I am reading the book PROC SQL Beyond the Basics Using SAS.

I have read three chapters in this book now and would like to read the fourth this evening. This book is about writing computer code for use in SAS programs.

My thesis optional course starts in January.

I will begin studying Knowledge Representation in January.

I read one paper in my master bibliography on an e-book reader and started a second paper this way last night.

As I began to work with a master bibliography in a table in a spreadsheet, I added a "status" column. In the workshop for managing information in research projects, the concept of using a master bibliography with a spreadsheet style table was suggested along with the suggestion of adding columns such as a status column. The table starts as a tab delimited file export from a RefWorks folder. Any bibliographic software could be used. You can add any number of columns to this file when open in a spreadsheet and a status column was one suggested. I chose to have a few values possible for status and one was "get" for literature documents I had found in name only ( citation), rather than the full document. This meant I needed to download the papers or borrow the books and had not done this yet. Other status column values I used included "read" and "partial" reflecting statuses after I started reading the documents. I began to search out and download documents in my master bibliography that were still "get" status documents and have found about five of the online journal articles and have them now in pdf.

As I started this a few weeks ago I bought an e-book reader with the anticipation that I could read my school work on this e-reader.

This e-reader method of reading worked so far. I read a paper with a catchy titled that is directly on topic with my thesis. The paper is

McQuade, Eamonn, et al. "Will you miss me when I'm gone? : A study of the potential loss of company knowledge and expertise as employees retire." Journal of European Industrial Training 31, 9. 2007. 758-768.

The second paper I am reading as an e-book is about defining the Knowledge Intensive Firm (KIF). As my thesis title includes this classification of firms, this paper is also very important. I hope this paper will continue to have the quality, it seems to have at the moment, from what I have read. The citation for this paper is:

Starbuck,William H. "Learning by Knowledge-Intensive Firms" Journal of Management Studies 29, 6, 1992.

My organization of reading notes is a little confused but really I am returning to a subject.

I wanted to research some topics related to disabilities and the Internet and found the book:

Goggin, Gerard and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disabilities: The Social Construction of Disability in New Media (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).

I realised after reading the preface that I have read this book before or at least the preface. It was written by two activists affecting the Internet use and other technologies use by disabled persons in Australia. It does a good job at looking at the social construction of disability and in a big way this was my introduction to this topic. I should review this a little because I also have to understand a bit better the concept of social construction because the social construction of gender is a concept I come across quite a bit these days when studying the Internet and gender as well as in feminist studies.

I have 150 minutes study to complete to keep to my pace of thirty minutes a day on my thesis.

Simply stated I add thirty minutes every day to my thesis work schedule. This is pushing me deeper into the work, this time based structure.

I have three goals at the moment for study in the short term.

I would like to read more of the papers on my master bibliography list today. I would also like to search my RefWorks collection for knowledge transfer and knowledge gain. Then the last of these three goals will be to make some notes based on the suggested methods and structure for writing the literature review that I learned at the first writing tutorial centre workshop I attended two and a half weeks ago.

I am starting to use a Master Bibliography.

I started a master bibliography for my thesis. I used a short list and added to it only papers concerned directly with retirement and knowledge loss in companies or with knowledge transfer. I edited out most of the skill component research because my methods from artificial intelligence will not support skill modeling in the simulation. I also included few general knowledge management titles and fewer books on this topic generally. Argote is still in the list and I used her work as spring board to find two more papers and then found an updated version of one of these.

The master bibliography is allowing me to move forward and download copies of the literature and actually start to read the papers. I now need to start using a system like this blog to record my notes and fabricate my literature review. I have some training now on both this master bibliography technique and using RefWorks to build this file. So far after less than one week this is working and giving good results and things are progressing nicely and specifically with real gains.

I dropped in on Shirley Mills today and told her about my new job.

Shirley Mills really helped me learn statistics. I claim she is a mentor of mine. She is a professor of statistics at Carleton university and encouraged me to learn SAS. Her encouragement really helped me in school a place of extreme elitism and bullying. Believe me some of the most respected professors are in fact bullies of knowledge and I can think of no other job that does not set an image of a snob to my mind. But I found Shirley to be supporting and her lectures on statistics are interesting and challenging. May be in a year or two I will be able to write a Ph.D in statistics with her as supervisor.

Here are the the calendar details for my winter course in knowledge representation.

COMP 5307 [0.5 credit] (CSI 5101)
Knowledge Representation
KR is concerned with representing knowledge and using it in computers. Emphasis on logic-based languages for KR, and automated reasoning techniques and systems; important applications of this traditional area of AI to ontologies and semantic web.
Prerequisites: COMP 1805 and COMP 3005, or equivalents.
Precludes additional credit for COMP 5900 section 'X' offered in winter term from 2003-2004 to 2005-2006 inclusive.

Studying human resources continues.

I have almost completed reading chapter 4 now in the human resources management book.

After yesterday's workshop I am ready to write my literature review.

I started one paragraph just an hour ago but now I am going stop and look and listen and then write an outline and plan this out better based on the material I learned today.

Tomorrow is a school day at least for part of the morning.

I am heading to school tomorrow to register for the winter term. I am meeting my academic adviser to sign the papers for both my winter term course in Knowledge Representation and my thesis for the winter. If I want to be cautious on the time lines I should plan to write my thesis by the end of the winter term.

I will also attend a writing workshop for graduate students tomorrow before coming home for lunch and then going back to work. The workshop will be about writing the literature review. I am happy I am writing only a science thesis and it may be shorter than my honour's legal studies paper. It seems to be less library and reading work too. To complete writing up the literature review would be a good short term goal to get done by the end of this term. That gives me about three weeks to write up the review.

I have no volunteering to do this weekend but am busying making changes in my living environment to overcome procrastination. Mostly this is a fancy way of saying I am cleaning up my mess in our apartment and organizing all the stuff I have which is mostly books, paper and computers and computer parts and some music instruments. Wish me luck on finding tme to study this weekend.

Actually this weekend I will also be fasting for climate justice. This feels very noble and a full expression of life long ideals of no polluting. I am glad I am involved in this.

I started reading chapter 16 in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning and hope to finish this chapter today.

I started to read chapter 16 in the book Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. I hope to finish this chapter today.

I read about web analytics this fall.

I read the first two chapters in the book:

Kaushik, Avinash. Web Analytics: An hour a day (Indianapolis, Ind.: Wiley, 2007).

I do not need to read this book and it really only helps me gather new knowledge and keep me informed about web mastering.

The human resources management textbook I am studying for my thesis.

After speaking with a senior management professor at the Tefler School of Management at the university of Ottawa, I settled on a first year textbook to read to create my small HR unit KB. Here is the citation:

Belcourt, Monica, Bohlander, George and Snell, Scott. Managing Human Resources 5e (Toronto: Thomson-Nelson, 2008).

So far in my reading chapter four seems best for building a KB of a small human resources unit in a human resources department.

