Has Vagueness Really No Function in Law?

When the United States Supreme Court used the expression “with all deliberate speed” in the case Brown v. Board of Education, it did so presumably because of its vagueness. Many jurists, economists, linguists, and philosophers accordingly assume that vagueness can be strategically used to one’s advantage. Roy Sorensen has cast doubt on this assumption by strictly differentiating between vagueness and generality. Indeed, most arguments for the value of vagueness go through only when vagueness is confused with generality. Sorensen claims that vagueness – correctly understood – has no function in law inter alia because judges lie systematically when confronted with borderline cases. I argue that both claims are wrong. First, judges do not need to resort to lying when adjudicating borderline cases, and even if they had to, this would not render vagueness useless. Secondly, vagueness has several important functions in law such as the reduction of decision costs and the delegation of power. Although many functions commonly attributed to the vagueness of legal expressions are in fact due to their generality or other semantic properties, vagueness has at least these two functions in law

What is fake news?

Recently, the term «fake news» has become ubiquitous in political and public discourse and the media. Despite its omnipresence, however, it is anything but clear what fake news is. An adequate and comprehensive definition of fake news is called for. We take steps towards this goal by providing a systematic account of fake news that makes the phenomenon tangible, rehabilitates the use of the term, and helps us to set fake news apart from related phenomena. (You can email us for a penultimate draft of this paper.

Robust online signal extraction from multivariate time series

We introduce robust regression-based online filters for multivariate time series and discuss their performance in real time signal extraction settings. We focus on methods that can deal with time series exhibiting patterns such as trends, level changes, outliers and a high level of noise as well as periods of a rather steady state. In particular, the data may be measured on a discrete scale which often occurs in practice. Our new filter is based on a robust two-step online procedure. We investigate its relevant properties and its performance by means of simulations and a medical application. --Multivariate time series,signal extraction,robust regression,online methods

Robust detail-preserving signal extraction

We discuss robust filtering procedures for signal extraction from noisy time series. Particular attention is paid to the preservation of relevant signal details like abrupt shifts. moving averages and running medians are widely used but have shortcomings when large spikes (outliers) or trends occur. Modifications like modified trimmed means and linear median hybrid filters combine advantages of both approaches, but they do not completely overcome the difficulties. Better solutions can be based on robust regression techniques, which even work in real time because of increased computational power and faster algorithms. Reviewing previous work we present filters for robust signal extraction and discuss their merits for preserving trends, abrupt shifts and local extremes as well as for the removal of outliers. --

PENGAWASAN DALAM PEMBINAAN HUKUMAN TAHANAN BERSYARAT

Tujuan dilakukannya penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui apa yang merupakan syarat-syarat untuk dapat dikenakannya pidana bersyarat dan bagaimana prosedur pengawasan dalam pelaksanaan pidana bersyarat. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode penelitian hukum normative dan dapat disimpulkan, bahwa: 1. Pidana dapat dianggap sama dengan probation, yaitu pidana bersyarat merupakan teknik upaya pembinaan terpidana diluar penjara. Pidana bersyarta diputus oleh hakim Pengadilan dengan syarat-syarat. Syarat untuk dapat diterapkannya pidana bersyarat, yang terdiri dari: Syarat formal, yaitu pidana bersyarat hanya dapat dikenakan apabila terdakwa dijatuhi pidana penjara paling lama 1 (satu) tahun atau pidana kurungan yang tidak termasuk kurungan penganti denda; dan syarat material, yaitu penilaian Hakim terhadap terdakwa, baik perbuatan maupun kepribadiannya, bahwa terdakwa memang layak dikenakan pidana bersyarat. 2. Pengawasan terhadap pelaksanaan pidana bersyarat dalam garis-garis besarnya adalah dilakukan oleh pejabat yang berwenang menyuruh menjalankan putusan jika kemudian ada perintah untuk menjalankan putusan. Dalam hal ini pejabat yang dimaksud adalah Jaksa. Agar supaya syarat-syarat dipenuhi, dapat diadakan pengawasan khusus yang semata-mata harus bertujuan memberi bantuan kepada terpidana (Pasal 15 ayat (4) KUHPidana). Dari proses pelepasan bersyarat yang dikemukakan di atas, terlihat bahwa segi pengawasan terhadap orang yang menjalani pelepasan bersyarat tidak diatur secara cermat. Kata kunci: Tahanan, Bersyara

Universal cycles for k-subsets of an n-set

Generalized from the classic de Bruijn sequence, a universal cycle is a compact cyclic list of information. Existence of universal cycles has been established for a variety of families of combinatorial structures. These results, by encoding each object within a combinatorial family as a length-j word, employ a modified version of the de Bruijn graph to establish a correspondence between an Eulerian circuit and a universal cycle. We explore the existence of universal cycles for k-subsets of the integers {1, 2,...,n}. The fact that sets are unordered seems to prevent the use of the established encoding techniques used in proving existence. We explore this difficulty and introduce an intermediate step that may allow us to use the familiar encoding and correspondence to prove existence. Moreover, mathematicians Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham hold that the construction of universal cycles has proceeded by clever, hard, ad-hoc arguments and that no general theory exists. Accordingly, our work pushes for a more general approach that can inform other universal cycle problems

Robust online signal extraction from multivariate time series

We introduce robust regression-based online filters for multivariate time series and discuss their performance in real time signal extraction settings. We focus on methods that can deal with time series exhibiting patterns such as trends, level changes, outliers and a high level of noise as well as periods of a rather steady state. In particular, the data may be measured on a discrete scale which often occurs in practice. Our new filter is based on a robust two-step online procedure. We investigate its relevant properties and its performance by means of simulations and a medical application