Picturing the Uncertain World

Picturing the Uncertain World PDF Author: Howard Wainer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691152675
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
From the publisher. This book explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. Using a visually diverse sampling of graphical display, from heartrending autobiographical displays of genocide in the Kovno ghetto to the "Pie Chart of Mystery" in a New Yorker cartoon, Wainer illustrates the many ways graphs can be used--and misused--as we try to make sense of an uncertain world. Picturing the Uncertain World takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do. Are cancer rates higher or lower in rural communities? How can you know how much money to sock away for retirement when you don't know when you'll die? And where exactly did nineteenth-century novelists get their ideas? These are some of the fascinating questions Wainer invites readers to consider. Along the way he traces the origins and development of graphical display, from William Playfair, who pioneered the use of graphs in the eighteenth century, to instances today where the public has been misled through poorly designed graphs.

Picturing the Uncertain World

Picturing the Uncertain World PDF Author: Howard Wainer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691152675
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
From the publisher. This book explores how graphs can serve as maps to guide us when the information we have is ambiguous or incomplete. Using a visually diverse sampling of graphical display, from heartrending autobiographical displays of genocide in the Kovno ghetto to the "Pie Chart of Mystery" in a New Yorker cartoon, Wainer illustrates the many ways graphs can be used--and misused--as we try to make sense of an uncertain world. Picturing the Uncertain World takes readers on an extraordinary graphical adventure, revealing how the visual communication of data offers answers to vexing questions yet also highlights the measure of uncertainty in almost everything we do. Are cancer rates higher or lower in rural communities? How can you know how much money to sock away for retirement when you don't know when you'll die? And where exactly did nineteenth-century novelists get their ideas? These are some of the fascinating questions Wainer invites readers to consider. Along the way he traces the origins and development of graphical display, from William Playfair, who pioneered the use of graphs in the eighteenth century, to instances today where the public has been misled through poorly designed graphs.

Acting in an Uncertain World

Acting in an Uncertain World PDF Author: Michel Callon
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262515962
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
A call for a new form of democracy in which “hybrid forums” composed of experts and laypeople address such sociotechnical controversies as hazardous waste, genetically modified organisms, and nanotechnology. Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about “technical democracy.” They show how “hybrid forums”—in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come together—reveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded. The authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and mad cow disease in the United Kingdom. The authors discuss the implications for political decision making in general and describe a “dialogic” democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy.

Public Policy in an Uncertain World

Public Policy in an Uncertain World PDF Author: Charles F. Manski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067541
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Manski argues that public policy is based on untrustworthy analysis. Failing to account for uncertainty in an uncertain world, policy analysis routinely misleads policy makers with expressions of certitude. Manski critiques the status quo and offers an innovation to improve both how policy research is conducted and how it is used by policy makers.

The Next Age of Uncertainty

The Next Age of Uncertainty PDF Author: Stephen Poloz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735243921
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 SHAUGHNESSY COHEN PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 DONNER PRIZE “The Next Age of Uncertainty combines invaluable historical insights with provocative reflections on the economy of the future—a must read.” —Thomas d’Aquino C.M., LL.D., founding CEO of the Business Council of Canada, and author of Private Power Public Purpose From the former Governor of the Bank of Canada, a far-seeing guide to the powerful economic forces that will shape the decades ahead. The economic ground is shifting beneath our feet. The world is becoming more volatile, and people are understandably worried about their financial futures. In this urgent and accessible guide to the crises and opportunities that lie ahead, economist and former Governor of the Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz maps out the powerful tectonic forces that are shaping our future and the ideas that will allow us to master them. These forces include an aging workforce, mounting debt, and rising income inequality. Technological advances, too, are adding to the pressure, putting people out of work, and climate change is forcing a transition to a lower-carbon economy. It is no surprise that people are feeling uncertain. The implications of these tectonic tensions will cascade throughout every dimension of our lives—the job market, the housing market, the investment climate, as well as government and central bank policy, and the role of the corporation within society. The pandemic has added momentum to many of them. Poloz skillfully argues that past crises, from the Victorian Depression in the late 1800s to the more recent downturn in 2008, give a hint of what is in store for us in the decades ahead. Unlike the purely destructive power of earthquakes, the upheaval that is sure to come in the decades ahead will offer unexpected opportunities for renewal and growth. Filled with takeaways for employers, investors, and policymakers, as well as families discussing jobs and mortgage renewals around the kitchen table, The Next Age of Uncertainty is an indispensable guide for those navigating the fault lines of the risky world ahead.