Attending my school's mentoring centre.

I am going to leave work early tomorrow to attend an initial session with a mentor at school. I am also planning on attending two writing workshops. One is on writing a literature review and the other on information management for research projects.

I am studying change.

I have been reading about change from a psychological perspective this morning. I have been working on overcoming procrastination and getting my office organized. This is a liberating and reliving pursuit. Really sorting my bookshelves is a good thing to be doing. I would also like to organize my school notes and notebooks.

Thoughts on social modeling.

I have been involved in modeling the social world for a couple of years now. I have for many years studied various models in health care, law enforcement psychology, and even in private case law and business case law. Here is something I wrote yesterday about a model of tribal development from the TED talks. I read that the TED talks had presented a social model and felt betrayed and feel the TED talks have lost my esteem because of this presentation of a social model. I wrote:

Any model like the stages of grief or a model of addictions and recovery can only frame a situation for viewing and can not be forced on the actual participants or actors in the reality of the situation. Computer languages give an impression that well structured models work but in reality outside of a machine models only give fuzzy truth not clear, decisive, determinable actions.

I have now read chapters 6, 7, 8 and part of 9 in the book Knowledge Represenation and Reasoning.

I was traveling this weekend. Rather than follow my usual habits and bring ten books with me, I brought only four. This was done so I could focus more. I read the first chapter in the new edition (4th) of the Little SAS book. And yes, my Little SAS book now has my signature coffee stain. I also managed to read more of the Brachman and Levesque textbook Knowledge, Representation and Reasoning. I now have only chapters 9, 10 and 16 to still read in the recommended chapters. On vacation, I managed to read chapters 6, 7 and 8 and get through most of chapter 9. I now have 61 pages left to read that my thesis supervisor has assigned.

7 careers

We will hold on average 7 careers not just jobs. Not like the generation before the baby-boom some times called the silent generation who held one career and a few jobs based on that career. BTW all those twenty sometimes you see these days are the baby-boom echo i.e. the baby-boom's kids. There are more of them typically these days than other age groups. The population of universities has never been higher than today.


My careers.

1. I have been a stage hand, rock star, theatre and punk rock employee and volunteer as one career. If I have more education in performance arts this career will pay more.

2. I have been a statistician/ computer programmer as another career. I am working in this now. My workplace is designed to keep me in this one job for the rest of my life and many of my parental units want me to stay at this job. That is what they are used too: one job for life.

3. I am also a computer fix it guy and am volunteering/working with others to become high tech entrepreneurs.

4. I also have a career as a philanthropist and self help promotor. This is where I educate myself and care for my own health. I am also poverty and disabled activist here.

5. I also have a law enforcement career again both paid and volunteer jobs, and formal education define this career. This goes from being a nickel and dime cop to stuff I can not talk about that is heavy stuff.

that's five for me that are well developed.

6. Researcher sociologist. This career is still beginning and I have been at this for about 6 years now only. Mostly I am self taught here and combine this with the other careers.

7. I have an ecologist natural science career. This is more of a hobby and life style. I helped found the green party in Canada. I own a professional microscope. I read advanced science in this area.

Labour activist goes in there somewhere. Writer of fiction also goes somewhere.

I started one book on human resources but need to actually find a reccomended book.

One of my tasks in my thesis work is to find a recommended book on human resources management. It is to be recommended by a business professor from the school of management. I am supposed to actually go to the school and visit someone there. I have not done this all summer. Feeling guilty I picked up a textbook from a library that is modern and Canadian and began to read it. I finished almost all of chapter one now.

I finished the chapter on ODS printer.

Now I have learned about using ODS to output to a printer or PS or PDF file. I have completed reading chapter 5 and thus part 2 and also 87 pages in

Haworth, Lauren. Output Delivery System: The Basics (Cary, NC: SAS Institute, 2001).

I read chapter 4 now to learn a little bit about outputing Rich Text Format (RTF) in SAS

I read chapter four just now in

Haworth, Lauren E. Output Delivery System: The Basics (Cary, NC:, SAS Institute, 2001).

For a while I was assuming that the Linux computing and other cross platform sharing of documents was done best as Rich Text Format (RTF). I did in my teaching assistant work have a brief talk to students about how to format SAS output. This amounted to suggesting they copy and paste the default SAS output window into a Word Pad document. This was in the early to mid 2000's. I think, it is about time I learn more about the Output Delivery System (ODS) in SAS. To this end I read another chapter tonight from this ODS book.

I now know more about outputing HTML files from SAS software.

I have been studying the book:

Haworth, Lauren E. Output Delivery System: The Basics (Cary, NC:, SAS Institute, 2001).

I just completed chapter 3 about HTML output. This made sense based on my experiences using SAS Enterprise Guide with HTML output set as the Enterprise Guide output preference. It was quite a basic explanation and I would recommend this book to anyone able to use a computer.

I have been reading a piece entitled Managing Professional Intellect.

I am reading a piece from the Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management. Here is the citation:

Quinn, James Brian. Anderson, Philip and Finkelstein, Sydney. Managing Professional Intellect: Making the Most of the Best in Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management (Boston, Mass.: Harvard Busines, 1998).

After posing the problem and the ideal situation in the workplace, the solution these authors point to is computer systems. They also make a claim at non hierarchical organizations and customer focus but I can see through their description as nothing more than slight of hand. And no this does not help one manage one's own learning and managing one's own knowledge. I think these guys are nothing more than high tech sales boosters. These guys are promoters of the digital age, end story.

My thesis proposal was approved.

Although I need to add more technical content to my thesis it has been approved to go ahead.

I began to read a book on Web Analytics by Avinash Kaushik

I started to read Web Analytics an hour a day. I have plans to support some GNU/Linux web sites using this book.

I am starting chapter 6 but did not make my other study goals last week.

I had set out to read three new chapters in Internet studies books last week but did not make it. I did read one chapter out of the three. I am starting chapter six in the book Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.

Using SAS PROC SQL, I think I have isolated the baby-booms in the world population file.

I used about five lines of PROC SQL code and was able to isolate the age bands where the older age bands are larger than the smaller age bands. This is the math expression I am using to define a baby-boom. I did this using two identical files. I need to check my results in the output file to make sure I have gotten what I expect.

The next book to read calls the chapters questions. So my goal is to read question one by Christine Hine.

My study goal for my Internet scholarship is coming along well. I ate a bowl of mint chocolate ice cream to celebrate getting the first of the three chapters in this week's goal read. The next chapter I will read is

Hines, Christine. Question One: How Can Qualitative Internet Researchers Define the Boundaries of Their Projects in Markham, Annette N. and Baym, Nancy K. eds. "Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Methods" (Los Angeles: Sage. 2009).

As I start this reading, I see Christine Hines is an scholar of the sociology of science and technology and will be writing about ethnographic method. This may help me stop or set boundaries on my online multiuser game playing studies, if these are indeed studies.

