Why I want To Be President Essay Example for Free

Why I want To Be President Essay Hola! â€Å"Why did the chicken cross the road?† Well, according to George W. Bush, the President of the United States, a proper answer could be. â€Å"We dont really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or it is against us. There is no middle ground here.† However, I am not George Bush, and this speech is about me running for president of the Foreign Language Honour Society. But what about language? Let us consider our own language, English, which is considered by many to be one of the hardest languages in the world to learn or speak. I read an interesting quote about the English language that goes: â€Å"Lets face it: English is a terrible language. There is no egg in the eggplant, no ham in the hamburger and neither pine nor apple in the pineapple. English muffins were not invented in England, French fries were not invented in France. We sometimes take English for granted. But if we examine its paradoxes we find that Quicksand takes you down slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. If writers write, how come fingers dont fing. If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldnt the plural of phone booth be phone beeth. If the teacher taught, why didnt the preacher praught. If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what the heck does a humanitarian eat!? Why do people recite at a play, yet play at a recital? Park on driveways and drive on parkways. You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language where a house can burn up as it burns down and in which you fill in a form by filling it out. And a bell is only heard once it goes! English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which of course isnt a race at all). That is why when the stars are out they are visible, but when the lights are out they are invisible. And why it is that when I windup my watch it starts but when I wind up this story it ends?† But back to the real reason for this speech. Why I want to be president? Because I think I would be a good one! Of course, everyone would say that, wouldn’t they? But I really mean it.   Every elected official wants to make a difference, and though, not all of them do, they all want to. Yet, I know I can make a difference in this Society, a difference that will not only improve things but make being a member of this Society something to be really proud of. Language is an art and the more languages a person knows then the broader their abilities to communicate with others. Communication is the key to any problem or any situation so when true communication is achieved, then the world can only improve from the classroom to the world of nations. This always reminds me of a quote I once read by a former politican. â€Å"When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldnt change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldnt change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.† No matter how small a group is, they can always make a difference and as the president of this Society, I know that I can help this Society make a big difference in our school and in our own lives.

Concepts and Applications of Deep Learning

Concepts and Applications of Deep Learning Abstract: Since 2006, Deep Learning, also known as Hierarchal Leaning has been evolved as a new field of Machine Learning Research. The deep learning model deals with problems on which shallow architectures (e.g. Regression) are affected by the curse of dimensionality. As part of a two-stage learning scheme involving multiple layers of nonlinear processing a set of statistically robust features is automatically extracted from the data. The present tutorial introducing the deep learning special session details the state-of-the-art models and summarizes the current understanding of this learning approach which is a reference for many difficult classification tasks. Deep Learning is a new area of Machine Learning research, which has been introduced with the objective of moving Machine Learning closer to one of its original goals: Artificial Intelligence. Deep Learning is about learning multiple levels of representation and abstraction that help to make sense of data such as images, sound, and tex t. Introduction: Just consider we have to identify someone’s handwriting. The people have different ways of writing, for example, the numbers-Whether they write a ‘7’ or a ‘9’. We know that if there is a close loop on the top of the vertical line then we named it as ‘9’ and if it contains a horizontal line instead of loop then we think it is ‘7’. The thing we used for exact recognition of digit is a smart display of setting smaller features together to make the whole detecting distinguished edges to make lines, observing a horizontal vs. vertical line, seeing the positioning of the vertical section under the horizontal section, detecting a loop in the horizontal section, etc. The idea of the deep learning is the same: find out multiple levels of features that work jointly to define increasingly more abstract aspects of the data. So, Deep Learning is defined as follows: â€Å"A sub-field of machine learning that is based on learning several levels of representations, corresponding to a hierarchy of features or factors or concepts, where higher-level concepts are defined from lower-level ones, and the same lower-level concepts can help to define many higher-level concepts. Deep learning is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on learning representations. An observation (e.g., an image) can be represented in many ways (e.g., a vector of pixels), but some representations make it easier to learn tasks of interest (e.g., is this the image of a human face?) from examples, and research in this area attempts to define what makes better representations and how to learn them.