, 2000. J. B. Schafer, J. A. Konstan, and J. Riedl. Recommender systems in ecommerce. In ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, pages 158166, 1999. Liaw, S. & Hung ,H. How Web Technology Can facilitate Learning. Information Systems Management, 2002. Choonho Kim and Juntae Kim, A Recommendation Algorithm Using Multi-Level Association Rules, Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence, p. 524, October 13-17, 2003. J. Han and M. Kamber, Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, Morgan Kaurmann Publishers, 2000 Za ane, O.R. & Luo, J. Towards evaluating learners’ behaviour in a web-based distance learning environment. In Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT01), p. 357– 360, 2001. Sarwar, B. , Karypis, G. , Konstan, J. A. , & Reidl, J. Item-based Collaborative Filtering Recommendation Algorithms. Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 285 – 295, 2001. R. Agrawal et al. , Fast Discovery of Association Rul es, Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, AAAI Press, Menlo Park, Calif. , 1996, chap. 12. L. Breiman et al. Classification and Regression Trees, Wadsworth, Belmont, Calif. , 1984. MacQueen, J. B. Some Methods for classification and Analysis of Multivariate Observations. In Proceedings of of 5-th Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, 1967, pp. 281297. Cristobal Romero, Sebastian Ventura and Jose A. Delgado et al. , Personalized Links Recommendation Based on Data Mining in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems, Creating New Learning Experiences on a Global Scale,2007, pp. 292-306. Inselberg, A. Multidimensionl detective, In IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, 1997, vol. 00, p. 00-110 . Ware, C. Information Visualization: Perception for Design,Morgan Kaufmann, New York, 2000. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] Recommender systems have emerged as powerful tools for helping users find and evaluate items of interest. The research work presente d in this paper makes several contributions to the recommender systems for personalized e-learning. First of all, we propose a new framework based on web data mining technology for building a Web-page recommender system. Additionally, we demonstrate how web data mining technology can be effectively applied in an e-learning environment. [11] [12] [13]

The Deadly Hazard of Avalanches

The Deadly Hazard of Avalanches Avalanches have always occurred in the mountainous regions of the world. With the growth of winter-time recreations, fatalities have been on the rise since the 1950s. Avalanches claim over 150 lives each year worldwide and hundreds more are injured or trapped following an avalanche. Ninety percent of all avalanches occur on moderate slopes with an angle of 30Â ° to 45Â ° (snow tends not to accumulate on steeper slopes). Avalanches occur when the gravity pushing the collection of snow at the top of the slope is greater than the strength of the snow itself. A change in temperature, a loud noise, or vibrations are all that are necessary to trigger one of these snowfalls that begin at a starting zone. The avalanche continues downslope along the track and ultimately the avalanche fans out and settles in the runout zone. What Country Gets the Most Avalanches? Internationally, the Alpine countries of France, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy experience the greatest number of avalanches and loss of life annually. The United States ranks fifth worldwide in avalanche danger. The states of Colorado, Alaska, and Utah are the most deadly. Avalanche Prevention and Control Avalanche prevention and mitigation involves a variety of methods. Snow fences are built to prevent the buildup of snow in starting zones, structures are built to stabilize snow. deflecting walls are built to divert avalanche flows away from buildings and even entire towns. Sheds build across roadways that pass through persistent avalanche paths can help to protect motorists from avalanches. Additionally, the reforestation of slopes with trees helps to prevent avalanches. Sometimes avalanche control experts actually desire to create smaller, controlled avalanches to prevent larger, uncontrolled ones. Percussion guns, explosives, and even artillery have been used to produce these controlled avalanches when people are kept away. Although a variety of recreationists spend time in snow-covered mountains - snowmobilers are those most often killed by avalanches in the U.S. Most avalanches in the U.S. occur during the months January, February, and March and on average, 17 are killed annually nationwide. Backcountry explorers are strongly advised to not only know how to identify avalanche hazard areas but also to carry an avalanche beacon/transceiver and a shovel in case of emergency.

