Ratios in the evolutionary behavioural sciences: problems and solutions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Richardson

Ratios are widely used in the social and life sciences, particularly the evolutionary behavioural sciences. However, over the past few decades, several problems have been identified with them leading many disciplines to abandon their use. Ratios show statistical properties that are not always obvious, are difficult to interpret properly and can have unintended implications. Uncertainty about their precise meaning impedes the development of effective theory. Arbitrary choices of which variable is used as the numerator and which is used as the denominator can lead to different results. Additionally anthropometric variables rarely remove the influence of body size and can induce spurious effects. Fortunately, advances in statistical techniques and software mean that most of these issues are easily resolved and have rendered ratios mostly unnecessary. Any researcher with a firm grasp of multiple regression can avoid the pitfalls associated with ratios. This review aims to introduce readers to the many issues associated with ratios and how to overcome them, with a special emphasis on the ratios most widely used in the evolutionary behavioural sciences. Using open access datasets I demonstrate both the potential problems with ratios and their solutions. I outline the times when ratios are acceptable and useful, and when our science would be more rigorous and productive without them.

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronan Van Rossem

Over the past decade discontent in Flemish universities with the increased work load of faculty members has risen. This study is the first to examine how many hours a week senior researcher (postdocs and faculty) in Flemish universities actually work. The data used stems from the 2010 Survey of Senior Researcher conducted among senior researchers at the five Flemish universities. 1195 respondents provided information on their working hours. Senior researchers worked on the average 50.4 hours a week, with 12% reporting to work more than 60 hours a week. The number of hours worked varied significantly with rank, where respondents in more senior ranks reported to work more hours. Once one controls for rank any gender differences in number of hours work disappear. We did observe a significant trade-off between the time spent on various activities. Postdocs spent more time on research than the other ranks, and senior professors spent more time on service and administration. Respondents from the humanities, and to a lesser degree from the social sciences, spent more time on education than respondents from other disciplines. This study confirms that senior researchers at Flemish universities work long hours, and that the number of hours spent on various activities is largely a reaction to demands from their institutional environment.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farras Kartika Kusumadewi ◽  
Moses Glorino Rumambo Pandin

The study of Islamic history today may not have been regulated through literature, either in foreign languages or using Indonesian (translations or works of the nation's children). Many books have studied the history of Islam that we can get to fill our information, but no one book is so complete, one literature with another can complement each other to form knowledge of Islamic history. From the thought that no single work is perfect and on the contrary will complement each other, the author of this book aims to present the book Sejarah Peradaban Islam to be a reference and teaching material for the history of Islamic civilization course. The author hopes that this work will not only serve as a reference for students majoring in history at various universities, but has also become a public reading as an important contribution to reinventing Islamic civilization in the past, present, and future.Previously, this book entitled Sejarah Islam was only published in a limited edition (30 copies) by Rayhan Intermedia six years ago for student reading. After undergoing revisions in several parts as well as adjusting the curriculum and lecture materials, a book with the title Sejarah Peradaban Islam was presented. This book is intended for everyone, from all walks of life. Although it focuses on Islam, it can be read by anyone who wants to gain additional knowledge about Islamic history.The flow of study in the book does not follow the periodization of Islamic history as written by Harun Nasution, which is divided into the classical period (650-1250 AD), the middle period (1250-1800 AD), and the modern period (1800 AD). His presentation in the book is more based on the growth and development of Islamic civilization in various regions and the reign of a certain caliph or king, however, it does not ignore the characteristics of the times and the character of the period in which Islam grew and developed. In certain parts of the book, it also reviews the roots and implications of the social revolution, the glorious achievements of the rulers, and the peaks of the development of Islamic civilization in various parts of the world.The book of Sejarah Peradaban Islam from Ahmadin needs to be reviewed to know what is in the book, considering some of the previous things. In addition, also to find out what weaknesses and strengths are contained in the book, it is possible to recommend the book as additional reading for others.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 597
Author(s):  
Ivan Vranić

Along with many different definitions of archaeology, from the inception of the discipline to the present, it may be valid to assert that it is a kind of complex dialogue on heritage with the public of contemporary societies. In this dialogue, archaeologists have directly constructed social memories and modern identities, this being an exceptional responsibility, and have at the same time been susceptible to ethnocentric transfers of modern values and expectations into the images of the past. In this respect, it may well be said that the public is not only the most important consumer of cultural heritage, but also an active participant indirectly influencing the shaping of archaeological interpretations of the past. Thanks to the global trends in the discipline, but also due to the administrative decisions of the Ministry of Culture and Information, archaeology in Serbia is compelled to intensify contacts with the public and to make the results of our work more readily accessible and economically sustainable. The paper aims to offer a short overview of theoretical premises of various models of collaboration of archaeology and the public, to point to the advantages and shortcomings, as well as the consequences of these approaches, thus warning of the many potential problems stemming from the uncritical dissemination of information on the past and heritage to the general public.