The Politics of Uncertainty

The Politics of Uncertainty PDF Author: Ian Scoones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000163407
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? To explore the underlying reasons, issues and challenges, this book’s chapters address finance and banking, insurance, technology regulation and critical infrastructures, as well as climate change, infectious disease responses, natural disasters, migration, crime and security and spirituality and religion. The book argues that uncertainties must be understood as complex constructions of knowledge, materiality, experience, embodiment and practice. Examining in particular how uncertainties are experienced in contexts of marginalisation and precarity, this book shows how sustainability and development are not just technical issues, but depend deeply on political values and choices. What burgeoning uncertainties require lies less in escalating efforts at control, but more in a new – more collective, mutualistic and convivial – politics of responsibility and care. If hopes of much-needed progressive transformation are to be realised, then currently blinkered understandings of uncertainty need to be met with renewed democratic struggle. Written in an accessible style and illustrated by multiple case studies from across the world, this book will appeal to a wide cross-disciplinary audience in fields ranging from economics to law to science studies to sociology to anthropology and geography, as well as professionals working in risk management, disaster risk reduction, emergencies and wider public policy fields.

Protean Power

Protean Power PDF Author: Peter J. Katzenstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425178
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
Mainstream international relations continues to assume that the world is governed by calculable risk based on estimates of power, despite repeatedly being surprised by unexpected change. This ground breaking work departs from existing definitions of power that focus on the actors' evolving ability to exercise control in situations of calculable risk. It introduces the concept of 'protean power', which focuses on the actors' agility as they adapt to situations of uncertainty. Protean Power uses twelve real world case studies to examine how the dynamics of protean and control power can be tracked in the relations among different state and non-state actors, operating in diverse sites, stretching from local to global, in both times of relative normalcy and moments of crisis. Katzenstein and Seybert argue for a new approach to international relations, where the inclusion of protean power in our analytical models helps in accounting for unforeseen changes in world politics.

Uncertain Worlds

Uncertain Worlds PDF Author: Immanuel Wallerstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317249992
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Uncertain Worlds is the definitive presentation of the evolution of world-systems analysis from the point of view of its founder, Immanuel Wallerstein. Few theorists have offered a more systematic theory of what has become known as 'globalisation' than Wallerstein. The book includes a one-of-kind interview with Wallerstein by Carlos Rojas, a conversation between Wallerstein and Lemert about the history of the field as it has come down to the present time, a long essay by Lemert on the uncertainties of the modern world-system, as well as a preface by Rojas and a concluding essay by Wallerstein. No other book lends such biographical, historical, and personal nuance to the biography of world-systems analysis and, thus, to the history of our times. The will be a key reference book for students of global politics, economics and international relations.

Mathematics of Uncertainty for Coping with World Challenges

Mathematics of Uncertainty for Coping with World Challenges PDF Author: John N. Mordeson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030686841
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book ranks countries with respect to their achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and their vulnerability to climate change. Human livelihoods, stable economies, health, and high quality of life all depend on a stable climate and earth system, and a diversity of species and ecosystems. Climate change significantly impacts human trafficking, modern slavery, and global hunger. This book examines these global problems using techniques from mathematics of uncertainty. Since accurate data concerning human trafficking and modern slavery is impossible to obtain, mathematics of uncertainty is an ideal discipline to study these problems. The book also considers the interconnection between climate change, world hunger, human trafficking, modern slavery, and the coronavirus. Connectivity properties of fuzzy graphs are used to examine trafficking flow between regions in the world. The book is an excellent reference source for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and the social sciences as well as for researchers and teachers.

Uncertain Science ... Uncertain World

Uncertain Science ... Uncertain World PDF Author: Henry N. Pollack
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139435442
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Is the world warming due to the Greenhouse Effect? Can nuclear weapon arsenals be relied upon without periodic testing? Is the world running out of oil? What action should be taken against an outbreak of foot-and-mouth or BSE? Why can't scientists provide certain answers to these and many other questions? The uncertainty of science is puzzling. It arises when scientists have more than one answer to a problem or disagree amongst themselves. In this engaging book, Henry Pollack guides the reader through the maze of contradiction and uncertainty, acquainting them with the ways that uncertainty arises in science, how scientists accommodate and make use of uncertainty, and how in the face of uncertainty they reach their conclusions. Taking examples from recent science headlines and every day life, Uncertain Science ... Uncertain World enables the reader to evaluate uncertainty from their own perspectives, and find out more about how science actually works.

Controlling Uncertainty

Controlling Uncertainty PDF Author: Magda Osman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 144435180X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Controlling Uncertainty: Decision Making and Learning in Complex Worlds reviews and discusses the most current research relating to the ways we can control the uncertain world around us. Features reviews and discussions of the most current research in a number of fields relevant to controlling uncertainty, such as psychology, neuroscience, computer science and engineering Presents a new framework that is designed to integrate a variety of disparate fields of research Represents the first book of its kind to provide a general overview of work related to understanding control