We present an overview of learning theory including its statistical and computational aspects. We start by giving a probabilistic formulation of learning problems including classification and regression where the learner knows nothing about the probability distribution generating the data. We then consider the principle of empirical risk minimization (ERM) that chooses a function from a given c...

The author comments on the potential of integrative data analysis (IDA) as a new methodological activity and on some of the topics that were discussed in the 5 articles in this special issue. One topic is the extent to which IDA will be used to provide conclusive summaries regarding the strength of evidence for well-specified questions versus to provide new information that goes beyond the simp...

Despite an increased awareness concerning the role of values in psychology, psychologists lack clear guidelines to appraise the moral implications of their work. To address this discrepancy, the author proposes a framework for examining the moral dimensions of psychological discourse and practice. The framework contains 3 central elements: values, assumptions, and practices, These components ma...

College English teaching in China aims at developing students’ communicative competence, in which vocabulary size plays an important role. According to Basic Requirements in the College English Syllabus (1999), Chinese university students’ vocabulary size should be 4,200 words. From investigation and a study of the research literature, the author finds that the deficiency of College English tea...

ABSTRACT The measarement of change is such a broad topic` that this arti cle 'must limit its focus to /a few_specific subtopics,: These .specific topidS include: longitudinal research design, attrAztion in research studies, the statisticalarialysis of difference sabres,-and the comparison of analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate analysis; of variance (MANOVA) techniques in analyzing rep...

In this article, the author outlines the need for a critical research method in the field of health promotion to explore the determinants of health. These determinants, including healthy child development, employment and working conditions, and education, for example, underlie many of the health issues that individuals experience. They are, in turn, influenced by nebulous factors such as patter...

In this article, the author explains how and why one particular qualitative research approach, the naturalistic inquiry paradigm, was implemented in an e-learning research study that investigated the use of the World Wide Web technology in higher education. A framework is presented that situates the research study within the qualitative research literature. The author then justifies how the stu...

Should we remove whole organs from living donors only in the case where they are genetically related to the intended recipients of such organs? The practice in a majority of European nations is to apply such a restriction. Yet this restriction obviously limits the availability of already scarce donor organs, and curtails the opportunities for altruistic action on the part of those who, in any g...

The policyholder dividend of participating insurance is essentially different from the usual equity and bond profit. There are disputes on taxing methods in theory and practice, and different countries adopt different taxing methods. This paper designs a basic framework of the personal income tax system on participating insurance policy. This policy is based on the reality that the participatin...

This article explores the effect of women’s movement into the labor market on the gender segregation of work, using the Current Population Survey from 1972 to 1993. The author includes as working those respondents who were “keeping house” and codes keeping house as an occupation. The results show higher estimates of gender segregation, and slightly steeper declines over time, than were seen in ...