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Static Analysis
Static analysis, static projection, or static scoring is a simplified analysis wherein the effect of an immediate change to a system is calculated without regard to the longer-term response of the system to that change. If the short-term effect is then extrapolated to the long term, such extrapolation is inappropriate. Its opposite, dynamic analysis or dynamic scoring, is an attempt to take into account how the system is likely to respond to the change over time. One common use of these terms is budget policy in the United States, although it also occurs in many other statistical disputes. Examples A famous example of extrapolation of static analysis comes from overpopulation theory. Starting with Thomas Malthus at the end of the 18th century, various commentators have projected some short-term population growth trend for years into the future, resulting in the prediction that there would be disastrous overpopulation within a generation or two. Malthus himself essentially clai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development involves writing and maintaining the source code, but in a broader sense, it includes all processes from the conception of the desired software through to the final manifestation of the software, typically in a planned and structured process. Software development also includes research, new development, prototyping, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products. Methodologies One system development methodology is not necessarily suitable for use by all projects. Each of the available methodologies are best suited to specific kinds of projects, based on various technical, organizational, project, and team considerations. Software development activities Identification of need The s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dynamic Scoring
Dynamic scoring is a forecasting technique for government revenues, expenditures, and budget deficits that incorporates predictions about the behavior of people and organizations based on changes in fiscal policy, usually tax rates. Dynamic scoring depends on models of the behavior of economic agents which predict how they would react once the tax rate or other policy change goes into effect. This means the uncertainty induced in predictions is greater to the degree that the proposed policy is unlike current policy. Unfortunately, any such model depends heavily on judgment, and there is no evidence that it is more effective or accurate. For example, a dynamic scoring model may include econometric model of a transitional phase as the population adapts to the new policy, rather than the so-called static-scoring alternative of standard assumption about behavior of people being immediately and directly sensitive to prices. The outcome of the dynamic analysis is therefore heavily dep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fiscal Policy
In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection ( taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenue expenditures to influence macroeconomic variables developed in reaction to the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the previous laissez-faire approach to economic management became unworkable. Fiscal policy is based on the theories of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynesian economics theorised that government changes in the levels of taxation and government spending influence aggregate demand and the level of economic activity. Fiscal and monetary policy are the key strategies used by a country's government and central bank to advance its economic objectives. The combination of these policies enables these authorities to target inflation (which is considered "healthy" at the level in the range 2%–3%) and to increase employment. Additionally, it is designed to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Overpopulation
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, and language. Humans are highly social and tend to live in complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which bolster human society. Its intelligence and its desire to understand and influence the environment and to explain and manipulate phenomena have motivated humanity's development of science, philosophy, mythology, religion, and other fields of study. Although some scientists equate the term ''humans'' with all members of the genus '' Homo'', in common usage, it generally refers to ''Homo sapiens'', the only extant member. Anat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Malthus
Thomas Robert Malthus (; 13/14 February 1766 – 29 December 1834) was an English cleric, scholar and influential economist in the fields of political economy and demography. In his 1798 book ''An Essay on the Principle of Population'', Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's food production improved the well-being of the population, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, humans had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the "Malthusian trap" or the "Malthusian spectre". Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship, want and greater susceptibility to war famine and disease, a pessimistic view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe. Malthus wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Population Bomb
''The Population Bomb'' is a 1968 book co-authored by Stanford University Professor emeritus Paul R. Ehrlich and Stanford senior researcher emeritus in conservation biology Anne Howland Ehrlich. It predicted worldwide famine due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Fears of a "population explosion" existed in the mid-20th century baby boom years, but the book and its authors brought the idea to an even wider audience. The book has been criticized since its publication for its alarmist tone, and in recent decades for its inaccurate predictions. The Ehrlichs stand by the book despite its flaws, stating in 2009 that "perhaps the most serious flaw in ''The Bomb'' was that it was much too optimistic about the future" and believe that it achieved their goals because "it alerted people to the importance of environmental issues and brought human numbers into the debate on the human future." General de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technological Singularity
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity—is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I.J. Good's intelligence explosion model, an upgradable intelligent agent will eventually enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an "explosion" in intelligence and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that qualitatively far surpasses all human intelligence.Vinge, Vernor"The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era", in ''Vision-21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace'', G. A. Landis, ed., NASA Publication CP-10129, pp. 11–22, 1993. The first person to use the concept of a "singularity" in the technological context was John v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accelerating Change
In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is the observed exponential nature of the rate of technological change in recent history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future and may or may not be accompanied by equally profound social and cultural change. Early observations In 1910, during the town planning conference of London, Daniel Burnham noted, "But it is not merely in the number of facts or sorts of knowledge that progress lies: it is still more in the geometric ratio of sophistication, in the geometric widening of the sphere of knowledge, which every year is taking in a larger percentage of people as time goes on." And later on, "It is the argument with which I began, that a mighty change having come about in fifty years, and our pace of development having immensely accelerated, our sons and grandsons are going to demand and get results that would stagger us." In 1938, Buckminster Fuller introduced the word ephemeraliza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moore's Law
Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship linked to gains from experience in production. The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel (and former CEO of the latter), who in 1965 posited a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit, and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41%. While Moore did not use empirical evidence in forecasting that the historical trend would continue, his prediction held since 1975 and has since become known as a "law". Moore's prediction has been used in the semiconductor industry t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exponential Growth
Exponential growth is a process that increases quantity over time. It occurs when the instantaneous rate of change (that is, the derivative) of a quantity with respect to time is proportional to the quantity itself. Described as a function, a quantity undergoing exponential growth is an exponential function of time, that is, the variable representing time is the exponent (in contrast to other types of growth, such as quadratic growth). If the constant of proportionality is negative, then the quantity decreases over time, and is said to be undergoing exponential decay instead. In the case of a discrete domain of definition with equal intervals, it is also called geometric growth or geometric decay since the function values form a geometric progression. The formula for exponential growth of a variable at the growth rate , as time goes on in discrete intervals (that is, at integer times 0, 1, 2, 3, ...), is x_t = x_0(1+r)^t where is the value of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperbolic Growth
When a quantity grows towards a singularity under a finite variation (a "finite-time singularity") it is said to undergo hyperbolic growth. More precisely, the reciprocal function 1/x has a hyperbola as a graph, and has a singularity at 0, meaning that the limit as x \to 0 is infinite: any similar graph is said to exhibit hyperbolic growth. Description If the output of a function is inversely proportional to its input, or inversely proportional to the difference from a given value x_0, the function will exhibit hyperbolic growth, with a singularity at x_0. In the real world hyperbolic growth is created by certain non-linear positive feedback mechanisms. Comparisons with other growth Like exponential growth and logistic growth, hyperbolic growth is highly nonlinear, but differs in important respects. These functions can be confused, as exponential growth, hyperbolic growth, and the first half of logistic growth are convex functions; however their asymptotic behavior (behavior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extrapolation
In mathematics, extrapolation is a type of estimation, beyond the original observation range, of the value of a variable on the basis of its relationship with another variable. It is similar to interpolation, which produces estimates between known observations, but extrapolation is subject to greater uncertainty and a higher risk of producing meaningless results. Extrapolation may also mean extension of a method, assuming similar methods will be applicable. Extrapolation may also apply to human experience to project, extend, or expand known experience into an area not known or previously experienced so as to arrive at a (usually conjectural) knowledge of the unknownExtrapolation entry at Merriam–Webster (e.g. a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
