Florentin’s Laws

Probably all of us used to hear the Murphy’s Law, in particular if you’re in industrial design office. This rule, saying that ‘If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong,’ has become a rule of thumb in industrial design, for instance electrical engineers who design USB plug will make the plugs asymmetrically, only to make sure that no stupid person will plug the USB in the wrong way

Introduction

The book aims to fill the gap between conventional research methodology books and published reports of research such as are found in academic journals. While volumes on methodology may explain how and why a particular approach to data collection should be used, they tend not to give specific and detailed examples of the 'messiness' of research - what may go wrong and how to overcome the obstacles that invariably get in the way of a smooth research journey

How Emotions Affect Farm and Ranch Succession

Whenever a family has a discussion about agricultural estate planning, conversations can become emotionally charged. Stakes can be high and feelings can be hurt just by using the wrong words in a sentence. If things go south and parties are upset, they will likely withdraw from the dialogue or leave the gathering altogether. When communications or negotiations break down, one way to help is to think about the five emotional blocks that need to be overcome if possible. They are: appreciation, affiliation, autonomy, status and role. Let\u27s examine each to see how these blockages can interfere with a family moving forward

What could possibly go wrong? (by way of introducing ‘the ethnographer’ to a primary school assembly)

This récit recounts the experience of the author in engaging with the idea of ‘who is the ethnographer’ to a whole-school assembly, before entering an English primary school to begin a year-long ethnographic study. Its purpose is three-fold. First, to re-visit the intentions, excitements and possibilities of the author, introducing herself to teachers and children alike in this forum as a creative performance. Second, to recount ‘what actually happened’ in the assembly through her re-engagement with an account she made of it immediately following the event. Third, in light of the somewhat unexpected (and certainly chaotic) occurrences, to consider just what this produced and enabled, ethnographically, that may not have otherwise become possible

Assessing Responsibility: Fixing Blame versus Fixing Problems

In the midst of even the most tragic circumstances attending the aftermath of disaster, and co-existing with a host of complex emotions, arises a practical consideration: how might similar tragedies be prevented in the future? The complexity of such situations must not be neglected. More than mere prevention must usually be taken into consideration. But the practical question is of considerable importance. In what follows, I will offer some reasons for being concerned that efforts to fix the problem -- efforts, that is, directed toward insuring that similar tragedies do not occur in the future -- can easily be obstructed by attempts to fix blame -- that is, efforts directed toward determining which agent among those involved is guilty of wrong-doing. This is the case, I shall contend, even where some agent or another really is guilty of wrong-doing. The problem is further complicated by a pervasive human tendency to imagine that some agent or another must be responsible in some way for any tragedy that occurs -- even when this is not really true -- but its influence is not at all limited to such cases. As I shall suggest, philosophical attitudes toward issues of determinism and free will may be implicated in the different approaches people take to the problem of assessing what has gone wrong in a particular case and how to fix it, but such deep philosophical problems need not be resolved here. The point is not that humans are never guilty of wrong-doing (since their actions, the argument might go, are all products of outside forces), but rather that whatever the case may be about guilt, tracking down guilty persons is a different business from fixing institutionally-embedded problems so as to lessen the likelihood of their recurrence

Man to Man: We Can Stop Sexual Violence

I was lucky enough to grow up with a loving mother who taught me early on to respect every woman and, more so, to never overstep the boundaries between people unless I am invited to do so with full cognizance of the actions of both parties. To be less philosophical, she was always very clear with me that touching no-no parts with any person (in my case, a lady) without express consent is wrong every time and that I would never forgive myself if I forgot that maxim in a flight of “passion.” At no time in my life have I ever thought that it was okay to “go the distance” with a woman who had not opened herself up to me in that way. This all makes sense, right? Everybody with me? See, I never thought I had to clarify that understanding; that is, until I got to college. [excerpt

Avoiding, acknowledging and fixing mistakes: investigation of a complaint about the Australian Community Pharmacy Authority

This investigation into the approval process for pharmaceuticals produced findings with broader lessons for Commonwealth agencies about the importance of proper program design, sharing information necessary to ensure proper outcomes and about service recovery arrangements when things go wrong. Foreword This is a report on the Ombudsman’s investigation of a complaint from a pharmacist about the Department of Health (DoH) and the Department of Human Services (DHS). The complainant contacted our office because he believed that a neighbouring pharmacy had been incorrectly approved to dispense medications under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). He told us the neighbouring pharmacy had relocated from its original site to one closer to his pharmacy than the rules allowed and this affected the viability of his business. He had unsuccessfully attempted to find out from DoH and DHS how this had happened, and was frustrated in his attempts to obtain a resolution. The approval process, jointly administered by DoH and DHS, relies upon the pharmacist applying for approval to provide evidence of the distances between their new location, old location and any other nearby pharmacies. There was an error in the measurement of the distances between the pharmacies. This error had come to the attention of the DoH before the approval was finalised, but the information was not relayed to DHS, which granted the approval without knowing that the application did not meet the location requirements. We found problems in the design of the pharmacy approval program, which focussed primarily on the interests of the applicant pharmacist without considering how to protect the interests of other pharmacies in the area. The program was delivered by two separate agencies, without sufficient regard to the need to share information in a timely way to ensure the integrity of the scheme. When it became apparent to DoH that DHS had made a decision based on wrong information, it initially failed to consult with DHS about how to put things right. In our view, DoH responded to the mistake in an inappropriately defensive way. Finally, when someone affected by the error complained about it, they were met by an unwillingness to explain or admit fault, and told their only option was to go to court. We were unable to obtain a remedy for the complainant. However, DoH agreed that, if the complainant makes a claim for compensation including evidence of loss, it will refer that claim to its Minister for consideration. We note that DoH has already implemented changes to its administrative procedures to address some of the problems that this complaint revealed. At the conclusion of this report we make four recommendations that we believe will further strengthen those arrangements, and provide a more open and responsive complaint process. While this complaint is about a very particular set of factual circumstances, we believe it holds broader lessons for Commonwealth agencies about the importance of proper program design, sharing information necessary to ensure proper outcomes and about service recovery arrangements when things go wrong

The conduct of the sample average when the first moment is infinite

Many books about probability and statistics only mention the weak and the strong law of large numbers for samples from distributions with finite expectation. However, these laws also hold for distributions with infinite expectation and then the sample average has to go to infinity with increasing sample size.\ud \ud Being curious about the way in which this would happen, we simulated increasing samples (up to n= 40000) from three distributions with infinite expectation. The results were somewhat surprising at first sight, but understandable after some thought. Most statisticians, when asked, seem to expect a gradual increase of the average with the size of the sample. So did we. In general, however, this proves to be wrong and for different parent distributions different types of conduct appear from this experiment.\ud \ud The samples from the "absolute Cauchy"-distribution are most interesting from a practical point of view: the average takes a high jump from time to time and decreases in between. In practice it might well happen, that the observations causing the jumps would be discarded as outlying observations