† see Wikipedia on â€Å"Deep Learning† as of this writing in February 2013; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning. The performance of recent machine learning algorithms relies greatly on the particular features of the input data. As for example marking emails as spam or not spam, can be performed by breaking down the input document intowords. Selecting the exact feature representation of input data, or feature engineering, is a technique that people can recall previous knowledge of an area to enhance an algorithms computational performance and accuracy. Moving towards general artificial intelligence, algorithms need to be less dependent on this feature engineering and better learn to classify the descriptive factors of input data on their own. Deep learning approaches is useful among many domains: it has had great commercial success powering most of Google and Microsofts current speech recognition, digital image processing, natural language processing, object recognition, etc. Facebook is also planning on using deep learning approaches to understand its users. How to build a deep representation of input data? The main idea is to learn a hierarchy of features one level at a time where the input to one computational level is the output of the previous level for an arbitrary number of levels. Otherwise, shallow representations (most current algorithms like regression) go directly from input data to output classification. Inspirations for Deep Architectures The main inspirations for studying learning algorithms for deep architectures are the following: The brain has a deep architecture The visual cortex is considered and demonstrates an order of regions all of them have a representation of the input, and signals move from one to the next. In case there are also miss connections and at some level parallel paths, so the picture is more complicated). Each level of this feature hierarchy represents the input at a different level of concept, with more abstract features further up in the hierarchy, defined in terms of the lower-level ones. Note that representations in the brain are in between dense distributed and purely local: they arelight: about 1% of neurons are active concurrently in the brain. Given the vast number of neurons, this is still a very efficient (exponentially efficient) representation. Cognitive processes seem deep Humans organize their ideas and concepts hierarchically. Humans first learn simpler concepts and then compose them to represent more abstract ones. Engineers break-up solutions into multiple levels of abstraction and processing. Introspection of linguistically expressible concepts also suggests alightrepresentation: only a small fraction of all possible words/concepts are applicable to a particular input (say a visual scene). One good analogue for deep representations is neurons in the brain (a motivation for ANN) the output of a group of neurons is given as the input to more neurons to form a hierarchical layer structure. Each layerNis composed ofh computational nodes that connect to each computational node in layerN+1. See the image below for an example: Related Work: Historically, the concept of deep learning was originated from artificial neural network research. (Hence, one may occasionally hear the discussion of â€Å"new-generation neural networks†.) Feed-forward neural networks or MLPs with many hidden layers, which are often referred to as deep neural networks (DNNs), are good examples of the models with a deep architecture. Back-propagation (BP), popularized in 1980’s, has been a well-known algorithm for learning the parameters of these networks. Unfortunately back-propagation alone did not work well in practice then for learning networks with more than a small number of hidden layers (see a review and analysis in (Bengio, 2009; Glorot and Bengio, 2010). The pervasive presence of local optima in the non-convex objective function of the deep networks is the main source of difficulties in the learning. Back-propagation is based on local gradient descent, and starts usually at some random initial points. It often gets trapped in poor local optima when the batch-mode BP algorithm is used, and the severity increases significantly as the depth of the networks increases. This difficulty is partially responsible for steering away most of the machine learning and signal processing research from neural networks to shallow models that have convex loss functions (e.g., SVMs, CRFs, and MaxEnt models), for which global optimum can be efficiently obtained at the cost of less modeling power. The applicative domains for deep learning: In natural language processing, a very interesting approach gives a proof that deep architectures can perform multi-task learning, giving state-of-the-art results on difficult tasks like semantic role labeling. Deep architectures can also be applied to regression with Gaussian processes [37] and time series prediction. Another interesting application area is highly nonlinear data compression. To reduce the dimensionality of an input instance, it is sufficient for a deep architecture that the number of units in its last layer is smaller than its input dimensionality. Moreover, adding layers to a neural network can lead to learning more abstract features, from which input instances can be coded with high accuracy in a more compact form. Reducing the dimensionality of data has been presented as one of the first application of deep learning. This approach is very efficient to perform semantic hashing on text documents, where the codes generated by the deepest layer are used to build a hash table from a set of documents. A similar approach for a large scale image database is presented in this special session. Conclusion: Deep learning is about creating an abstract hierarchical representation of the input data to create useful features for traditional machine learning algorithms. Each layer in the hierarchy learns a more abstract and complex feature of the data, such as edges to eyes to faces. This representation gets its power of abstraction by stacking nonlinear functions, where the output of one layer becomes the input to the next. The two main schools of thought for analyzing deep architectures areprobabilisticvs.direct encoding. The probabilistic interpretation means that each layer defines a distribution of hidden units given the observed input,P(h|x). The direct encoding interpretation learns two separate functions theencoderanddecoder- to transform the observed input to the feature space and then back to the observed space. These architectures have had great commercial success so far, powering many natural language processing and image recognition tasks at companies like Google and Microsoft.

