Bias

Some of Law and Economics’ basic claims have come to be criticized as a result of empirical findings that question their viability. Particularly, the premise that agents consistently act rationally and with their self-interest in mind seems problematic. What the consequences of the criticism mean for Law and Economics’ tenability depends largely on the questions whether (1) some elements are unassailable to the alternative’s objections and (2) the alternative is a systematic whole. It is argued that Law and Economics may be salvaged, if it is minimized and its ambitions are tempered. This means focusing on the stable, a priori, elements inherent to it.

Solar energy applications require readily available, site-oriented, and long-term solar data. However, the frequent unavailability of diffuse irradiation, in contrast to its need, has led to the evolution of various regression models to predict it from the more commonly available data. Estimating the diffuse component from global radiation is one such technique. The present work focuses on improvement in the accuracy of the models for predicting horizontal diffuse irradiation using hourly solar radiation database from nine sites across the globe. The influence of sunshine fraction, cloud cover, and air mass on estimation of diffuse radiation is investigated. Inclusion of these along with hourly clearness index, leads to the development of a series of models for each site. Estimated values of hourly diffuse radiation are compared with measured values in terms of error statistics and indicators like, R2, mean bias deviation, root mean square deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. A new me...

We test for the existence of gender bias in power relationships. Specifically, we examine whether police officers are less likely to issue traffic tickets to men or to women during traffic stops. Whereas the conventional wisdom, which we document with surveys, is that women are less likely to receive tickets, our analysis shows otherwise. Examination of a pooled sample of

The objective of this research was to test suitability of the Dumas combustion method to completely substitute the Kjeldahl method in routine laboratory determination of crude protein content in cereals and oilseeds. The validation of the method demonstrated that it is able to determine crude protein content in cereals and oilseeds in an efficient and accurate manner, with a detection

Many real-life graphs such as social networks and peer-to-peer networks capture the relationships among the nodes by using trust scores to label the edges. Important usage of such networks includes trust prediction, finding the most reliable or trusted node in a local subgraph, etc. For many of these applications, it is crucial to assess the prestige and bias of a node. The bias of a node denotes its propensity to trust/mistrust its neighbours and is closely related to truthfulness. If a node trusts all its neighbours, its recommendation of another node as trustworthy is less reliable. It is based on the idea that the recommendation of a highly biased node should weigh less. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to compute the bias and prestige of nodes in networks where the edge weight denotes the trust score. Unlike most other graph-based algorithms, our method works even when the edge weights are not necessarily positive. The algorithm is iterative and runs in O(km) time where k is the number of iterations and m is the total number of edges in the network. The algorithm exhibits several other desirable properties. It converges to a unique value very quickly. Also, the error in bias and prestige values at any particular iteration is bounded. Further, experiments show that our model conforms well to social theories such as the balance theory (enemy of a friend is an enemy, etc.).

Objective: This study was done to assess the accuracy of Accutrend GCT meter in determining blood cholesterol levels in our setup, with an aim to recommend its use in clinical practice
Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted on 251 healthy volunteers from April to May 2013. Capillary whole blood samples were obtained using sterile lancets and cholesterol levels were measured using Accutrend GCT meter (Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany) using the standard technique. Three ml whole blood was also collected in plain tubes by the same operator without applying a tourniquet. Serum cholesterol levels were determined using Merck Microlab 300 Automated Clinical Chemistry Analyser the same day. The laboratory technician performing this test was blinded to results obtained with Accutrend GCT meter. The seven patients with readings beyond the analytic range of the Accutrend GCT meter were excluded, meaning that data analysis was performed on 244 results only.
Results: Results of 182 males and 62 females having a mean age of 38.54± 15.25 years were analysed. There was a significant difference in mean cholesterol levels measured by Accutrend GCT and Microlab-300 (4.73± 0.74mmol/l and 4.67± 0.86 mmol/l; p=0.021), producing a measurement bias of 1.43% with Accutrend GCT meter. A strong positive correlation was found between the results of the two techniques (r=0.852 ,p<0.001).
Conclusions: Accutrend GCT meter provides accurate measurement of blood cholesterol levels and its use should be encouraged for point-of-care measurements.

In the evaluation of models, theories, information retrieval
systems, learning systems and neural networks we must deal
with the ubiquitous contingency matrix of decisions versus
events. In general this is manifested as the result matrix for a
series of experiments aimed at predicting or labeling a series
of events. The classical evaluation techniques come from
information retrieval, using recall and precision as measures.
These are now applied well beyond this field, but
unfortunately they have fundamental flaws, are frequently
abused, and can prefer substandard models. This paper
proposes a well-principled evaluation technique that better
takes into account the negative effect of an incorrect result
and is directly quantifiable as the probability that an informed
decision was made rather than a random guess.

Objectives: This article presents a Cochrane/Campbell systematic review of the evidence on the effect of parent training to support the parenting of parents with intellectual disabilities. Method: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing parent training interventions for parents with intellectual disability with usual care or with a control group were included in the review. Outcomes: The attainment of parenting skills specific to the intervention, safe home practices, and the understanding of child health were the outcomes of interest. Results: Three trials met the inclusion criteria. All three indicated improved parenting skills following parenting training. Conclusions: The quality of the evidence is moderate to low, with limited information available to assess possible bias. The presented evidence seems promising; however, there is a need for larger RCTs of interventions before conclusions can be drawn about the effectiveness of parent training for this group of parents.

In contrast to the normative theory of evidence, where the impact of data is determined solely by their informativeness, this paper develops the thesis that the impact of evidence on intuitive judgements of probabilities depends critically on whether it is perceived as causal, ...