My goal is to read one chapter in each of three Internet books before Wednesday the 26th of August.

I set a goal to read one chapter more from each of three books. I just completed reading one chapter and here is the citation:

Whitty, Monica T., Joinson, Adam N. Chapter 6: Online Deception, fraud, spam and cons in Whitty, Monica T., Joinson, Adam N. Truth, Lies and Trust on the Internet (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2009).

So now I have two more chapters to read, one chapter in each of two more books.

Six short term goals that will get my thesis finished by next summer.

These are six short term goals I wrote tonight that will help me get my thesis completed by next summer.

1. Write more entries in my thesis notebook.
2. Continue to write in my learning journal.
3. Open my thesis tex files on my netbook.
4. Read the chapters recommended by my supervisor in the textbook: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.
5. Return statistics books to the school library.
6. Buy more printer ink.

Human Resources and Macro Organizational studies are now topics I am exploring.

To model a workplace I need to study human resources literature and also macro organizational studies. Both of these studies should also help me in my working life.

I am waiting for my thesis proposal to be approved.

I submitted my thesis proposal to my supervisor on August 4th and have heard nothing back yet. I find this hard to deal with.

I read the forward to Cybershock.

I read the forward by a famous computer person to Winn Schartau's Cybershock. I was for a long while using computer crime as a focus for studies because I was reading so broadly I had to have a focus point or specialty. But Winn Schartau himself as he starts this book in the first chapter admits his book is not advanced study. So I can return that book basically unread only having really read Cap'n'Crunch's forward. I did learn Apple computer co founder Woz spends a lot of time in university libraries like me.

I won't be studying a course this fall

I won't be able to study a course in the semantic web this fall as I have a time conflict with the class schedule. I am still reading this book

Allemang, Dean and Hendler, Jim. Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL (Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008).

I am reading chapter 6 now which is about RDFS and is starting to introduce this schema language.

I am studying knowledge management but am coming across the same papers regurgitated.

As I read more books and papers about knowledge management I am drilling down to the source papers and there seem, in fact, to be fewer original papers in this field.

I am beginning to read business studies.

I borrowed a book on organizations from a macro perspective, another two books on knowledge management and one book on using Microsoft 2007 for project management.

I am reading about Emacs and learning to use Emacs on my Dell Inspiron and my Macbook.

I have been reading the book SAMS Teach Yourself Emacs in 24 Hours. I have read chapter 1 and chapter 3. I did not read chapter 2 as that was about installing Emacs on Windows NT. The book was written by Jesper Pedersen, et al. I have started to use the Diary in the Calendar in Emacs. I hope to become effective at email, code writing, LaTeX and basic word processing in Emacs. I have stated chapter 4 today.

Learning SAS Output Delivery System (ODS).

SAS stands for Scientific Analysis System or Statistics Analysis Software or Statistical Analysis System. I have learned SAS at Carleton university as part of my B.Math in statistics studies and then have further used it as a teaching assistant in statistics. In that work I helped teach SAS to undergraduates in statistics courses. I now use it daily at my workplace in the government.

I have been reading the book: Haworth, Lauren. Output Delivery System: The Basics (Cary, NC: SAS Institute, 2001). So I am studying the new Output Delivery System in SAS. I have read chapter 1 at work and am today reading chapters 2 and 3. I have completed the reading of chapter 2 so far today. Chapters 1 and 2 are merely introductions to what ODS is and what it can do. Although chapter 2 covers how ODS works with SAS procedures (PROC) and the output objects from procedures, and has some syntax for using ODS. Chapter 3 is about using ODS to output HTML files.

Four Supreme Court cases of note last week concerning search and seizure. Application of R. v. Grant as the new standard of detention by police.

This is the key to the four cases of July 17th, 2009.

From R. v. Suberu. 2009 SCC 33 at 5.

Not every interaction with the police, however, will amount to a detention for the purposes of the Charter, even when a person is under investigation for criminal activity, is asked questions, or is physically delayed by contact with the police. Section 9 of the Charter does not dictate that police abstain from interacting with members of the public until they have specific grounds to connect the individual to the commission of a crime. Likewise, not every police encounter, even with a suspect, will trigger an individual’s right to counsel under s. 10(b). According to the purposive approach adopted in R. v. Grant, 2009 SCC 32, detention under ss. 9 and 10 of the Charter refers to a suspension of the individual’s liberty interest by a significant physical or psychological restraint. Psychological detention is established either where the individual has a legal obligation to comply with the restrictive request or demand, or a reasonable person would conclude by reason of the state conduct that he or she had no choice but to comply. The onus is on the applicant to show that, in the circumstances, he or she was effectively deprived of his or her liberty of choice. The test is an objective one and the failure of the applicant to testify as to his or her perceptions of the encounter is not fatal to the application. However, the applicant’s contention that the police by their conduct effected a significant deprivation of his or her liberty must find support in the evidence. The line between general questioning and focussed interrogation amounting to detention may be difficult to draw in particular cases. It is the task of the trial judge on a Charter application to assess the circumstances and determine whether the line between general questioning and detention has been crossed. [3] [23] [25] [28‑29] see case at http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2009/2009scc33/2009scc33.html

I completed reading Working Knowledge by Davenport and Prusak, and now must finish Linda Argote's Organizational Learning.

I did finished reading Working Knowledge by Davenport and Prusak, and now must finish Linda Argote's Organizational Learning.

The goal today is to complete reading Working Knowledge by Davenport and Prusak

I have just finished chapter six. I have about 65 pages left to read in this book. So with the end of the book in sight I am settled into finishing it today.

Reading goals this past weekend are partly done.

I had set out to read chapters three, four and five of the book Working Knowledge this weekend. I succeed and got that reading done. I had also set out to read chapters five and six of the book Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. I only got chapter five read but read it completely which means I read the beginning again. I had also set out to read chapters five and six of my web semantics textbook but only got chapter five read. So either I wasn't working hard enough or I set my goals to high.

Framing quote.

This really frames my thesis.

In general, the greatest value of modeling knowledge processes lies not in reaching an exact understanding of knowledge input, output, and flow rates but in identifying the variables in the model that can be affected by management action.

Davenport, Thomas H. and Prusak, Laurence. Working Knowledge (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1998) at 80.

Studies continue over the weekend.

I got chapter three now read in Working Knowledge and started chapter four. I see that the author of the Complete Idiots Guide to Knowledge Management has lifted her examples from this book I am reading.

Studies continue with a background literature reading term underway.

I have managed to continue reading Working Knowledge by Davenport and Prusak. Focusing on this book is good. I am nearly done chapter two of this book. The book is under two hundred pages long.

I should also read more of the book Knowledge Representation and Reasoning by Brachman and Levesque. I have almost finished chapter five now and still have chapters six, seven, nine, ten and sixteen to read on my supervisor's recommendation. This is about 90 pages of logic to read.

In my course textbook on the semantic web I have started chapter 5 of 14 chapters.