Relationship between Motivational leadership and culture

Relationship between Motivational leadership and culture Introduction: The link between Motivation, Leadership and the reference and appropriateness of American culture oriented education systems and the Pakistani cultural context investigated. Motivation in the workplace holds a direct link to the leadership within organisation. In the modern age work has become the focus of our live. Work is the place where most of us find much of our sense of identity. It is hard today for many of us separate our work from the rest of our lives. We spend much of our time at work or in work related social and leisure activities. Within this work environment, at its core we can find Motivation, Leadership and culture. The way in which these three issues combine has a defining influence on how we lead our lives. One of the major problems of leadership today is that of understanding what motivates people. In order to be able to influence people it is necessary to understand what moves people. However, by studying motivation insight is found, drawing useful generalization, all of which will make the process of leading other that more effective. For many years the Pakistani business, education and cultural environment has been influenced by American business, education and culture. Clearer understanding of how successful this cross-cultural mixes has been needs investigation to judge its success. Motivation is closely linked to leadership; without motivation it could be argued that there is no leadership. The leadership style will naturally relate to the national culture of the country being investigated; to lead effectively and motivate people in a suitable way. Pakistan as a developing country is ready to accept many western ideas and if appropriate presented western cultural education programme. This dissertation aims to study how to apply an American cultural education programme with western structure to the Pakistan cultural business environment. The important of cultural influence on the leadership style and motivation has been researched. The differences between Pakistan and American culture within this context will have been investigated. Assessment of the following areas will be made: The effect of leadership on motivation. The cultural impact on leadership style. The differences between American and Pakistani culture. The best way to apply an American cultural education programme within the Pakistani cultural context. Background and Academic Context: Motivation: Motivation is a basic concept in human behaviour and also in employee behaviour. Motivation is one of the key drivers of high performance as it encourages individuals to work hard, and desire to achieve a higher goal and a better performance. According to Mitchell (1982) motivation is psychological process that cause encouragement, direction and insistence of voluntary actions that are goal oriented. Robbins (1993) shares the same view, that motivation is the willingness to exercise high levels of effort towards organization goals and to satisfy individual needs. McKenna (2002, p.8) explains motivation as an emotion, which is personal in nature, and comes from within the individual. Robbins (1993) also describes that it is the individual needs that make the outcomes to be attractive and unsatisfied needs will create tension to stimulate drives within the individual and this is called motivation process. Leadership: Leadership is defined as a social influence, process in which the leader seeks the voluntary participation of subordinates in an effort to reach organisational goals. There are many ways of looking at leadership and many interpretations of its meaning, it is therefore difficult to generalise about leadership (Mullins, 2002). However a definition from the 1990s said, Leadership is an influence relationship between leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes (Rost, 1991). Mullins also submitted that leadership is essentially a relationship through which one person influences the behaviour or actions of other people (Mullins, 2002). Culture on the other hand, has the culture brought about by a nations  culture such as language, religion, customs, traditions, norms of behaviour, beliefs, business ethics etc.   For a successful globalisation, though organization culture plays an important part, it cannot over-ride the national culture. Any successful operation will pay much attention to the national culture in formulating its organization culture for that country. Leadership is the ability to lead, including inspiring others in a shared vision. Leaders have clear visions and they communicate these visions to their employees. Leadership has been a topic of interest to historians and philosophers, but only around the turn of the century did scientific studies begin. Since that time, scientists and other writers have offered more than 350 definitions of the term leadership (Daft, 1999). Defining leadership has been a complex problem because the nature of leadership itself is complex. In recent years, however, much progress has been made in understanding the essential nature of leadership as a real influence in organizations and societies (Northouse, 2001). It is worth reweaving the first conceptions of leadership the trait and the behavioural approach as one can learn from these former approaches in order to construct a new approach best fitting to the current economic situation. Leadership is related to motivation, interpersonal behaviour, culture and the process of communication. Di Cesar Sadri (2003) explains the dimensions of cultural impact on employee motivation, stating while the principle of leadership, motivation, and decision making may be applicable almost everywhere, their success or failure depends heavily on ways in which managers adapt to the local culture and work situation (cited in Di Cesar Sadri 2003, p.30). Culture can be defined as Symbols, language, ideologies, rituals, and myths (Pettegrew, 1979), or it can be said that it is a product; is historical; is based upon symbols; and is an abstraction from behaviour and the products of behaviour (Jongeward, 1979) or the famous definition by Edgar Schein a pattern of basic assumptions- invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with the problems of external adaptation and internal integration- that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.