Elevators as media objects manipulating information in time

We investigate elevators as media. Our central argument is that elevators manipulate information in time. Time manipulation of elevators (movement data + genetic algorithms) produces temporal order. Elevators have become media objects because they produce data that are digitally manipulated to optimize movement. We conducted an empirical study in a multinational corporation that manufactures elevators, including 4 months of field research at multiple locations and interviewed 64 people. We show how time manipulation changes with the information architecture: first, time manipulation took place inside and during the movement of elevators by pushing the buttons. Second, time manipulation took place in the cloud by statistical mathematics. The latest development is toward decentralized social application where elevators as independent media objects manipulate time using genetic algorithms and communicate with each other. We reveal how largely hidden media affects our temporality and argue that media theory should study its implications in contemporary society.

On the Body Image and Standard Score Scale for Ideal Body of Women in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

Developing the shape of human bodies is both one of the important tasks of the sports industry in each country in the world and the need of each individual, especially women. So, what body image is considered standard? We have researched and initially built a rating scale for each of the basic body standards indicators of women including 7/9 body standards indicators. At the same time, it also developed a standard to evaluate the body image of women's body shape through the ratio between waist measurement and indicators such as standing height, bust measurement, and hips measurement. During this study, we used common methods such as reference methods related to research objectives; expert interviews; anthropometric; Statistical mathematics. The study has developed a scale to evaluate the indicators of body beautiful image for each criterion of ideal body standards. This is the basis for them to be able to calculate the measurements of each fitness criterion to exercise in proportion to their height so that they have an ideal body standard, as well as a source of reference for other athletes, trainers, body image trainers, physical education teachers, or researchers on women's health in Vietnam. From there, it helps the practitioner know the correct rings needed have to work out based on his height. This is the basis for them to be able to calculate the measurements of each fitness criterion to exercise in proportion to their height so that they have an ideal body standard.

Studying behaviours and attitudes towards science and technology

What makes research important is an important philosophical question that is a consideration for many researchers. Further important considerations are the public's perception of science and how an individual's perception of science and technology is shaped. These are some of the complex ideas that social scientist Dr Naoko Kato-Nitta, Department of Statistical Data Science, Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan, is exploring. She is working on a series of projects related to public perceptions and attitudes towards different scientific disciplines and fields. She hopes that answering such important questions will facilitate the creation of a science communication model for the public understanding of science. Kato-Nitta's research focuses on human behaviour and psychology and how it relates to issues at the interface of technology and society. A key question that she is seeking to answer from the standpoint of cultural capital is how the extent of the general public's participation in science communication can be determined. In the first research to connect social stratification theory and science communication research, Kato-Nitta divided the concept of Bourdieu's cultural capital into two sub-concepts: scientific and technical cultural capital and literary and artistic cultural capital. She went on to consider how these two types of cultural capital affect the exhibit-viewing behaviours of the general public.

Study on spacial-temporal analysis of ground surface temperature for global warming countermeasures

Extreme weather events can arrive unannounced and cause immense harm for communities. Especially in cities where many people live in close proximity, events like flash flooding, windstorms or even heat waves can cause property damage, overworking of the emergency infrastructure and death. Unfortunately, because climate change continues to alter weather patterns, from subtle local variations to changes in global factors like ocean currents, these events are occurring with increased frequency. There is a great need for accurate monitoring and prediction systems that can help forecast these catastrophes. Monitoring overall changes in the patterns of these events will also help governments and citizens better adapt and plan measures to protect themselves from climate change's inevitable impact. Professor Tomoko Matsui is an expert in the field of statistical spatial-temporal modelling. Matsui is heading up an international team of researchers at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo, Heriot-Watt University in UK and the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba to find ways for using a variety of data including low-resolution surface meteorological observation, time-series measurements of ground surface temperature by high-resolution satellite and social media.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter addresses how statistics has assumed the trappings of a modern academic discipline primarily during the last half century. The intellectual character of statistics had been thoroughly transformed by 1900. The period when statistical thinking was allied only to the simplest mathematics gave way to a period of statistical mathematics—which, to be sure, has not been divorced from thinking. In the twentieth century, statistics has at last assumed at least the appearance of conforming to that hierarchical structure of knowledge beloved by philosophers and sociologists in which theory governs practice and in which the “advanced” field of mathematics provides a solid foundation for the “less mature” biological and social sciences. The crystallization of a mathematical statistics out of the wealth of applications developed during the nineteenth century provides the natural culmination to this story.