1983 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Bennett

Advocates of the “new social history” have buttressed their efforts to recreate the past lives of ordinary people with concepts, models, and quantitative methods taken from the social sciences. These new approaches have allowed scholars to extract vivid and dynamic reconstructions of past human experiences from the dry folios of civil and ecclesiastical registers. Their successes, as exemplified by the many publications of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, have focused largely on the demographic and familial histories of the early modern era. The manipulation of parish listings of baptisms, marriages, and burials is now a fairly precise science that has taught us much (and will doubtless teach us more) about the daily lives of common people and their families in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. But the tracing into the past of the social, familial, and demographic characteristics of the English people need not start abruptly with the auspicious advent of parish registers in 1538. Indeed, we can only hope to trace the origins of fundamental features of Tudor-Stuart life (such as the pronounced tendency towards late marriage and the high incidence of persons who never married) if we develop accurate techniques for analyzing the pre-1500, pre-parish register materials at our disposal. From the perspective of a medievalist, this work is clearly essential; most medieval people, quite simply, were peasants, and we shall better understand the histories of medieval parliaments, towns, and universities when we have successfully uncovered their rural underpinnings.


1979 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.K. Edwards

The social analysis of strike activity is in its infancy despite the many recent publications which focus on the "social" rather than the "economic" causes of strikes. In the past, writers have searched for fundamental causes and have concentrated on three major areas: social disorganisation, frustration and com munication and the basic conflict of interest between employer and employee. Now, utilising the concepts of structure and process, the social perspectives of strike activity have been reformulated. It would appear that the earlier, static, one-way approach may have distorted reality. Thus a dialectic between structure and process should form the focus of attention when considering the causes of strikes. The conclusion is that the concept of a dialectic is an important step forward in replacing the old fundamentalist perspective, even though the concept still requires considerable refinement before it can be fully operational as a useful research tool.


1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 1027-1039
Author(s):  
Samuel Dubois Cook

The essence of Hacker's construction is the theory of the ruling class. Immediately, one thinks of Marx, Mosca, Michels, Pareto, and several Americans who have espoused, in one form or another, oligarchic doctrines. What most sharply distinguishes Hacker from most theorists of this persuasion is the absence of presuppositions of historical inevitability. Seeking only to describe sequences and relations of the past and present, he makes no claims of omniscience, of knowing what the social process must unfold. Neither is his theory normative.Yet, apart from details and variations, there is a crucial framework of meaning which discloses Hacker's close affinity with the essence of conventional oligarchic doctrines: the few rule, the many simply obey; the governors, in substance if not in form, are free from compulsion to answer to the governed. Historically, and indeed currently, Hacker asserts, genuine power has been and is the exclusive or, at least, the primary possession of a privileged few. True, the composition and foundation of the governing class have changed, but this change, he continues, did not bring in its wake a widening or deepening of the structure of power in American culture. It merely means the substitution of one set of masters or controllers for another. After all, a monopoly of power is a monopoly, whether its source be deference or manipulation. Both, he avers, “permit a few men to rule many men.” Neither system of power allows the personnel and the general policies of government to be the product of voluntary and active consent. In both contexts, the ruled, not the rulers, are the object of control. “Both deference and manipulation are similar in that they are control.” Such, then, is Hacker's relation to the essence of oligarchic thought. What can be said of the validity of his formulation?