(Schein, 1985). Leadership can be defined below: Contingency Theories of Leadership Leadership is all about the way people are guided, involved and supported through the completion of a task or activity. There are many styles of leadership and every leader will have their own personal views why their style is the best method for them. All forms of leadership are individualistic and can be categorised into four different styles: Democratic, Paternalistic, Authoritarian (dictatorial) and Laissez-faire. Contingency Theories unlike Style Theories are primarily concerned with the factor that leaders are assumed their style can be varied at will. Style Theories simply assumes that there is a single leadership style that is suitable for all situations. Contingency Theories therefore assume that it is the situation itself which makes one style more appropriate than another. A Contingency Theory therefore is a theory that has to be suitable for the conditions in which leadership is to be exercised. An Outline of the Three Contingency Theories of Leadership Fiedlers Contingency Theory This theory is also referred to as the LPC, which stands for the Least Preferred Co-Worker. This is the subordinate that a supervisor was least able to work with successfully on a previous occasion. Fiedlers Theory is based upon his view that the most appropriate leadership style (which results in high task performance by workgroups) is denoted by the preferred behavioural style of the leader within the contextual circumstances in which the group operates. Basically if the leaders style is positive towards the workgroups then workers will work to a maximum output. The Path goal Theory of Leadership The Path goal theory is closely linked with Vrooms Expectancy Theory where the motivation for people to perform an activity is functional with two connected factors. These factors are expectancy and valence and are defined below. Æ’ËÅ"  Ã‚   Expectancy is about a person believing that his/her good/positive performance will lead to specific identifiable results. i.e. if this individual performs to his/her highest ability and this is shown and recognised then expectancy will lead to positive results. Æ’ËÅ"  Ã‚   Valence is to what extent this individual values these results i.e. valuing the results that he/she is expecting from the work carried out. The Hersey and Blanchard Contingency Approach Also named the situational leadership model theory this theory derived by Hersey and Blanchard argues that a managers style should alter according to the readiness of followers to take responsibility for directing their own actions. The term readiness is used to embrace task-related readiness and psychological readiness. Task-related readiness shows whether subordinated have the necessary skills, knowledge and abilities to undertake a job without the leader having to plan, structure and direct their efforts. Psychological readiness is linked to the leaders subordinates characteristics such as self-motivation and pride in their work, which in turn may instil them to accept responsibilities. Key factors of successful contingency leadership theories: Æ’ËÅ"  Ã‚   Adapting to external surroundings and understand the people who you are leading what is the way in which they want to be lead? Æ’ËÅ"  Ã‚   What do these people want in return for task completion, Remuneration, praise and promotion. Æ’ËÅ"  Ã‚   Incorporating a motivational theme throughout the business is a key issue for task completion and for workers to experience the expectancy theory. (in reference to Vrooms Expectancy Theory) Æ’ËÅ"  Ã‚   Contingency Theories are not Leadership Styles. Culture: Culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behaviour (Spradley, 1980) take from Social Responsibility in the Market: Fair Trade of cultural products by (Littrell and Dickson, 1999). Culture encompasses a groups ideology, as well as its normative behaviours and its physical environment, artefacts and technology. As applied to business, the study of organisational culture offers insights into a firms unique character. Organisational culture evolves as a group learns to solve problems and conduct business (Schein, 1985). Often initiated by a strong founder, a firms culture perpetuates itself through the telling of company stories, daily rituals, hiring practices, training, rewards, and marketing decisions (Kotter and Heskett, 1992). According to (Rugman and Hodgetts, 2000) Organisational culture that people use to interpret experience and to generate social behaviour. Members of a group, organisation, or society share culture. Through culture we form values and attitudes that shape our individual and group behaviour. Culture is learned through both education and experience. Culture is also passed from one generation to another, so it is enduring. At the same time cultures constantly undergo change as people adapt to new environments. Having looked at culture in western countries, the attention will focus now specifically on Eastern (Pakistan) culture, its relationship with leadership and identify which international attitudes it is most closely associated with. From last past years certain characteristics have become influential in shaping Pakistani culture. Among the important cultural characteristics of Pakistan are vast differences in socio-economic status at the both societal and organisational level, and the influence of nationalism and secularism in transforming society into a western societal structure. The Quaid-e-Azam whos known as the founder of Pakistan was one of them who received a western influenced education and was consequently greatly inclined to European culture and institutions. Pakistan stands out as being different from Asian countries. Despite the fact that 99 percent of the Pakistani population is Muslims, the Pakistani state is secular. The ideology of Pakistan is based on principle of religion and state. In other words the state is independent of religious rules and is run by secular rules. Generally, externally characteristics serve as an important power base for leaders. Leaders power is a manifestation of feudal links and has strong roots in Pakistani culture, in that leaders are expected to promote patronage relationships with their followers. Objective: In view of this the objective of this dissertation is to undertake a critical evaluation of the impact of leadership on motivating the workforce within different cultures or contexts where different cultures exist. Expanding on this key objective, attention is focused on a number of distinct areas like: A review of the literatures dealing with motivation to establish whether or not there is strong relationship between motivation and effective leadership. A review of the literatures to establish whether or not there is strong relationship between effective leadership and culture. An assessment of leadership within different cultural context. To evaluate the extent to which American principles advocated in the leadership and motivation literatures will encounter cultural resistance when introduced to the Pakistani context. In what ways will the principles of motivation and leadership need to be modified and what will be the implications for management style. Research Method: The research for this dissertation (Proposal) started with review of relevant books, research and articles. First effort was directed towards establishing what research has been published in the chosen area and then other research that might currently be in the progress has been identified. This process that is called Critical reviewing helped to develop knowledge on this subject and also assisted in clarifying research. Methods: The references used within this dissertation proposal (Relationship between leadership, motivation and culture) are not an extensive list and the common of them are drawn from American or British journals publishing on the topic of leadership, motivation and culture. Furthermore qualitative research is a systematic method of post-mortem, which follows a logical in depth method problem solving conflicting in certain directions (Thomas and Nelson, 2001). With