Just Methods

Just Methods
Author: Alison M. Jaggar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317264754

The supplemented edition of this important reader includes a substantive new introduction by the author on the changing nature of feminist methodology. It takes into account the implications of a major new study included for this first time in this book on poverty and gender (in)equality, and it includes an article discussing the ways in which this study was conducted using the research methods put forward by the first edition. This article begins by explaining why a new and better poverty metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. Feminist research is a growing tradition of inquiry that aims to produce knowledge not biased by inequitable assumptions about gender and related categories such as class, race, religion, sexuality, and nationality."Just Methods" is designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines. Rather than being concerned with particular techniques of inquiry, the interdisciplinary readings in this book address broad questions of research methodology. They are designed to help researchers think critically and constructively about the epistemological and ethical implications of various approaches to research selection and research design, evidence-gathering techniques, and publication of results.A key theme running through the readings is the complex interrelationship between social power and inequality on the one hand and the production of knowledge on the other. A second and related theme is the inseparability of research projects and methodologies from ethical and political values."

Just Methods

Just Methods
Author: Alison M. Jaggar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317264746

The supplemented edition of this important reader includes a substantive new introduction by the author on the changing nature of feminist methodology. It takes into account the implications of a major new study included for this first time in this book on poverty and gender (in)equality, and it includes an article discussing the ways in which this study was conducted using the research methods put forward by the first edition. This article begins by explaining why a new and better poverty metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. Feminist research is a growing tradition of inquiry that aims to produce knowledge not biased by inequitable assumptions about gender and related categories such as class, race, religion, sexuality, and nationality."Just Methods" is designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines. Rather than being concerned with particular techniques of inquiry, the interdisciplinary readings in this book address broad questions of research methodology. They are designed to help researchers think critically and constructively about the epistemological and ethical implications of various approaches to research selection and research design, evidence-gathering techniques, and publication of results.A key theme running through the readings is the complex interrelationship between social power and inequality on the one hand and the production of knowledge on the other. A second and related theme is the inseparability of research projects and methodologies from ethical and political values."

The Business Value of Agile Software Methods

The Business Value of Agile Software Methods
Author: David F. Rico
Publisher: J. Ross Publishing
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2009-10-15
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1604270314

Whether to continue using traditional cost and benefit analysis methods such as systems and software engineering standards or to use a relatively new family of software development processes known as Agile methods is one of most prevalent questions within the information technology field today. Since each family of methods has its strengths and weaknesses, the question being raised by a growing number of executives and practitioners is: Which family of methods provides the greater business value and return on investment (ROI)? Whereas traditional methods have been in use for many decades, Agile methods are still a new phenomenon and, until now, very little literature has existed on how to quantify the business value of Agile methods in economic terms, such as ROI and net present value (NPV). Using cost of quality, total cost of ownership, and total life cycle cost parameters, The Business Value of Agile Software Methods offers a comprehensive methodology and introduces the industry's initial top-down parametric models for quantifying the costs and benefits of using Agile methods to create innovative software products. Based on real-world data, it illustrates the first simple-to-use parametric models of Real Options for estimating the business value of Agile methods since the inception of the Nobel prize winning Black-Scholes formulas. Numerous examples on how to estimate the costs, benefits, ROI, NPV, and real options of the major types of Agile methods such as Scrum, Extreme Programming and Crystal Methods are also included. In addition, this reference provides the first comprehensive compilation of cost and benefit data on Agile methods from an analysis of hundreds of research studies.The Business Value of Agile Software Methods shatters key myths and misconceptions surrounding the modern-day phenomenon of Agile methods for creating innovative software products. It provides a complete business value comparison between traditional and Agile methods. The keys to maximizing the business value of any method are low costs and high benefits and the business value of Agile methods, when compared to traditional methods, proves to be very impressive. Agile methods are a new model of project management that can be used to improve the success, business value, and ROI of high-risk and highly complex IT projects in today's dynamic, turbulent, and highly uncertain marketplace. If you are an executive, manager, scholar, student, consultant or practitioner currently on the fence, you need to read this book!

Scala and Spark for Big Data Analytics

Scala and Spark for Big Data Analytics
Author: Md. Rezaul Karim
Publisher: Packt Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 786
Release: 2017-07-25
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1783550503

Harness the power of Scala to program Spark and analyze tonnes of data in the blink of an eye! About This Book Learn Scala's sophisticated type system that combines Functional Programming and object-oriented concepts Work on a wide array of applications, from simple batch jobs to stream processing and machine learning Explore the most common as well as some complex use-cases to perform large-scale data analysis with Spark Who This Book Is For Anyone who wishes to learn how to perform data analysis by harnessing the power of Spark will find this book extremely useful. No knowledge of Spark or Scala is assumed, although prior programming experience (especially with other JVM languages) will be useful to pick up concepts quicker. What You Will Learn Understand object-oriented & functional programming concepts of Scala In-depth understanding of Scala collection APIs Work with RDD and DataFrame to learn Spark's core abstractions Analysing structured and unstructured data using SparkSQL and GraphX Scalable and fault-tolerant streaming application development using Spark structured streaming Learn machine-learning best practices for classification, regression, dimensionality reduction, and recommendation system to build predictive models with widely used algorithms in Spark MLlib & ML Build clustering models to cluster a vast amount of data Understand tuning, debugging, and monitoring Spark applications Deploy Spark applications on real clusters in Standalone, Mesos, and YARN In Detail Scala has been observing wide adoption over the past few years, especially in the field of data science and analytics. Spark, built on Scala, has gained a lot of recognition and is being used widely in productions. Thus, if you want to leverage the power of Scala and Spark to make sense of big data, this book is for you. The first part introduces you to Scala, helping you understand the object-oriented and functional programming concepts needed for Spark application development. It then moves on to Spark to cover the basic abstractions using RDD and DataFrame. This will help you develop scalable and fault-tolerant streaming applications by analyzing structured and unstructured data using SparkSQL, GraphX, and Spark structured streaming. Finally, the book moves on to some advanced topics, such as monitoring, configuration, debugging, testing, and deployment. You will also learn how to develop Spark applications using SparkR and PySpark APIs, interactive data analytics using Zeppelin, and in-memory data processing with Alluxio. By the end of this book, you will have a thorough understanding of Spark, and you will be able to perform full-stack data analytics with a feel that no amount of data is too big. Style and approach Filled with practical examples and use cases, this book will hot only help you get up and running with Spark, but will also take you farther down the road to becoming a data scientist.

