Parkinson's Law Quantified: Three Investigations on Bureaucratic Inefficiency

We formulate three famous, descriptive essays of C.N. Parkinson on bureaucratic inefficiency in a quantifiable and dynamical socio-physical framework. In the first model we show how the use of recent opinion formation models for small groups can be used to understand Parkinson's observation that decision making bodies such as cabinets or boards become highly inefficient once their size exceeds a critical 'Coefficient of Inefficiency', typically around 20. A second observation of Parkinson - which is sometimes referred to as Parkinson's Law - is that the growth of bureaucratic or administrative bodies usually goes hand in hand with a drastic decrease of its overall efficiency. In our second model we view a bureaucratic body as a system of a flow of workers, which enter, become promoted to various internal levels within the system over time, and leave the system after having served for a certain time. Promotion usually is associated with an increase of subordinates. Within the proposed model it becomes possible to work out the phase diagram under which conditions bureaucratic growth can be confined. In our last model we assign individual efficiency curves to workers throughout their life in administration, and compute the optimum time to send them to old age pension, in order to ensure a maximum of efficiency within the body - in Parkinson's words we compute the 'Pension Point'.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

The ‘dark side’ of personal values:relations to clinical constructs and their implications

Personal values are considered as guiding principles in one's life. Much of previous research on values hasconsequently focused on its relations with variables that are considered positive, including subjective well-being, personality traits, or behavior (e.g. health-related). However, in this study (N = 366) the negative‘dark’ side of values is examined. Specifically, the study investigated the relations between Schwartz' (1992)ten value types and four different clinical variables — anxiety, depression, stress, and schizotypy with its subdimensions, unusual experience, cognitive disorganization, introverted anhedonia, and impulsive nonconfor-mity. Positive relations between achievement and depression and stress, and negative relations between anxiety and hedonism and stimulation were predicted and found. Multiple regressions revealed that the ten value typesexplained the most variance in impulsive nonconformity and the least variance in unusual experience. Overall,values were better in predicting more cognitive clinical variables (e.g., cognitive disorganization) whereas clinical constructs were better in predicting more affective values (e.g., hedonism). Implications of the findings for value research are discussed

Is the Tsallis entropy stable?

The question of whether the Tsallis entropy is Lesche-stable is revisited. It is argued that when physical averages are computed with the escort probabilities, the correct application of the concept of Lesche-stability requires use of the escort probabilities. As a consequence, as shown here, the Tsallis entropy is unstable but the thermodynamic averages are stable. We further show that Lesche stability as well as thermodynamic stability can be obtained if the homogeneous entropy is used as the basis of the formulation of non-extensive thermodynamics. In this approach, the escort distribution arises naturally as a secondary structure.Comment: 6 page

Aronsons Antistreptococcenserum bei puerperaler Sepsis

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Schumpeterian economic dynamics as a quantifiable minimum model of evolution

We propose a simple quantitative model of Schumpeterian economic dynamics. New goods and services are endogenously produced through combinations of existing goods. As soon as new goods enter the market they may compete against already existing goods, in other words new products can have destructive effects on existing goods. As a result of this competition mechanism existing goods may be driven out from the market - often causing cascades of secondary defects (Schumpeterian gales of destruction). The model leads to a generic dynamics characterized by phases of relative economic stability followed by phases of massive restructuring of markets - which could be interpreted as Schumpeterian business `cycles'. Model timeseries of product diversity and productivity reproduce several stylized facts of economics timeseries on long timescales such as GDP or business failures, including non-Gaussian fat tailed distributions, volatility clustering etc. The model is phrased in an open, non-equilibrium setup which can be understood as a self organized critical system. Its diversity dynamics can be understood by the time-varying topology of the active production networks.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure

Creativity Enhancement Methods for Adults: A Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes 332 effect sizes of various methods to enhance creativity. We clustered all studies into twelve methods to identify the most effective creativity enhancement methods. We found that, on average, creativity can be enhanced, Hedges’ g = 0.53, 95%-CI [0.44, 0.61], with 70.09% of the participants in the enhancement conditions being more creative than the average person in the control conditions. Complex training courses, meditation and cultural exposure were most effective (gs = 0.66), while the use of cognitive manipulation drugs was least and also non-effective, g = 0.10. The type of training material was also important. For instance, figural methods were more effective in enhancing creativity, and enhancing converging thinking was more effective than enhancing divergent thinking. Study effect sizes varied considerably across all studies and for many subgroup analyses, suggesting that researchers can plausibly expect to find reversed effects occasionally. We found no evidence of publication bias. We discuss theoretical implications and suggest future directions for best practice in enhancing creativity.Peer Reviewe

Unanimity Rule on networks

We introduce a model for innovation-, evolution- and opinion dynamics whose spreading is dictated by unanimity rules, i.e. a node will change its (binary) state only if all of its neighbours have the same corresponding state. It is shown that a transition takes place depending on the initial condition of the problem. In particular, a critical number of initially activated nodes is needed so that the whole system gets activated in the long-time limit. The influence of the degree distribution of the nodes is naturally taken into account. For simple network topologies we solve the model analytically, the cases of random, small-world and scale-free are studied in detail.Comment: 7 pages 4 fig

Statistical detection of systematic election irregularities

Democratic societies are built around the principle of free and fair elections, that each citizen's vote should count equal. National elections can be regarded as large-scale social experiments, where people are grouped into usually large numbers of electoral districts and vote according to their preferences. The large number of samples implies certain statistical consequences for the polling results which can be used to identify election irregularities. Using a suitable data collapse, we find that vote distributions of elections with alleged fraud show a kurtosis of hundred times more than normal elections on certain levels of data aggregation. As an example we show that reported irregularities in recent Russian elections are indeed well explained by systematic ballot stuffing and develop a parametric model quantifying to which extent fraudulent mechanisms are present. We show that if specific statistical properties are present in an election, the results do not represent the will of the people. We formulate a parametric test detecting these statistical properties in election results. Remarkably, this technique produces similar outcomes irrespective of the data resolution and thus allows for cross-country comparisons.Comment: For data see also http://www.complex-systems.meduniwien.ac.at/elections/election.htm