qualitative research a hypothesis is often not given at the beginning of research studies instead prospective are explored as the data unfold. Although the research aimed to put it in sincere effort to make this research as genuine and possible, one must accept that limitations remain as they always do in all human activities. The geographical distance between, the West (US UK) and East (Pakistan) is off course one of the major hindrances, and the limitation of time is another. Financial resources put another limitation, which might not allow the researcher to go all out for the purpose of data collection. Furthermore, all previous studies on the area, although none concerning developing countries such as Pakistan, focused on leadership style. This research can help to develop better strategic plans, such strategic plans for research question. In order to achieve the objectives the literature available with the Anglia Ruskin University will be studied and analysed along with the academic literature included; Anglia Ruskin University Library, mainly academic journals, which are closely related to research topic, including Harvard Business review, HR development International, HRM journals, Journal of Management studies and primarily academic books, including HRM, SHRM, IHRM, employee relation, international management, psychological and sociological contract etc and CIPD weekly magazine, general magazine, economist etc. Different resource of information provided by the university portal will be accessed and used like Emerald Database, Thomson Gale, and Ebsco etc. Time line: Research will be started in the third week of August 2010, The period of the whole research will be six months. The following timeline is based on my current course schedule. Description of the activity Start Date End Date Draft Dissertation Proposal Submission of Dissertation Proposal 23rd Aug 2010 Literature Study Research Design Analyses your design Collect and Analyse collect date as per research Writing dissertation Finalizing the dissertation and necessary editing and correction Submission of dissertation 6th Jan 2011 Aim of study: Motivation in the workplace holds a direct link to the leadership within organisation. In the modern age work has become the focus of our live. Work is the place where most of us find much our sense of full meaning. It is hard today for many of us separate our work from the rest of our lives. We spend much of our time at work or in work related social and leisure activities. Within this work environment, at its core we can find Motivation, Leadership and culture. The way in which these three issues combine has a defining influence on how we lead our lives. Leadership now days face some serious problems in determining and understanding the factors which are the motivational factors for people and similarly to get maximum possible one need to determine these factors beforehand. However, by studying motivation insight is found, drawing useful generalization, all of which will make the process of leading other that more effective. For many years the Pakistani business, education and cultural environment has been influenced by American business, education and culture. But a clearer understanding of how successful these cross cultural mix has been needs investigation to judge its success. In this work it will be distinguished what motivates people as well as how leadership gives direction, drawing on cultural factors. Most commonly family leadership occurs in business enterprises even in large companies in almost in a similar way in both regions but more common in Asia primarily emphasizing with respect to cultural differences giving importance. Li Ka-shing [of the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa and Cheung Kong holding group], for example, has decided to give the leadership of his firms to his two sons these companies were run by him very closely, whereas in America if a company is being established and founded by a certain elder of the family of a largest firm will be holding the position but it is only if he has founded it and been establishing it. Boards and executives in America enjoy less freedom of action as compared to Asia. In America board of directors are mainly the authority to replace professional managers, they are either replaced or they get retired so they are replaced by other professional managers. Good companies train their own staff for future recruitment and they recruit and give priority to internal staff and chose their next chief executive from among themselves. On average a CEO will own less than 4 percent of its companys shares and would have served for at least thirty years with his company. There are certain companies who get publicity and try to over project than they actually are who hire executive from the external market without any experience. Then these CEOs strive to win and they think that money is not that important but professional achievement is all what they are after actually they are in a very highly competitive market. During the last decade in America its hard to get credit due to enormous inflation of top executives compensation packages. Many large companies in America receives their equity capital from capital market which is why they are mostly inclined and attentive towards Wall Street compared to Asian in common. Which is why Wall Street has definite expectations from the board of executives in terms of behaviour and performance and also whoever the next successor is too. It is the main reason that executive members of the board of directors get less chance to act freely in America rather than in Asia. In Asia, Siblings usually gets the succession. In Lis case, his two sons will receive it from him whereas Chief executive officer of General Electric is being groomed with a talent machine which is developed by Jack Welch. American firms are much more on advance stage than as of Asian firms, they To a significant degree, they have passed from founders family leadership to professional management and to capital obtained from the capital markets (rather than obtained from government-directly or indirectly-or from family fortunes). In this transition they have adopted particular styles of leadership responsive to boards (often led by outside directors) and to Wall Street. It is possible, but not certain, that Asian firms will also adopt this kind of important practice. Business Executives in Asia thinks its vital for them and their businesses to have connections with the ruling party or whoever is in the government offices, and in America its not that important to have such connections while in Asia it is the basic characteristics of executives and they think its also very important for their businesses. In America, Mostly business Executives even dont get the privilege to have any direct contact with top politicians and simply business is treated as business and executives dont even try to collaborate with top politicians and always keep the government on a certain distance and business is conducted by business people and experts. Still there are people in America who do involve and keep close ties with political guns so that to gain profitable margins but that wouldnt be on a large scale as of Asia and simply would be an exception.