4 Ways to Improve Your Resume

4 Ways to Improve Your Resume No matter how good your resume or C.V., it can always be better. Try the following four strategies to bump yours up into the category of greatness, and see if you can’t land that dream job. 1. Make it skim-ableEase of reading is key. Organize your document so that the hiring manager can find the information they need without effort or strain of any kind. Work hardest on the headers, eliminate unnecessary verbiage, and concentrate on putting the most important and relevant information in the first five words of each description. The faster they can get the gist of how great you are, the better.2. Tailor to the jobYes, tailoring each resume you send to the particular position is a pain- and requires a ton of extra work, but it’s a great habit to get into. It’s more important to do this than to have one resume that is formatted beautifully and fits perfectly on to one page. Figure out what the hiring manager wants from a candidate, and do your best to present yourse lf specifically in that light.3. Make it mobileWe never used to have to think about how our perfectly formatted resume would read on a smart phone or a PDA. This is, however, the world we live in now. Double check how your files open on these mobile devices and alter accordingly to make sure you’re not shortchanging yourself if a hiring manager reads your application on the run.4. Go liveMake a website for yourself for job search purposes. It doesn’t need to include much more than your resume, but it’s always useful to have a direct link in case a file is unreadable on one device or computer or the other. It’s also a very useful way to encourage people to look at your portfolio- without being asked for it directly.Endless tinkering of your resume is not the idea here. Just make sure you’re firing on all cylinders, then update it, and let it go. Get out there and get the job!

Online vs Traditional Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Online vs Traditional Education - Essay Example This paper draws a comparison and contrast between online education and traditional education. Online education and traditional education are similar in the syllabus and course structure but differ in the styles and patterns of communication between the students and instructors, flexibility in terms of schedule, extent of learning and development of skills, and the overall cost both for the school and the students. Communication on online education is very different from the way it is in traditional education. In online education, conversation is made through the exchange of messages. Messages are exchanged via keyboard, so typing errors are common to occur. Although online communication is a fairly effective means of communication, yet it is subjected to a lot of challenges. For example, the communicating parties may be interrupted in the middle of communication if the internet connection breaks. There is a lot of uncertainty in online communication. One never knows when the compute r starts malfunctioning or is attacked by a virus. However, when the computer is functioning properly and everything is set, communication is not only instant and effective, but is also time saving and cost effective. Nevertheless, a research conducted by SRI International found that â€Å"[o]n average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction† (Bits, 2009). On the contrary, traditional education provides an individual with frequent opportunities of socializing with peers. Students get to meet one another on daily basis. They make gossip, share views and discuss ideas both pertinent to the school education and other social and political matters. Such group discussions are very informative. Students get to learn about new opportunities. â€Å"Traditional college students are between the ages of 18-21 and benefit from the social atmosphere that a normal college campus provides† (Carron, 2006). The face to face interaction with peers and teachers has also many psychosocial benefits for the students. It inculcates confidence in the students and enhances their emotional intelligence so that they are more prepared to play their constructive role in the society in general and in the workplace in particular. Online education provides an individual with much more flexibility than the traditional education. Students that take online courses are provided with the facility to work along with carrying on their studies. Many students with great potential are not able to continue their studies just because they are not able to afford the fee and other expenses associated with education. Online education brings students back to the world of academia by providing them with flexible schedules. The students can adjust their studies according to their work schedule rather than having to adjust their work schedule according to their studies. Thus, an individual having online education is more empowered as c ompared to the students of traditional education. The freedom online education offers enables the students to optimize on their time management skills. â€Å"[S]elf-paced, independent learners are usually more disciplined in terms of preparation and time management† (Sanders, 2011). On the other hand, schedules in the traditional

The argument in The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith depends on the Essay - 1

The argument in The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith depends on the possibility of failure. Why is this so What implications does this have - Essay Example Smith has based his theories about opulence on the general principle that man is not by nature a benevolent creature but is rather motivated by self interest to seek the best benefits for himself, it also follows that viewed from the other side of the coin, such actions to promote himself and improve his own welfare arise out of a reluctance to fail. The extent of man’s industriousness and motivation are dependent upon the depths to which he expects to fall if he fails. Smith’s views were offered in the context of mercantilism where a protectionist policy on trade and a free market was preferred, under the mistaken notion that wealth could be preserved within the boundaries of rich nations only by preventing free trade. Smith contested the prevalent views that stated â€Å"England would soon be ruined by trade with foreign countries† and that â€Å"in almost all our commercial dealings with other nations, we are losers†, leading to the assumption that England would be drained of her wealth through such trade and this would lead to poverty.(Smith, 1775: I:18) Therefore the policy of protectionism was mooted by those who were afraid of failure and loss of the wealth and riches they had accrued. Smith on the contrary believed that money was not consumable and that the consumption of goods was the greatest source of wealth and also the source of man’s industry which led to additional wealth. Therefore, his views rebutted the belief that indulging in a free trade of goods would produce failure in that it would lead to a loss of wealth. He argued that inspite of the arguments that had been advanced by political writers for decades that â€Å"in a few years we would be reduced to an absolute state of poverty† , the realities of a system of free trade and exchange between nations actually demonstrated that rather than the feared loss of money actually coming through, â€Å"we find ourselves far richer than before.† (Smith, 1776, I:19). Therefore Smith’s arguments