I am trying to focus on school more this summer and it looks like I am recoverying some of my study habits.

This term should be my background literature reading term. I am trying to find more time to read. The problem is I have a full time job every day of the week. This has slowed down other graduate students in the past and is typically a show stopper for something like completing a PhD. I am trying to focus myself by blogging here more.

These past few days I have started to read the textbook for my fall course Semantic Web: Concepts & Technique COMP 4900-C (The course outline is here: http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~bertossi/semweb/syll09.pdf) and am now about one sixth done reading this book on web semantics. Here is the citation to my course textbook:

Allemang, Dean and Hendler, Jim. Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL (Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008).

So far I have read three chapters. I have learned the rational behind the semantic web. I have been introduced to coding in RDF and a few related languages. I am now learning in chapter four about RDF parsers and serializers and RDF stores.

I read one essay in Laurence Prusak's Knowledge in Organizations

The essay I read seemed the most theoretical and shortest in this book. The essay citation is:

Polanyi, Michael. Tacit Knowledge in Prusak, Laurence. Knowledge In Organizations (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997) at 135.

This was copyright to Polanyi in 1966. In this brief essay/lecture he explores tacit knowledge as a theory. He has some structure of a theory of this type of knowledge. In this type of knowledge we assume we do not know what we known. This type of knowledge can not really be known but we do know it under the surface of our thinking. He makes his argument referring to psychological experiments. These were popular in the 1960's and earlier. He claims to show that positivist science is a failure as scientific method and says objectivity is not a possible way to know the world. Scientific knowledge is best known and originally know through tacit knowledge.

I will be studying web semantics as my thesis optional course.

I am pumped about the optional course my supervisor has chosen for me to study. It is titled web semantics. I will learn about knowledge representation languages and ontological web languages (OWL). The course is at Carleton in the fall in the school of computer science. I ordered the textbook last night. I will get this textbook started early.

I am beginning my mid month backups to a network drive.

I have been starting my backups to a network drive for the mid month. So far, I am working with Remembrance and the eMac.

I am also transferring my network music library to the new 1 TB drive.

I still have not fully transferred the first of the USB external drives to the network hard drive. It is not an easy process. There are always files that produce error messages and stop whole copy operations.

To define knowledge is the task.

I read the definition of knowledge presented by probably the two most well known scholars of knowledge management this morning. Here is the citation and my notes on this chapter one definition:

Davenport, Thomas and Prusak, Laurence. Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (Boston, Mass: Harvard Busines College, 1998).

Feminist cyborg studies, robotics and statistics

I started to read this book this evening and got the introduction read and started the first chapter:

Balsamo, Anne. Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Durham, N.C.: Duke University, 1996).

This is a really interesting read so far. It has me questioning bodies. In particular, I am interested in my own body and my fingers and my finger work on bass guitar and computer keyboard. And of course, I must learn to be even more sensitive to the objectification of the female body.

I am now reading more about Mikhail Soutchanski's work and read his school web page today and sent him and e-mail asking him to direct me to his page listing knowledge representation languages.

I am also reading about JMP software in the book:

Schlotzhauer, Sandra D. Elementary Statistics Using JMP (Cary, N.C.: Sas Institute, 2007).

I have read and worked through chapters 1 to 3 and have started chapter 4 and can now consider myself a JMP user.

I am slowly getting a paper about situational calculus by Mikhail Soutchanski read

I have read about 3 pages now in Gu, Liyan and Soutchanski, Mikhail. "The Two-Variable Situation Calculus" Frontiers In Artificial Intelligence and Applications 142, 2006. 144-161.

Following up my supervisor's suggestions on situational calculus finds robotics programmers.

My supervisor suggested I look up Mikhail Soutchanski. I did look him up today on google scholar and found his paper on situational calculus. I also found that he is part of a Ryerson-Toronto universities partnership in robotics programming. He seems to have only three or four papers out there so I am reading them now. This is real boy culture to be learning robotics programming. I see a good thesis topic change possibility here or at least some foundation for my simulation by strengthening my understanding of "agents" in a simulation. These agents can be conceptualized as software robots and fit well with my sociology of science and technology reading such as Brunto Latour's works.

I am assigned the wrting of lecture due tomorrow.

I have worked on this lecture two weekends ago. I also last weekend made a structure to match the title. Yesterday and on Tuesday I wrote something in each section. I am now thinking about lectures and will need to simply create subsections for each section to make this more like a lecture. The lecture is about knowledge management which is really a subject I have only know for one year now and I still have not read all the classic literature in this field.

I am writing this lecture using TeXShop and $LaTeX$.

Academic blogging session at the Congress

This session is a panel of four academic bloggers. Here are their blogs

Mary Cameron's Math Education with Mary Cameron at Memorial University of Newfoundland

Michael Barbour's Virtual High School Meanderings

Carolyne Steele's Career Sense

She mentioned Henry Jenkin's blog as a successful blog.

Moderator: Dale Kirby's Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education

These bloggers talked about their blogging experiences.

Notes on Kay O'Halloran's multimodal approach

Kay O'Halloran is talking and first sets the need for studies to understand the information age. She has been a mathematician and maths teacher and now a linguistics scholar. Her first presentations are on multimodal research. She states that signs or mathematical notation or semiotic resources are tools for thinking. This theory becomes multimodal social semiotics. She draws from Halliday's structural functional linguistics(1978, 1994[1985]). There is also critical discourse analysis from Noriss.

Her lab is here http://multimodal-analysis-lab.org/

I am attending the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences today and yesterday.

I got some time off work to attend parts of this congress today. Today I am attending the lecture titled A Multimodal Approach to Discourse Studies: A paradigm with new research questions, agendas and directions for the digital age given by Kay O'Halloran. It is just about to start.

I managed to study quite a bit on the weekend.

I managed to read sections 4.1 and 4.2 in the book Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Here I learned resolution of conjunctive normal form (CNF) expressions in symbolic logic. This covered universals, existentials, equality and variables. So I learned Answer Extraction and Skolemization. I can understand this but not sure I can do this myself so will need to practice the exercises in this chapter.

I will need in the next week and a half to review chapter 3 so I can begin to create a Knowledge Base (KB) for a small department inside a firm. This is one assignment I have due besides the lecture.

I also read more about basic knowledge management. I have started to find the book The Computerization of Work useful and interesting. It is not the sociology that will be useful but rather the case study descriptions of the context of working that will help me write my KB for the small department. This book is also critical of systems designers which helps me foresee some problems in my work.

I have to write a lecture due May 29th.

I am writing a lecture on knowledge loss, gain and retention for my professor and it is due May 29th. I have it started in $Latex$.