The Quest :: essays research papers

CHAPTER 1 There is a beautiful land called Taylem. It has no cities, just little districts spread across the land. The districts are like villages where everything the village needs is grown and made in the district. The country is a beautiful place of rolling hills, dense forests and plenty of natural wildlife. The districts are not joined by nasty concrete roads but instead they have dirt or cobblestone roads made by people in the districts. There are no cars, planes, busses or trains in Taylem. People get around by horse and cart, home-made bikes, and boats. The country that borders Taylem is called Barstland. It is not as nice as Taylem but more people live there. Anyway, Barstland claimed that Taylem used to belong to them. But what they really wanted was the natural resources that Taylem had so much of. There was an abundance of gold, diamonds, timber, coal, and plenty of fresh water. So with that excuse they invaded Taylem. In Taylem there is a certain man named Figmo. He is 25 years old. His district has not yet been affected by the war. His dream and goal has always been to be an adventure hero, but he never had the chance in such a peaceful country. He is a man who has the gifts of an adventure hero. He is very resourceful, skilful, and very, very brave. He is tall, thin, good looking, and very clever. Even though he has all these qualities, he has a bad habit of sometimes being influenced by the pressure of others. Both of Figmo's parents had died when he was 20 years old leaving him a sailing ship called "The Jubilee". Everything on the Jubilee was made up of solid timber with plenty of gold because of the abundance of them in Taylem. Even though Figmo has no brothers or sisters, he has a very close friend named Grest. They are the same age and they have been friends since they were children. Grest is a good companion to have around because he is very encouraging. He is very good at following instructions but not good at giving them. Figmo also has a cousin called Kab. Kab is the kind of guy you just have to love. He is a chubby, funny sort of guy who could make everybody laugh in the midst of the worst situations. His biggest problem is that sometimes he takes his jokes too far. He is 23 years old. Grest has a fiance called Tashi. She is very attractive and she is very athletic.

Love in Allisons Bastard Out of Carolina :: Bastard Out of Carolina Essays

Love in Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina "Love" is a word, a signifier, tied to many meanings, all different in context, cultures, and ideologies. Love is used numerous ways in Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, by many characters. In the character of Bone, love is a confused thing, always changing, as Bone uses it to fit her life on the fly. In relation to parental love, Bone wants Daddy Glen to love her. However, early in the book, Bone's conception of "love" is that of a child, obviously. On page 52, she says, "I wanted him to love us. I wanted to be able to love him. I wanted him to pick me up gently and tell Mama again how much he loved us all." This idea of love is simple, involving hugs, smiles, and friendliness, the sort of "love" Bone gets from Anney. However, as Bone's relationship with Glen changes, so does her perception of "love". On page 108, Glen asks Bone, "'Don't you know how I love you?'" Bone thinks to herself, "No, I did not know." This is near the beginning of Bone's confusion about love, what it means, and what it does. At the time he asks her, he is molesting her. It is no wonder that Bone was confused, having love expressed simply, from her mother, and sexually (if indeed it is "love") from Glen. This confusion leads bone to question the idea of love, and to look elsewhere for it, perhaps to compare. Love, she finds, is a prominent idea in the Southern Baptist church. Bone is enthralled with the black and white of Christianity, the definitive line drawn between good and evil, because she can see where the love is, and what it does. She believes she can see that other people truly love one another, and believing this, she thinks the has a better grasp on the abstract idea of love. However, as Bone later discovers, love is abstract, and being abandoned by her mother, she never truly figures it out. The problem within, for Bone, is that love is a conceptual idea, and that, really, it means something different to each person. Not only that, but love is used by others, in ways that may not suit anyone else's conceptions of the idea. So when Anney insists to Bone and everyone else that Glen loves her and her girls, Bone tends, of course, to believe her, and thus the idea of love is transferred to how Glen treats Bone.