Objections to Nuclear Defence

Objections to Nuclear Defence
Author: Nigel Blake
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2020-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 100019969X

Moral and political questions are vitally relevant to the issue of survival in the nuclear age. Ethics has much to teach us about the meaning of national defence and civic responsibility in the nuclear state. For instance, those in NATO who argue for increased spending on such weapons do so with the intention of defending the values of the West. They must therefore be absolutely sure that they are not – as the contributors to this volume, originally published in 1984, powerfully suggest – undermining or destroying those values by the very means they adopt to preserve them. With the continued success of nuclear deterrence itself in question, responsible citizens feel an urgent need to assess the clash between personal doubts, cherished principles and their governments’ loudly voiced moral certainties. In Objections to Nuclear Defence, professional philosophers of widely varying persuasions provide new analyses of these problems. They spell out clearly and vividly the moral and political objections – objections to the concrete nuclear policies of the Western governments today. Often impassioned but always rational, the book will be of special interest to students of international affairs, peace studies and applied philosophy as well as to the general reader who is trying to choose between political parties in Europe or North America.

Ruby in a Nutshell

Ruby in a Nutshell
Author: Yukihiro Matsumoto
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2002
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0596002149

Portable and convenient, "Ruby Essentials" is a concise reference to the features of Ruby's command-line options, syntax, built-in variables, functions and other commonly used classes. Additional code, discussion and examples are included.

Macromedia Coldfusion MX Web Application Construction Kit

Macromedia Coldfusion MX Web Application Construction Kit
Author: Ben Forta
Publisher: Macromedia Press
Total Pages: 1548
Release: 2003
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780321125163

This is an all-in-one kit that gives readers everything they need to create Web-based applications--including the latest version of the ColdFusion Web Application Server and development environment. This is the book that has taught thousands of developers all they need to know about ColdFusion.

New Methods in Social Justice Research for the Twenty-First Century

New Methods in Social Justice Research for the Twenty-First Century
Author: Alphia Possamai-Inesedy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 90
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317988833

This book provides a source of innovative theories and data for researchers grappling with social justice methodology and research methods in an environment constrained by funding agendas. This book foregrounds and promotes creativity and imagination within a critical frame of reference to challenge the status quo. It invites people into creative spaces for thinking about and researching ‘the social’. With/in these spaces both the processes of social justice research (methodology) and the presentation of the research (re-presentation) are seen as being intertwined. This book explores methodologies which include, but are not limited to: writing as inquiry; performance ethnography; emotional geographies; arts-based inquiry; autoethnography; evocative inquiry; reader’s theatre. This may include poetry, monologues, art, music, dance, and other creative mediums. Many of these methods are not new per se. What is new is the blurring of traditional research boundaries, for example between the social sciences and the arts, and the initial movement of these methods from the margins to the mainstream in the search for more successful ways to effect social justice outcomes. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology.

Parents and Family Planning Services

Parents and Family Planning Services
Author: Ann Cartwright
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2017-07-12
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1351500864

Parents and Family Planning Services focuses on parents of a sample of newborns in twelve areas of England and Wales during the 1970s. The parents were asked about their contraceptive practices, attitudes toward different methods of birth control, and opinions of-and experience with-different types of services. General practitioners, health visitors, and doctors at family planning clinics were interviewed about their views and practices. This juxtaposition of the attitudes of parents and professionals highlights the reasons why people do not use effective methods of birth control, and leads to suggestions as to how they could be helped to do so. Several chapters discuss fathers' attitudes and actions, the views of parents and professionals, and the influence of religion, social class, education, and geographic location. The final chapter is concerned with possible changes in contraceptive habits, and the ways in which services can develop to help more women avoid unwanted pregnancies. The work has ongoing policy implications, and also indicates how attitudes and change evolve over time. Parents and Family Planning Services is predicated on the assumption that unwanted fertility is to be avoided. It underscores the need for a proliferation of different sorts of services: more clinics, an increase in the help and advice given at hospitals, the development of a supportive and integrated home service. This volume is a significant contribution to the literature in this vital field. It remains essential reading for both professionals and concerned policy personnel, particularly those interested in the evolution of policy and practice.

The First 20 Hours

The First 20 Hours
Author: Josh Kaufman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2013-06-13
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1101623047

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.