Finally success with creating a clean population data file

I was finally able to get a good clean data set for the world's population data using a different approach. In the original data set there was always a blank row at the end of each yearly table and at the beginning. Between these blank rows was a row with only the table title in column one. This title was a combination of the country name then a slash then the year covered by the table. My easy process was to label each row with the year as another variable. I did this by physically typing the year in the new column beside the title row then filling down in Excel to the blank row at the end of the table. Once I had the first country in this case actually the world tables with the new variable labeling each row in the cooresponding table with the tables year 1996 to 2050, I then copied the year variable to the next country Afghanistan. Then I highlighted both of the year variables for the World and Afghanistan and copied the years to the third and fourth country. Then repeated for the fitth, sixth, seventh and eighth and so on always doubling. This did not take long and it worked because the tables were all repeated with exactly the same number of rows per year table and per country.

The next step was done with brute force copy and paste so took all night but actually I did others tasks on the computer. It really took about as many copy and drag fills as there are countries. I highlighted the table title cell, the column one cell in the title row and then copied out only the country name and pasted this in a second new variable column and then I drag filled this down from 1996 to 2050 so each row concerning one country now had a new variable named Country that contained the name of the country. I then added column headers for variables names, Age_band, Both_genders, Male, Female, Year, Country. I then saved tihs excel file as a CSV file. Then I imported this to SAS. The using a data step where statement I deleted all the blank rows and title rows. So now I have this basic data file.

Knowledge representation and reasoning

The subject I am leanring from my supervisor is knowledge representation and reasoning. This is part of the artifical intelligence field. I have started to read in this field and have three books borrowed now. One of the books is written by my supervisor's thesis supervisor from the University of Toronto. This field is about logic in a sense that some forms of logic are knowledge representation languages. I am told I must choose a language to represent knowledge. I am reminded of a popular book that covered this idea of a knowledge representation and my whole topic of knowledge simulated in a computer. The book is:

Davis, Martin. The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2000).

I am starting to write literature review sections.

I have the most reading done on knowledge loss in firms. So from this in brain reading I started the section of the literature review covering knowledge loss. I frame it as three issues, safety, cost of production, and intellectual capital. I am trying to construct ordinary academic writing that is at heart simple clear and not too articulate. I do not want to use the nuances of the social sciences in this thesis. I want to in effect use a style that is almost a lifting of structure but in effect I am seeking common structures of academic writing and even just a standard English prose. I will have plenty of fun and more original and arcane structure, when I start to document the computer systems and systems modeling. This, the results and methods sections, will also likely be that more difficult and most likely a very unclear part of the thesis.

I need to pick up the pace on my thesis.

I need to pick up the pace on my reading. May be I can finish reading a couple of chapters today as it is Saturday.

Narrative in thesis, music and aborginal studies.

In my early research into knowledge transfer the idea of story telling and narrative came up. But how do I add narrative to computer code? Narrative is a way older workers can relate their knowledge to younger workers. I was just reading the introduction to a book about an epic story. The book is

Van Deusen, Kira. Kiviuq: An Inuit Hero and His Siberian Cousins (Montreal Que.: McGill-Queens University, 2009).

The book contains an Inuit legend and compares this legend with Siberian aboriginal legends. This is how stories and lessons of life would be passed down in Inuit culture.

I can not spend time on cross culture too much in my thesis. This book is hundreds of pages long. My thesis will not be of use outside of capitalist firms. I thus can not read this book. As well the legend itself will be of no help rather the context of story telling might be of help.

I had also thought to read this book to help my music making but the book and story are not for telling thus to avoid plagiarism I will not read this book. I will simply be inspired by Kira's introduction where she explains briefly that she uses performance art, and music with story telling. She also explains that the elders who told her Kiviuq had given her alone permission to tell this epic. I like these ethics and will respect them.

I also thought, as I read the book, of aboriginal studies but have only read a few aboriginal studies books and will not read this one.

I started to read another book for my thesis today.

I read section 1.1 in

Levesque, Hector J. and Lakemeyer, Gerhard. The Logic of Knowledge Bases (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2000).

This covers an introduction to knowledge bases but mostly an introduction to logic

I am reading the first book in my literature review and it is a good choice for my topic.

I read chapter one in

Linda Argote. Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining and Transferring Knowledge (New York: Kluwer Academic, 1999).

Argote's research has been on learning curves. These are plots with hours of labour as a dependent variable v cumulative production as the independent x variable. The basic formula for a learning curve is as so: $y = ax^{-b}$. Cumulative production serves as a proxy for knowledge gained by experience in this model.

My paper on global demographics got kicked out of the social economy conference.

The organizer was not happy that my paper did not connect with the social economy so I withdrew my paper at his request.

I saw my thesis Supervisor yesterday and have not slept since.

I saw my thesis supervisor and he suggested rewriting the section titles of the first three chapter of my thesis. I have not slept because I have been watching hockey, playing computer games and doing work on my home computer. Well enough of all that I will now write my thesis. I have not been reading much these days as I am engulfed in work. I will now take a break from work at home and write my thesis. I must move to my eMac in my office now.

I joined the International Association for Statistical Computing.

Here is the mission statement of the International Association for Statistical Computing.


It is the mission of the IASC to link traditional statistical methodology, modern computer technology, and the knowledge of domain experts in order to convert data into information and knowledge.

Statistical Computing is meant here in its broad sense as Statistics in the Communication and Computer Age and it contains a rich variety of research topics in almost every branch of statistical inquiry.

The topics focused on by the IASC include computational statistics, statistical software, exploratory data analysis, data mining, pattern recognition, statistical graphics and data visualisation, statistical data bases, and related fields.

The IASC works to share and advance methods and techniques related to these topics by facilitating the exchange of information and by stimulating evaluations, research, and development in all areas of statistical computing. It is the aim of the IASC to foster world-wide interest in effective statistical computing and to exchange technical knowledge between researchers world-wide.

IASC promotes collaborative efforts within international, national, regional and other organizations and institutions having similar aims.

I am going to ProQuest, IEEE and ACM databases again for ten more items for background literature..

I feel I am done now searching out the knowledge management items for my thesis. I hope the next ten items are easier as I plan to search out simulations, programming and other methods literature now.

I can read in the country data sets in two lines of code.

I figured out how to read in the country data sets in two lines of code. The problem is I need 228 of these pairs of lines. To do this I turn to the automated features of "fill down" in Excel. I am learning that in SAS one can do this with macros. In Excel I have created the first line of code where I set a specific counter based on the position of the countries data in the large file. Once this so called counter or index of numbers is set the second line is a as.data.frame line that reads the large file but only reads the rows( as indicated by the counter/index set of numbers) needed for that country. So today I am going to use Excel to write the second line of code 228 times.

I am still using Inference for R and was mistaken in a sexist way about the representative changing her last name. Of course, many women have two last names and that was all it was. I have only completed the first tutorial for Inference for R and have not yet tried the studio application. This promises to allow breaks while running code.

At this point in testing this Inference for R software, after I have the second lines of code completed I will run this and try printing the Inference for R word document and adding a write up. I may use some of this blog for the write up. I will do this in word. I will after that try to make a Power Point for the conference and start to write up this part of the research. Ideally I will have only a few slides devoted to this part of the project but that show some of the code.

