Comparing People with Bibliometrics

Bibliometric indicators, citation counts and/or download counts are increasingly being used to inform personnel decisions such as hiring or promotions. These statistics are very often misused. Here we provide a guide to the factors which should be considered when using these so-called quantitative measures to evaluate people. Rules of thumb are given for when begin to use bibliometric measures when comparing otherwise similar candidates.Comment: to appear in Proceedings of Library and Information Science in Astronomy VIII (LISA-8

Eigenvector Sky Subtraction

We develop a new method for estimating and removing the spectrum of the sky from deep spectroscopic observations; our method does not rely on simultaneous measurement of the sky spectrum with the object spectrum. The technique is based on the iterative subtraction of continuum estimates and Eigenvector sky models derived from Singular Value Decompositions (SVD) of sky spectra, and sky spectra residuals. Using simulated data derived from small telescope observations we demonstrate that the method is effective for faint objects on large telescopes. We discuss simple methods to combine our new technique with the simultaneous measurement of sky to obtain sky subtraction very near the Poisson limit.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (Letters) 2000 March 7. Includes one extra figure which did not fit in a lette

A History of Cluster Analysis Using the Classification Society's Bibliography Over Four Decades

The Classification Literature Automated Search Service, an annual bibliography based on citation of one or more of a set of around 80 book or journal publications, ran from 1972 to 2012. We analyze here the years 1994 to 2011. The Classification Society's Service, as it was termed, has been produced by the Classification Society. In earlier decades it was distributed as a diskette or CD with the Journal of Classification. Among our findings are the following: an enormous increase in scholarly production post approximately 2000; a very major increase in quantity, coupled with work in different disciplines, from approximately 2004; and a major shift also from cluster analysis in earlier times having mathematics and psychology as disciplines of the journals published in, and affiliations of authors, contrasted with, in more recent times, a "centre of gravity" in management and engineering.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figure

Of Course a Handgun Can Take down a Helicopter: Cultivation Effects of Military-Style Video Games

The goal of this study is to add to the literature that extends the theory of cultivation into the realm of video games. Video game studies incorporating cultivation stress the importance of specifying a single genre of video games and measuring the cultivation effect, due to the lack of homogenous content between video games. It is possible that video games are actually an antithesis to the theory of cultivation because of content that is user-generated, which not only dissolves homogeneity between different games, but also the same game. Cultivation research has also suggested that second- order cultivation effects (on attitudes and beliefs) are moderated by factors that affect the experience during the encounter of information. This study looks at exposure to military-style video games to help better understand how video games may lead to a variety of cultivation effects. It includes measures of the independent variables of video game habits, gaming skill, traditional media use, political orientation, and contact with the military, and the dependent variables of first- and second-order cultivation effects, and self-efficac