Postal research: too many problems?

Too Many Types Of Quality Problems

ne of the hallmarks of expert problem solving is the use of wellfounded problem types or categories when interpreting and responding to situations. Physicians use hierarchies of disease categories to organize their diagnoses of patient ailments. Similarly, attorneys classify cases in terms of the legal principles and precedents involved. Problem types or categories help direct attention to rele...

The (too Many) Problems of Analogical Reasoning with Word Vectors

This paper explores the possibilities of analogical reasoning with vector space models. Given two pairs of words with the same relation (e.g. man:woman :: king:queen), it was proposed that the offset between one pair of the corresponding word vectors can be used to identify the unknown member of the other pair ( −−→ king − −−→ man + −−−−−→ woman = ?−−−→ queen). We argue against such “linguistic...

How many "me-too" drugs is too many?

ON AUGUST 3, 2009, THE US FOOD AND DRUG ADministration (FDA) approved pitavastatin (Livalo), making it the eighth statin approved for use in the United States and seventh currently available for sale. This approval comes almost a quarter century after that for the first member of the class, lovastatin, 8 years after generic lovastatin was approved and 4 years after 2 additional statins, pravast...

Therapeutic cytapheresis: too many platelets, too many white blood cells.

Myeloproliferative disorders may present with thrombocytosis and/or leukocytosis with symptoms ranging from minor to life-threatening. Therapeutic cytapheresis (TC), the removal of excess and/or abnormal cells such as platelets and white blood cells, can be used to rapidly reduce cells in the symptomatic patient. The patient's clinical status determines the need for TC as symptoms may not corre...

Too few physicians, or too many?