2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
SAMUEL HABER

In the light of recent events, the once widely accepted Marxist distinction between “scientific” and “utopian” socialism is fading rapidly. For it has become increasingly difficult to believe that any form of socialism is inherent in the workings of history, as the Marxists had claimed for their “scientific” variety. Today Marxism, in its own terms, turns out to be “utopian.” One can now more readily recognize the kinship of the many different socialisms as well as the significance of their link to the social ideals of the past. What had previously been a somewhat antiquarian literature on “precursors,” “forerunners,” and “schismatics” of socialism suddenly appears as especially pertinent and perhaps even central. Today, without difficulty, one turns away from the various contradistinctions developed in this scholarship and toward the interconnections implicit in it.1Surveying this literature, we can recognize three preeminent social ideals that went into the making of the various socialisms – the call for social justice, the aspiration toward a society of brotherly love, and the belief that one could rid society of poverty. It was the eighth-century prophets of the Hebrew Bible who advanced the audacious demand for justice in society. They urged an end to oppression, cruelty, abuse, and more generally that people be given what was rightfully theirs. This demand recurs in almost all the socialist programs. In the Marxist scheme, it takes the form of the theory of surplus value which describes capitalist profit as a surplus product stolen (“entwandt”) from the worker who creates it.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yudiaryani Yudiaryani ◽  
Wahid Nurcahyono ◽  
Sylvia Angreni Purba

Cultural identity in ketoprak performance should depart from all cultural products themselves. Strengthening the form of ketoprak performance in the middle of the era becomes important for artists in building their creativity. The strategy was designed so that people assume that ketoprak was theirs and able to be their representation. Based on the data collected, the number of groups, performances, and ketoprak artists in DIY were as follows. The number of groups in four districts and one municipality were 497 groups. The number of ketoprak showed from 1999-2009 was 145 times. The highest number of ketoprak groups was in Kulonprogo Regency, followed by Gunungkidul Regency, Bantul Regency, Sleman Regency, and finally the Municipality. The year 2005 was a milestone in the development of ketoprak to the present. The successful renewal of ketoprak shows can be seen by the number of shows which are 113 times over five years (from 2005 to 2009), which means that there were twenty ketoprak shows every year, and every month there were two ketoprak shows. The condition was triggered by several factors as follows. First, local government awareness to determined the icon of DIY tourism as part of globalization. Second, the awareness of artists to package performances that match the demands of the times. Third, awareness of the artistic layout strategy using symbolic and supported by Tobong ketoprak tricks. Fourthly, the influence of ketoprak humor and ketoprak R&D which still uses the style of play and jokes, causes the ketoprak show to be no longer a mere political tool, but a tool and place of friendship for the citizens. Fifth, the story was no longer based on myths, chronicles and legends, but penetrated the wayang story but with a more contextual interpretation of the story with the present. By seeing the many activities of ketoprak performances in DIY it can be said if ketoprak has become an icon of culture and tourism in DIY. Ketoprak performances tread its survival was no longer a traditional art, but has become a form of modernist art. Over the past ten years, the ketoprak show has experienced quite improved conditions. The vigilance of artists and audiences must be constantly reminded. The trick was to continuing to enhance the role of government as a protector of arts and culture. The ketoprak festival must continuing to be held continuously. Improving the skills of ketoprak artists must continuing to be sharpened. Of course the friendship between Ketoprak artists must continuing to be encouraged. Government’s appreciation for ketoprak artists must be increased.Keywords: identity; ketoprak; strengthening; globalization


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-124
Author(s):  
Ni Made Anggia Paramesthi Fajar ◽  
I Wayan Diasa ◽  
Ade Maharini Adiandari

Taro Village is one of the tourism villages that has the oldest history in Bali. This Taro Tourism Village is an old village in Bali that is rich in stories and cultural relics of the past. The existence of this village is closely related to the visit of a sacred person in the past from East Java to Bali around the 8th century. This Taro Tourism Village has green and beautiful nature. The cool air and the trees make the atmosphere shady. As well as residents' houses with the characteristics of traditional Balinese houses. Besides enjoying the natural atmosphere, the tourist village of Taro also has many cultural values that can be an interesting source of knowledge for visitors to the tourist village. However, along with the development of the times, the Taro Tourism Village began to experience a setback because of the many other tourist attractions that offered new "experiences" for tourists. so it requires the need for new packaging of tourism activities while still using religious culture and beautiful nature as the main components.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-119
Author(s):  
Sharon Traweek ◽  
Duygu Kaşdoğan ◽  
Kim Fortun

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This is an edited transcription, which accompanies the full audio file also available in this issue of the journal. The interview supplements the text of Traweek’s 2020 Bernal lecture. In this interview, Traweek discusses her research, academic career, the many influences on her life, and her thoughts on STS—in the past and in the future.


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