Then it is off to Google or back to the US census site to find data about major industries by country.

Beautiful quote from the Rae years by Lilith Finkler from Candian Woman Studies

Can you guess who her populations is, and why she was not given full academic rights at this conference even thought she was qualified academically but because she belonged to the subject population she was treated differently?

The politics of appropriation are such that a privileged few manage to determine subjects of study and gain recognition as "experts" on a community outside their own. This process becomes particularly insidious when so - called "progressive" individuals claim to be allies of an oppressed group and in so doing, constantly speak on their behalf. This disempowers the people directly affected by a particular experience, since they have less "credibility" and less access to privilege.

Finkler, Lilith. Canadian Woman Studies. Downsview: Summer 1993. Vol. 13, Iss. 4; pg. 72.

Inference for R software. Quality issues explored

I won't post something technical about inference for R here. The representative who contacted me from that company has now changed her last name in emails. And one search at Google found this debate from some noted statisticians about Inference for R as a spam marketed software. I was worried because I was approached outside of work. I am now finding that persons who contact me here about math have questionable ethics in terms of robbing Open Source projects. But this could just be theft. I may not be able to as careful in the future. May be Inference for R is a more nefarious product. I will need to search further and perhaps contact a computer security service now and inquire about this company and software. Perhaps it will all turn out to be an aggressive slightly unethical marketing side to a good software.

Practically twenty books or hundreds of journals articles will not work.

The two master's thesis advisers I saw who did not take me on as a student both offered the advice of not doing too much work on the thesis. I am realising now that twenty books would be too much. So just like a short list of twenty references is better than hundreds of references, a twenty item list with journal articles is also much more practical in terms of getting it done. Also books are not as easy to vet I think at present. Perhaps there are simple vetting processes for books but I am not able to know or express these simple processes right now. So I am cutting books down on the list and adding more peer reviewed papers. I am also focusing less on the seven components of operational knowledge and instead on knowledge loss and knowledge retention. Much better and seems like it will be much easier.

My searching of ProQuest that started a year ago is now filtered down to 79 references.

I am attempting to find the 20 classic references to the problem of Knowledge Loss. I may have nine or ten references now and these are books. I should be adding peer reviewed journals. I should cut some of these books and add more journal articles. I have only one or two classic knowledge management books and these two I will keep. And I have two methods books. And I have two knowledge loss books. I am looking right now at the possibility of narrowing down the 79 present references. I also now have the idea that I should perform a search on ProQuest and Google scholar for the term Knowledge Loss and find about 15 papers that way. After all, the previous searching that is now narrowed to 79 papers, was about searching for ways to measure knowledge. What I really need is papers on the main topic: Knowledge loss. Also I think ten books is too many books. So I will cut the book list to the six books mentioned above and cut the previous search to five or so papers then find ten or so peer reviewed papers on Knowledge Loss.

I am co-presenting a paper at a work conference.

The paper is about online seniors. Here are the conference details
Socio-economic Conference 2009

Baby-boom research

The conference I am presenting at is sponsored by this network The Social Economy Student Network (SESN) http://socialeconomy.info/en/english

I have made it to ten references now.

I feeling slightly pressured to complete my literature review. But I now have ten items on the list so am two days behind only. I say two days behind because I set a goal on Sunday of adding one item per day to be done early for the next meeting with Dr. Kiringa my thesis supervisor. I am just printing the ten item list now and blogging a bit about my home computers. I am also starting to register for courses at work in statistical computing. This reminds me to choose courses from the School of the Public Service which means first I need to check in this morning with my career vision for the next five years. I created this vision at my course last week.

I installed Microsoft Project 2007 and will use it to plan my thesis work.

I installed Microsoft Project 2007 on Remembrance and made a file for the thesis I am working on in graduate school.

I plan to find five more classic literature items today

I started to look up the references in Continuity Management and found some but some are off the Internet now. I plan to find five more references today so as to be on schedule for my April 15th deadline for my literature review. I must read references found on this list this summer. I need to have about 20 items.

Progress with spring paper: I can read by 21 rows now and have all the population data into 18 datasets

I have now read all my data into 18 age band data sets and just need to now join these 18 data sets and then split these every 21*23 rows into 228 data sets and then again split this into 23 yearly tables. So the end result should be 227 countries and one world data sets with population for both genders and population for each of male and female by 17 age bands and total all ages, and 23 yearly tables for each country.

This is giving me an idea for the analysis. This idea is to use the 18 data sets and call these the age band data sets(18). Then I want to have 227 country and one world data sets and call these the country data sets(228). Then also have 23 data sets for years and call these the years data sets(23). Then I will work comparing these data sets for my populations analysis.

In fact, rather than join these data sets I have now, the age band data sets to get the other data sets, I should instead simply read in the data for each data set. So my next reading in will be for the 227 countries and one world data sets. Then the third step will be to read in the data into years data sets.

I also need to start looking at a data source for finding the top three industries in each of the 228 countries. May be one google search like I did to find the population data will work.

I have started using Inference for R software and can code with this documentation software now.

I was offered a chance to test out Inference for R. This software it seems interfaces R with Microsoft Office. I have so far used it in both Word and Excel. Because it is an interface it is faster than copying and pasting code into the R command line window and also is faster because when you change code and run that changed code as in debugging you do not lose the code typed on the command line. I had in the past changed my code on the command line and would have to copy my successful code back to my text editor to keep a record of what I was doing.

One big problem for Inference for R is that it is only available on one platform. I am having to move back to the Windows world of computers because of statistics software like Inference for R, SAS and Excel and also because of the game Eve Online which is mostly a windows based game.

My computers are working well. I am having to use Windows at school and work.

My eMac is functioning fine and I even found the DVD drive working again. The Macbook although it is filthy is working fine as my usual daily machine now in the living room, The new home built PC with Windows XP 64 bit and Debian Linux is also working fine now. The new Dell Mini 9 Netbook is fine and I carry it around all the time but it is not getting much use but it is very useful to have it if needed. I used it at a community group last week to keep minutes of a meeting.

I am thinking of buying a Windows laptop that I would build from an OCZ laptop skeleton. This PC laptop would also be running Windows XP 64 bit and Debian 4.2. I am also thinking of buying an iMac 20 inch desktop. I am looking at used MacBooks and Powerbooks and iBooks for a friend and perhaps one for myself for music recording. I am looking in the 200-400 dollar range for these. These would be running Tiger not Leopard for an OS.

Getting books and papers organized: Shelves I use for books.