The Errors of Art and Nature

This chapter analyzes the law of facility of errors. All the early applications of the error law could be understood in terms of a binomial converging to an exponential, as in Abrahan De Moivre's original derivation. All but Joseph Fourier's law of heat, which was never explicitly tied to mathematical probability except by analogy, were compatible with the classical interpretation of probability. Just as probability was a measure of uncertainty, this exponential function governed the chances of error. It was not really an attribute of nature, but only a measure of human ignorance—of the imperfection of measurement techniques or the inaccuracy of inference from phenomena that occur in finite numbers to their underlying causes. Moreover, the mathematical operations used in conjunction with it had a single purpose: to reduce the error to the narrowest bounds possible. With Adolphe Quetelet, all that began to change, and a wider conception of statistical mathematics became possible. When Quetelet announced in 1844 that the astronomer's error law applied also to the distribution of human features such as height and girth, he did more than add one more set of objects to the domain of this probability function; he also began to break down its exclusive association with error.

The Roots of Biometrical Statistics

This chapter traces the roots of biometrical statistics. That the modern field of mathematical statistics developed out of biometry is not wholly fortuitous. The quantitative study of biological inheritance and evolution provided an outstanding context for statistical thinking, and quantitative genetics remains the best example for an area of science whose very theory is built out of concepts of statistics—variance-covariance matrices, regression coefficients, and so on. Beyond that, the biometrician-eugenicists were possessed with an intense ecumenical urge and, especially in the case of Karl Pearson, endowed with very respectable talents for academic entrepreneurship. The great stimulus for modern statistics came from Francis Galton's invention of the method of correlation, which, significantly, he first conceived not as an abstract technique of numerical analysis, but as a statistical law of heredity. Here, as throughout the nineteenth century, the special problems of particular fields were of central importance for the development of statistical mathematics.

Social Law and Natural Science

This chapter details how Adolphe Quetelet's work on error law provided the inspiration for the most important writers on statistical mathematics of the late nineteenth century. While Quetelet interpreted his discovery as confirmation that variation could be neglected in favor of the study of mean values, James Clerk Maxwell and Francis Galton, among others, saw in it a convenient and valuable tool for analyzing with mathematical precision the nature and effects of natural variation. The mathematics of variation was instrumental for the impressive achievements of the nineteenth-century kinetic theory. It also provided the key in biology to the quantitative study of heredity, leading eventually to what is now the most purely statistical of the natural sciences, quantitative genetics. Beyond its importance for particular natural and social sciences, however, the new understanding of the error law that derived from Quetelet's work proved essential for mathematical statistics itself.

Development and Implementation of the Application APPMAR 1.0. A Toolbox for Management of Meteorological and Marine Data on Limited Information Regions

This work presents an application called APPMAR 1.0 based on Python ® environment, built to perform the downloading, treatment and analysis of meteorological and marine information. This application is composed of two main modules: the first module allows the downloading of information from the database (NOAA - WW3); the second module uses the principles of statistical mathematics for the treatment of waves and wind. The importance of this simple application is based on the free and agile access to meteorological and marine information for a coastal project. The determination of representative conditions of sea states ultimately will govern the process of design of coastal and oceanic infrastructure. The analysis of historical time series of local waves and winds allows the evaluation of average regimes or operational design, the ultimate limit states or extreme design, and the storms or design by persistence. In spite that the former analysis is a common task for coastal engineers, the codes generated are seldom shared for public use. In summary, for operational purposes is useful to have a freeware that can assist in the data processing for decision making and forcing of the mathematical models that are part of the common practice of coastal, oceanic and offshore engineering. This application has been tested in the Caribbean area of Colombia where meteorological and marine information are scarce.