Horse and Herald: Posidippus' Equestrian Angelia

Posidippus’ epigrams for equestrian victors (the Hippika, AB 71–88) build on epinician convention by maintaining the central role of the herald’s proclamation— the angelia—in the representation of athletic achievement. In a few of these epigrams, however, Posidippus embeds the horse itself in postvictory rituals. For example, the horse brings the crown to the victor, replacing the figure of the herald who announced and crowned victors; or, in a narrative of the race’s aftermath, the horse, incredibly, chooses the victor. Posidippus’ horses, therefore, act as causal agents for the glory of their owners, and his detailed descriptions transform the horse from flesh-and-blood equine to everlasting (literary) monument. Les épigrammes de Posidippe sur les victoires équestres (les Hippiques, 71-88 A.-B.) s’appuient sur une convention poétique propre aux épinicies qui maintient le rôle de la proclamation du héraut – l’angelia – dans la représentation de la réussite athlétique. Cependant, dans quelques-unes de ces épigrammes, Posidippe intègre le cheval lui-même au rituel marquant la victoire. Par exemple, le cheval apporte la couronne au vainqueur en remplacement de la figure du héraut qui annonce et couronne les vainqueurs ; ou encore, dans le récit de l’après-course, le cheval choisit, de façon surprenante, le vainqueur. Les chevaux de Posidippe interviennent donc en tant qu’agents causaux dans la gloire de leur propriétaire. Ses descriptions détaillées transforment ainsi l’être de chair et de sang qu’est le cheval en un monument (littéraire) éternel.https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/mous.16.3.00

Board performance evaluation: a case study of a private hospital in Australia

Sound corporate governance principles are a prerequisite for the effective performance of modern organisations. Members of the Board of Management of a private hospital in Australia were concerned with establishing a process whereby the Board could gauge its own performance in relation to the governance of the organisation. The paper outlines the process adopted by the Board and provides a summary of the outcomes of the process. The research project utilised an Action Research design (first cycle) involving the development of a self administered questionnaire. While adopting sound governance principles, Boards of Management in the Private Health Care sector need not converge or diverge from private sector corporate governance standards and can design an evaluation process that maintains their cultural identity and yet conforms to sound governance principles. The paper is of significance to academics researching corporate governance, to members of Boards of Management and to consultants that practice in the area of governance for Boards.hospital administration; governance; Board performance; Board evaluation.

The role of alcohol in crime and disorder

Looking into the Australian culture of drinking and the correlations it has with crime numbers. Four out of five Australians aged over 14 years report being recent drinkers and one in five report drinking seven or more drinks on a single occasion at least monthly. 1 Two-thirds (61 per cent) of 18–29-year-olds report consuming alcohol for the purpose of getting drunk.2 The annual cost of alcohol-related harm in Australia is estimated between $15.63 and$36 billion,4 depending on the model used and whether harm to others is included in the model. The personal cost of alcohol-related trauma to many individuals is overwhelming.4 Virtually every type of alcohol-related harm is on the rise in Australia.5 This report provides a review of the literature and statistics related to alcohol consumption and crime and disorder in Australia and Victoria. This paper is part of a ‘suite’ of resources for government (local, state and federal), the justice sector, health professionals and associated agencies. It offers an overview of proven and promising strategies for reducing alcohol-influenced crime and disorder

Global Discipline Confusion in Management and Business Related Doctorate Programmes

Professional doctorate programmes have recently emerged around the globe as an alternative to the more traditional research based doctoral programmes and have expanded rapidly to the point where professional doctorates are now the dominant form of doctorate education. This paper aims to shed some light on the growth of professional doctorates and to make some comparisons of professional doctorate programmes with traditional research based doctorate programmes by reporting on research undertaken in Australia. The research demonstrates confusion in the discipline of doctorates globally. The research includes a case study on a globally significant Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programme to demonstrate how professional doctorates are impacting on what might be regarded as more traditional doctorate programmes and causing confusion in the market place. Issues and observations arising from the research are discussed. A conclusion reached is that it may be time for Australian universities to consider establishing a new advanced higher research degree that clearly differentiates university research of a very high standard from other research.Professional doctorate; research doctorate; research higher degree; business; management.

Modeling the variability of rankings

For better or for worse, rankings of institutions, such as universities, schools and hospitals, play an important role today in conveying information about relative performance. They inform policy decisions and budgets, and are often reported in the media. While overall rankings can vary markedly over relatively short time periods, it is not unusual to find that the ranks of a small number of "highly performing" institutions remain fixed, even when the data on which the rankings are based are extensively revised, and even when a large number of new institutions are added to the competition. In the present paper, we endeavor to model this phenomenon. In particular, we interpret as a random variable the value of the attribute on which the ranking should ideally be based. More precisely, if $p$ items are to be ranked then the true, but unobserved, attributes are taken to be values of $p$ independent and identically distributed variates. However, each attribute value is observed only with noise, and via a sample of size roughly equal to $n$, say. These noisy approximations to the true attributes are the quantities that are actually ranked. We show that, if the distribution of the true attributes is light-tailed (e.g., normal or exponential) then the number of institutions whose ranking is correct, even after recalculation using new data and even after many new institutions are added, is essentially fixed. Formally, $p$ is taken to be of order $n^C$ for any fixed $C>0$, and the number of institutions whose ranking is reliable depends very little on $p$.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOS794 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Using the bootstrap to quantify the authority of an empirical ranking

The bootstrap is a popular and convenient method for quantifying the authority of an empirical ordering of attributes, for example of a ranking of the performance of institutions or of the influence of genes on a response variable. In the first of these examples, the number, $p$, of quantities being ordered is sometimes only moderate in size; in the second it can be very large, often much greater than sample size. However, we show that in both types of problem the conventional bootstrap can produce inconsistency. Moreover, the standard $n$-out-of-$n$ bootstrap estimator of the distribution of an empirical rank may not converge in the usual sense; the estimator may converge in distribution, but not in probability. Nevertheless, in many cases the bootstrap correctly identifies the support of the asymptotic distribution of ranks. In some contemporary problems, bootstrap prediction intervals for ranks are particularly long, and in this context, we also quantify the accuracy of bootstrap methods, showing that the standard bootstrap gets the order of magnitude of the interval right, but not the constant multiplier of interval length. The $m$-out-of-$n$ bootstrap can improve performance and produce statistical consistency, but it requires empirical choice of $m$; we suggest a tuning solution to this problem. We show that in genomic examples, where it might be expected that the standard, ``synchronous'' bootstrap will successfully accommodate nonindependence of vector components, that approach can produce misleading results. An ``independent component'' bootstrap can overcome these difficulties, even in cases where components are not strictly independent.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS699 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Absolute photometric calibration of detectors to 0.3 mmag using amplitude-stabilized lasers and a helium-cooled absolute radiometer

Laser sources whose intensity is determined with a cryogenic electrical substitution radiometer are described. Detectors are then calibrated against this known flux, with an overall error of 0.028 percent (0.3 mmag). Ongoing research has produced laser intensity stabilizers with flicker and drift of less than 0.01 percent. Recently, the useful wavelength limit of these stabilizers have been extended to 1.65 microns by using a new modular technology and InGaAs detector systems. Data from Si photodiode calibration using the method of Zalewski and Geist are compared against an absolute cavity radiometer calibration as an internal check on the calibration system