We have a coffee table with six shelves in our living room. I am dedicating one shelf now for my thesis literature. The shelf under that is for statistics and Internet studies books. One shelf is for remotes, another for phone books, another for non paper items and then one for my partner's books and journals. I also have numerous shelves around the apartment for other subjects like the ones in the dinning area for, music, engineering, fine art, poetry and drama, science fiction, TV and film, social sciences, radical books, classic literature, philosophy and religion, and geography. In the office are shelves for computer books, nature books, hard science books, political science and peace literature, math books, two shelves for statistics books and notes, a shelf for storing cables and connectors and other loose computer stuff. Another shelf is used just for camera stuff. Four shelves are used to store computer parts, and one CD cabinet is used to store disks, I have shelves for personal papers including one for bills and two shelves with magazine boxes to organize school notes and other papers. I have shelves in there for classic games like chess and GO. I have a shelf for Internet studies and guides. I have shelf for cyberpunk fiction. Plus I have a rolling file cabinet where old agenda books, school admin papers and pens and other miscellaneous stuff is kept. I have four shelves for bankers boxes of old school notes, magazines and old bills and old school calendars. Plus I have a shelf where I store old journals and old daily accounts. All in all most of the stuff has a place to go and be put away.

Literature search and studies update

After meeting my supervisor I felt confident that my thesis is progressing well. I am focused on the literature search and my paper for a conference in social economy in two months. These are the two basic tasks at present. I will need to find the twenty classic references for my topic. Then I will spend the summer term reading these references. I have four items in mind so far for this twenty item list.

In health reading I am reading about stress management. In entertainment reading I am reading two books about guitar. In programming I am studying SAS, Excel and have numerous computer "language" books. I will need to learn to program in Java or C++ this summer.

I was unable to import the data in R or in SAS so I am working in Excel.

I was unable so far to import the world population data into R or into SAS. I was trying to do this to allow me to automate the finding process for baby booms. Instead, I am doing the discovery with my eyes using the highlighted column created with conditional formatting in Excel. I wrote about this conditional formatting in my last post. I started with the last country in the Z's and am now on the T's. I have about 270,000 records and am now at about 200,000 records so am about 1/4 done so this will be possible in Excel. I am making a separate worksheet for each country that shows a suspected boom and then copying and pasting the tables from 1996 to 2050 for each suspect country into its own worksheet. So then I can save each work sheet as a csv text file for one country at a time. Then I can try to import one country's data at a time into a more sophisticated statistical analysis software. That will be my next step when this discovery step is completed.

Progress with my paper for the May graduate conference in social economy.

I have created columns next to the total population and male and female population counts columns that subtract a given age band from the previous age band. Thus if these new columns are negative it means a given age band is larger than the younger age band before it. For instance, if there are 300,000 persons aged 5 to 9 years old and there are only 200,000 babies aged 0-4 years old in a country in say 1996 then the next columns shows - 100,000. I then used conditional formatting to highlight the new column if a value was negative. This has given me a way of visually finding any suspected baby booms. But I still desire R code that will scan these new columns and produce a data set of only the population tables where these negative values occur. At this point, as well I have been offered the use of a documentation software to document in Office 2007 format, my use of R code.

I have some idea of the required indexes in the data set to use in R loops or array indexes. These are the re-occurrence rows of data in the large data set. In other words starting with the World population data tables then going from country names starting at A then down to Z we have repeated tables starting in 1996 to 2010 for each year and then 2015 and basically every five years projected until 2050. So there are tables in two dimensions, country names and then years. I will limit my searches to 1996 to 2005 at first but then if I am choosing a country as having booms in this decade of years 1996 to 2005, I will come back to the projections for the future.

I also need to get the path's right to open data files using R on windows. So once this path problem is solved I can move ahead with trying index's to parse the large data set into a smaller data set with only population tables that indicate a suspected baby boom.

Reading Internet studies today.

I am reading

Whitty, Monica T., Joinson, Adam N. Truth, Lies and Trust on the Internet (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2009).

This is interesting and I agree with these authors that not all self disclosure is anonymous. I am seeing this working into my findings that sites that allow social networking with those we know offline are different than the "virtual friends who are strangers" topics of past Internet studies.

HTML authoring resources by Ian Graham University of Toronto

I think Ian Graham wrote some great HTML books in the 1990's. Is anyone studying the computer self help press?

here are some titles that are only pennies used from Amazon

If a few bucks is still too much you read his online tutorial

http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/intro.html

Old but still useful

The Html Sourcebook: A Complete Guide to Html 3.0 (Paperback)
by Ian S. Graham (Author), Ian S Graham (Author)


Html 4.0 Sourcebook (Paperback)
by Ian S. Graham (Author) "What is a text markup language?..." (more)



I am trying to start reading this one

HTML Stylesheet Sourcebook (Sourcebooks) (Paperback)
by Ian S. Graham (Author)



BTW I do not know Ian or have any monetary connection to him nor really academic beyond learning from his great books and always available online tutorial.

Components of Operational Knowledge: ProQuest journal database search feeds.

Here are the RSS feeds from ProQuest for the searches I did to complete the searching for the seven sub-component types of knowledge theorized to make up operational knowledge.

Procedural and Process Knowledge

http://rss.proquest.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/rss?rss_id=504831

Heuristic Knowledge

http://rss.proquest.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/rss?rss_id=504839

Cultural Knowledge

http://rss.proquest.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/rss?rss_id=504858

Completing a literature search within the thesis

Last winter and spring I had searched out types of knowledge theorized to make up operational knowledge at a firm. At present in RefWorks I have four folders for four types of knowledge. These are:

• Cognitive Knowledge
• Skills Knowledge
• Systems Knowledge
• Social Network Knowledge

Today I want to search for the remaining three forms of knowledge in this theoretical framework. These are:

• Process and Procedural Knowledge
• Heuristic Knowledge
• Cultural Knowledge

.

This theoretical framework follows from:

Hamilton Beazley, Jeremiah Boenisch, and David Harden. Continuity Management: Pre-serving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2002).

I have been studying this book for over a year now.

Catching up on Internet studies: Thoughts on the present theory direction of the social impact of the Internet

I am reading

Katz, James E. and Rice, Ronald E. Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement and Interaction (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2002).

I have read now the introductory chapter critically and find a comment. In terms of community involvement I would add that, in fact, if we open the Internet up to include computers used offline and call it simply ICT's we could add organizational power of ICT's in building the processes of volunteering and the work needed to volunteer as a plus to Internet access. Rather than just recruitment of volunteers ( mentioned in the first chapter) the Internet does much more for a volunteer group. I spend hours volunteering every week. It is not the Internet alone amongst ICT's that allow me to be a better volunteer and for our group to do its business. I am now thinking of multiple group membership and multiple group participation. Almost all these groups must do writing. The other basic skill reading it not as fully aided by ICT's in the context of reading in volunteer work. Whereas, writing benefits from the Internet, Palm pilots, web pages, pdf's, word processors, spreadsheets, calendaring software. I guess what I am finding is the social capital thesis is less important than the work organization thesis.

Researching my next workplace.