In the Snack Bar Essay

I picked this poem because I could picture the main character and his daily struggle clearly as I read the poem. Edwin Morgan used a lot of descriptions within the poem describing the surrounding area of the cafe and described the main character. The main theme that runs thought the whole poem is one of the daily struggle that an elderly gentleman’s has to go through although people might be aware of his presence they are ignorant to the fact of the help and support that he might need. This is portrayed in the poem by the following lines:- â€Å"An old man is trying to get to his feet† â€Å"Slowly he leavers himself up, his hands have no power. † â€Å"He is as far up as he can get. The dismal hump looming over him forces his head down† â€Å"The face not seem, bent down in a shadow under his cap† â€Å"Even on his feet he is staring at the floor or would be if he could see† Edwin Morgan’s descriptions uses a lot of literary techniques to help us picture the character one of the techniques he uses is juxtaposition this is used to show that nobody is really interested in this gentleman. â€Å"A few heads turn in the crowded evening snack bar. † Juxtaposition again is used describing the gentleman getting to his feet with no self-esteem or status. â€Å"Slowly he leavers himself up, his hands have no power† The word leavers also could represent the hard mechanical movement that the hands go through slow and stiff. The next literary technique showed enjambment something that has more than one meaning this is shown in â€Å"The dismal hump looming over him forces his head down† This line could mean that the character has a humped back but it can also mean that the character has a dark cloud hanging over him no self-esteem, no status. That he is unseen in today’s society. â€Å"He stands in his stained beltless gabardine like a monstrous animal caught in a tent. † This sentence gives the allusion of a creature like King Kong it also has alliteration running through the theme that he slitters along unnoticed. The first turning point with in the poem that makes the character real instead of a creature when he states that the character is actually blind and although his appearance isn’t appealing to people around him he probably would not notice as he cannot see it. â€Å"Or it would be, if he could see†. Edwin Morgan then goes on to explain that he notices how the man’s white stick that once might have been new and clean was now all â€Å"scuffed and muddy† which told myself that the man probably lived alone, that there was no one there to help him co-ordinate and see that his clothes were clean and presentable. Edwin Morgan then lists the characters afflictions in the poem making you see him how everyone around may see almost making you feel pity for the gentleman. â€Å"Long-blind, hunchback born, half paralysed. † Edwin Morgan then makes the character real when he states that he â€Å"Speaks† This makes large probably dirty deformed object actually human. â€Å"I need the toilet† the character is also showing his vulnerability that he has to state out loud a personal function, making him fragile and dependant on someone else’s help. The text then changes into two people having a conversation stopping him from being the solitary object that people are ignoring to a person asking for help a human being. The gentle man hakes the man’s arm trying to take charge of the situation but the gentleman tells him â€Å"Give me your arm its better he says† Again the communication between the two gentlemen makes him real and also fragile once again that he is dependent on someone else’s help. Onamatapia is used in the next line to show the speed used to travel across the cafe â€Å"Inch by inch† With a passive reference on how they go â€Å"We drift† Edwin Morgan then describes what is possibly a short distance actually feels like a vast area by using the slimily. â€Å"A few yards of floor are like a landscape† The word landscape could also refer to obsicals that they have to avoid to cross the floor. That it feels to him like â€Å"Time has almost stopped† that it is taking an eternity to reach their destination. Edwin Morgan then sees the world through the gentleman’s perspective : â€Å"Slidie puddle from the night’s umbrella’s† â€Å"Table edges, people’s feet† â€Å"Hiss of the coffee – machine, voices and laughter,† â€Å"Smell of cigar, hamburgers, wet coats steaming.† And the shuffle of the slow pace to the stairs shoes alliterations the shuffling sound in the words â€Å"And the slow dangerous inches to the stairs† The tone of the poem changes to quite an active one here but it also shows how dependant the gentleman still is still vulnerable and needs help â€Å"I put his hand on the rail. † â€Å"And take his stick† â€Å"He clings to me. â€Å"The stick â€Å"this is enjambment the stick could represent the gentleman helping him. â€Å"White tiles and mirrors at last, he shambles† the writer is using synecdoche here to symbolise that they have reached their destination.

