Accounting historians notebook, 2011, Vol. 34, no. 1 (April) [whole issue]

Copyright held by: Academy of Accounting Historian

'Eque-cultural identity': A case study of the Scone and Upper Hunter Horse Festival and the Georgetown Festival of the Horse

This thesis examines two horse festivals, one held in Scone (New South Wales, Australia) and the other in Georgetown (Kentucky, the United States of America). The two major aims of the thesis are (1) to advance the existing knowledge of the role non-humans play in the creation and maintenance of place-identity; and (2) to enhance an understanding of how festivals contribute to this particular identity in nonmetropolitan locations and to identify and explain how relationships between humans and non-humans are negotiated in these festival spaces. The term ‘eque-cultural identity’ is employed throughout the thesis in reference to these issues. The main aims of the Scone and Upper Hunter Horse Festival and the Georgetown Festival of the Horse were to hold festivals that were fun, celebrated community and the towns’ important relationships with horses. The festivals were explored as ‘socio-material’ assemblages with horses recognised as co-constitutive actors within these spaces. This study argues that the relationship between humans and thoroughbred horses, in particular, has played a significant role in the creation of an ‘equescape’, a regional identity for the Bluegrass region of Kentucky and the Upper Hunter region of NSW, and a local identity for Scone and Georgetown. In turn, the festivals have assisted in maintaining these ‘eque-cultural identities’ through the marketing and annual performance of these events. This public display of human-horse interaction in shared social spaces highlights the significant relationship that persists between place, identity and human-animal relations

'Eque-cultural identity': A case study of the Scone and Upper Hunter Horse Festival and the Georgetown Festival of the Horse

This thesis examines two horse festivals, one held in Scone (New South Wales, Australia) and the other in Georgetown (Kentucky, the United States of America). The two major aims of the thesis are (1) to advance the existing knowledge of the role non-humans play in the creation and maintenance of place-identity; and (2) to enhance an understanding of how festivals contribute to this particular identity in nonmetropolitan locations and to identify and explain how relationships between humans and non-humans are negotiated in these festival spaces. The term ‘eque-cultural identity’ is employed throughout the thesis in reference to these issues. The main aims of the Scone and Upper Hunter Horse Festival and the Georgetown Festival of the Horse were to hold festivals that were fun, celebrated community and the towns’ important relationships with horses. The festivals were explored as ‘socio-material’ assemblages with horses recognised as co-constitutive actors within these spaces. This study argues that the relationship between humans and thoroughbred horses, in particular, has played a significant role in the creation of an ‘equescape’, a regional identity for the Bluegrass region of Kentucky and the Upper Hunter region of NSW, and a local identity for Scone and Georgetown. In turn, the festivals have assisted in maintaining these ‘eque-cultural identities’ through the marketing and annual performance of these events. This public display of human-horse interaction in shared social spaces highlights the significant relationship that persists between place, identity and human-animal relations

Pure Exploration with Multiple Correct Answers

We determine the sample complexity of pure exploration bandit problems with multiple good answers. We derive a lower bound using a new game equilibrium argument. We show how continuity and convexity properties of single-answer problems ensures that the Track-and-Stop algorithm has asymptotically optimal sample complexity. However, that convexity is lost when going to the multiple-answer setting. We present a new algorithm which extends Track-and-Stop to the multiple-answer case and has asymptotic sample complexity matching the lower bound

Algorithmic Complexity Bounds on Future Prediction Errors

We bound the future loss when predicting any (computably) stochastic sequence online. Solomonoff finitely bounded the total deviation of his universal predictor $M$ from the true distribution $mu$ by the algorithmic complexity of $mu$. Here we assume we are at a time $t>1$ and already observed $x=x_1...x_t$. We bound the future prediction performance on $x_{t+1}x_{t+2}...$ by a new variant of algorithmic complexity of $mu$ given $x$, plus the complexity of the randomness deficiency of $x$. The new complexity is monotone in its condition in the sense that this complexity can only decrease if the condition is prolonged. We also briefly discuss potential generalizations to Bayesian model classes and to classification problems.Comment: 21 page