My supervisor helped me find another possible place to work supporting research. I started to print some 27 analytical articles from the web that this workplace has written. The articles appear to be sets of three or four per year with the same titles each year except for the year in the title. So these are like annual reviews of their subject matters. The job would be for one year supporting these publications as a technical/IT research assistant. I have been worried about being disorganized with my workplace reading, so these systematic articles are inspiring me to neatly catalog the articles in a binder. I am not sure I will have the time to read them all before my interview but I really need to do that. My first question for my new employers will be to ask them to describe the processes that happen from beginning to end for the data and most importantly the quality control process they use in their processes.

Workplace organization and its modeling.

There is an interesting section on conceptualizing workplace organization in this book James R. Taylor, et al. The Computerization of Work (Thousand Oaks, Calf.: Sage, 2001) at 9.

Paper for the May gradudate conference in social economy is coming along.

I started to scan with my eyes divergences from the perfect population pyramid. I have some doubts now about my interpretation and criteria for booms, after finding, in fact, the world population has some age bands starting in 2000 where the older band exceeds the younger band in size. This is my first clue of a boom or divergence from the perfect pyramid. This rule is, if an older age band exceeds a younger age band, we have identified a boom. I have scanned the available world pyramids for both genders combined but not separately and copied and pasted the full years data for all occurrences of the divergent pattern. I then tried to construct a population pyramid with Excel. I needed to code one gender's population with negative numbers to get the Excel chart to look something like a population pyramid. I also scanned with my eyes Afghanistan and next is Albania.

So my method is to scan with my eyes. The other choice of method is to read the tables into R and run a check to see if a table decreases continuously from the 0-4 age band to the 80+ age band. Actually the 80+ age band is giving me some false positives in the rule above. I will do all the countries by eye and then run the R code to check. Or better would be to next design the R code to find all the divergences and not have to scan all the rows of countries. I have so far scanned only the World and Afghanistan and reached about the thousandth row of thirty three thousand rows of data. So here automating will save me some time.

Also getting the data from each table into R gives me more statistical power than simply identifying one divergent pattern. I can run many pattern recognitions once the data is cleanly into R or other statistical software.

Here is my abstract for this paper.

Abstract
The world over all has no baby boom. There are always more babies and fewer seniors when one looks at the whole world. We would like to examine if baby booms exist in any and each country. If this examination is possible we will then move further. The study will survey the age pyramid structures, the typical retirement age and industries, that the majority of the population work within, for all the world's nations, if data can be located. If these measures are possible attempts are made at assessing the potential knowledge losses in these majority industries as the widest parts of the age pyramid retire and take their workplace operational knowledge with them potentially crippling these industries and nations. General comments are attempted concerning each nation studied.

I submitted a paper to a conference this May in Ottawa.

I submitted a paper proposal to the International Student Conference on the Social Economy Innovation & Sustainability in a Changing World: Exploring Social Economy Alternatives.

I explored some demographics from the US census international data web site looking for baby boom's world wide.

I found global population numbers by age and by gender for all the world's countries at the US census international data site. I downloaded tables for every country for each year from 1996 through projections to 2010 and then by five and then ten year projections up to 2050. So why did I need this data? I was looking to find the baby boom in each country. I am going to write a paper that looks at the baby boom in each country, then looks at the major industries in those countries and then looks for possible knowledge lose crisis points in time in the future for each country. This would be the point when the widest part of the population pyramid retires.

Of course retirement I am realising is not a global concept. So this may be a flawed study.

I started to examine the data from the world population pyramid and found the world has no baby boom. The world has more babies and fewer seniors with no exceptions. For every year and every projection and at each age band there more younger persons than older persons. I guess we could call this the perfect pyramid. Now I have to inspect each of some 200 countries individually. I think now I will submit my abstract for this research project to a conference I have created it for. The deadline is fast approaching. I will rewrite it one more time and send it off.

Enjoying work and being rewarded by practicing statistics, maths and programming.

I have won a promotion at work but have to find an opening at the higher level. That is I am qualified for a promotion now but have yet to find an opening. I transferred recently from being a research assistant in aging research to being a research assistant in Internet research. In the first research assistant job, I was able to effect some control on my work and time at work by advertising my SAS skills. These skills have devloped over that year of work have improved and made it possible for both my latest transfer and also my passing the tests and interviews for the promotion. This is at least how the promotion job is styled as a technical statistical officer. But the real power I was able to affect was choosing where in my large workplace to work. I was able to match my own reading and research interests in the Internet to my workplace. At the same time I am now writing SAS everyday. I now must carefully choose a new field of statistics to work in that I will enjoy. This is one present task and my coworkers have offered me help in this. I am living in some sweet times and have a very good work life at the moment that is healthy and in somewhat of a sync with my school studies.

My next step is to search google scholar and google for similar projects.

I have searched Ph.D. and other thesis libraries when doing my paper last summer for knowledge measurement by searching for knowledge management and demographics. But this may have been an error. So now I need to search for this term: "simulation of knowledge management in learning organizations.". I did this once this morning with google scholar and found a paper from McMaster's school of business. This covered something called a Tango simulation but this turns out to a live person simulation not a computer simulation.

I have emailed professor Tuncer Ören for some guidance in simulations and knowledge management

I have emailed a simulations expert professor Tuncer Ören at the university of Ottawa for some advice with modeling firms. I have sent him my present thesis abstract and a brief paragraph explaining why I chose this topic.

I need to prepare a summary of my thesis for a professor who may be able to help me.

I have asked my instructor from my last term for help locating researchers who have simulated firms. I have found no one so far who knows knowledge management at the university of Ottawa. But my instructor has found someone who would like to see a summary of my research plan. So I will send my abstract from my thesis draft and the abstract from my summer paper.

I am beginning my thesis proposal tonight.

I am beginning to write my thesis proposal after emailing someone in simulations for some advise on the structure.

I need to organise my simulation now.

I have the skills and tools now from my last course to start to organize my simulation of the workplace and the retirement of the baby boom. I will start this week and weekend to write the key features document of the simulation and this could be the document for my thesis proposal. I need to freeze frame on this one step and work on this for about a month.

I am working hard at work applying school knowledge.

I am working hard at work today combining my recent computer skills with my school knowledge to produce work that I can not detail here. I can not talk about work as our data at work is confidential so it is good practice to remain fairly tight lipped really about everything. I work with confidential data governed by the Statistics Act and could go to jail and be fined if I caused data to revealed. But I am working with data and learning to a good job and at the same time trying to get ahead in this world of research and analysis.

Thesis proposal course

I have the forms now for my thesis proposal registration. I just need to fill these in and then fax them to the academic adviser and administrator at our school. I also have some guide line documents for completing the thesis proposal.

Tree tabs and mixed tabs add ons for firefox.

This video from a Linden Labs staffer explains these useful firefox add ons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFz66w8wAEY

or search tree style tabs and mixed tabs on goggle. You need the mixed tabs for the tree tabs to work.