Certificate in Financial Maths & Modelling Syllabus

Certificate in Financial Maths & Modelling Syllabus Overview The Certificate in Financial Maths & Modelling provides a rigorous and integrated set of quantitative tools to understand and ex plain financial instruments, financial risk and corporate value and the fundamentally important relationship between them. The emphasis throughout is on t he practical modelling of real life problems and opportunities. Techniques such as no-arbitrage pricing, duration, convexity and portfolio analysis – including the trade-off between risk and return – are explained and applied. The course analyses the use of options for financial risk management, and the valuation of different types of option using binomial pricing models, the Black Scholes model and other techniques. It also int roduces and applies Value at Risk measures, their potential us es and their limitations. Study Unit 1 – Fundamental concepts in financial maths and modelling Study Unit 1 introduces the fundamental concepts of financial maths and modelling in the five areas of: interest rat e mathematics; modelling the values of a series of fixed or growing future cashflows; modelling the term structure of int erest rates using no arbitrage relationships; selected issues in probability and statistical models; and modelling the maths of Value at Risk. Study Unit 2 – Modelling the maths of debt Study Unit 2 looks at modelling the maths of debt in the main areas of: present values, fut ure cash flows, timing and risk; and interest rat e sensitivity and duration models, in particular value relationships with respect to yield, maturity, coupon rate and coupon frequency. Study Unit 3 – Modelling the maths of foreign exchange Study Unit 3 introduces the c oncepts of modelling t he maths of foreign exchange in the four areas of: quoting conventions; hedging using forward foreign exchange cont racts; the relationships bet ween foreign exchange rates, interest rates and inflation rates and applying VaR to foreign exchange risk management. Study Unit 4 – Modelling the maths of derivatives Study Unit 4 covers the maths and modelling of derivatives in t he two areas of: int roduction to derivatives mathematics; and modelling capital market swap mathematics. Study Unit 5 – Modelling the maths of options Study Unit 5 covers the maths and modelling of options in the four areas of: option payoff mathematics; option payoff maths in the context of hedging; option valuation modelling; and options arbitrage and the put-call parity relationship. Study Unit 6 – Modelling the maths of portfolios and corporate finance Study Unit 6 introduces the fundamental concepts of modelling the maths of port folios and corporate finance in the t wo areas of: modelling port folios – analysis of risk and return, and modelling for corporate finance – corporate valuation and the impact of changing capit al structure. Association of Corporate Treasurers (01. 04. 11, subject to change) Study Unit 1 – Fundamental concepts in financial maths and modelling Unit introduction 1. 0. 1 Notation and rules of algebra 1. 0. 2 Financial modelling Section 1 – Interest rate mathematics 1. 1. 1 Interest calculations and quoting convention s 1. 1. 2 The time-value relationship Section 2 – Modelling values of a series of future cashflows 1. 2. 1 Infinite series cashflows (perpetuities) and their valuation 1. 2. Finite series cashflows (annuities) and their valuation Section 3 – Modelling the term structure of interest rate s: no arbitrage relationships 1. 3. 1 Zero coupon, forward and par structures of interest rates: different forms of yield curves 1. 3. 2 No arbitrage relationships between zero coupon, forward and par rates Section 4 – Probability and stati sti cal models: selected issue s 1. 4. 1 Measures of central location (or central tendency), dispersion and correlation 1. 4. 2 Frequency distributions in theory and in practice Section 5 – Modelling the maths of Value at Risk 1. . 1 Modelling the maths of Value at Risk for single risks 1. 5. 2 Extending the modelling of Value at Risk Study Unit 2 – Modelling the maths of debt Section 1 – Short term debt 2. 1. 1 Short term debt issuers, market participants and market conventions 2. 1. 2 Calculation of interest and valuation of short term debt instruments Section 2 – Longer term debt 2. 2. 1 Analysis and valuation of bonds 2. 2. 2 Real interest rates and inflation indexing Section 3 – Interest rate sensitivity and duration models 2. 3. Duration and int erest rat e price sensitivity, relative and absolute measures 2. 3. 2 Interest rate immunisation, convexity and modified convexity Study Unit 3 – Modelling the maths of foreign exchange Section 1 – Foreign exchange mathematics 3. 1. 1 Converting between currencies: using spot foreign exchange rates 3. 1. 2 Converting between currencies: determining and using forward foreign exchange rat es 3. 1. 3 The maths of foreign exchange risk management 3. 1. 4 Applying Value at Risk to foreign exchange risk management Study Unit 4 – Modelling the maths of derivatives Section 1 – Introduction to derivative s mathematics 4. 1. 1 Payoffs for fixing derivatives and options 4. 1. 2 The maths of FRAs: cashflows, hedging, valuation and basis risk 4. 1. 3 Futures contracts: cashflows, hedging and valuation Section 2 – Modelling swap mathematics 4. 2. 1 The maths of capital market swaps including interest rate swaps 4. 2. 2 The maths of cross-currency interest rate swaps  © Association of Corporate Treasurers (01. 04. 11, subject to change) Study Unit 5 – Modelling the maths of options Section 1 – Option payoff mathematics 5. 1. 1 Payoffs from trading strategies with single options 5. 1. 2 Payoffs from trading strategies involving more than one option Section 2 – Option payoff maths: hedging and hedged results achieved 5. 2. 1 Hedging a portfolio: options plus underlying asset/(liability) 5. 2. 2 Hedging corporate exposures with options Section 3 – Option valuation modelling 5. 3. 1 Binomial option valuation models 5. 3. 2 Black Scholes option pricing model 5. 3. 3 Arbitrage and the put-call parity relationship Study Unit 6 – Modelling the maths of portfolios and corporate finance Section 1 – Modelling portfolios: analysi s of ri sk and return 6. 1. 1 Modelling simple port folios: analysis of risk and return 6. 1. 2 Modelling multi-asset port folios & portfolios including liabilities Section 2 – Modelling for corporate finance 6. 2. 1 Modelling the cost of corporate capital 6. 2. 2 Modelling the relationship between corporate value and capital structure 6. 2. 3 Modelling corporate valuation  © Association of Corporate Treasurers (01. 04. 11, subject to change)