scholarly journals Institutional complexity is complexity with an adjective

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Marielle Papin
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Complexity Science ◽  
Institutional Complexity ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

A review of the studies on institutional complexity reveals that the many definitions of institutional complexity and related concepts share similarities with the understanding of complexity and complex systems of complexity science. Yet few publications on institutional complexity engage explicitly with complexity science. Most observers still confuse complicated and complex systems, for instance. Furthermore, the variety of definitions may create disarray regarding what institutional complexity and its related concepts are and what they imply. Highlighting the similarities between institutional complexity and complexity science in global governance, this think piece offers a conceptual and operational definition of institutional complexity using a complexity science lens. It highlights the attributes and properties of institutional complexity. It also presents the benefits of such an approach. Besides offering advantages in terms of concept clarification, this approach aims to engage theoretically, epistemologically, and methodologically with the complexity of global governance, as well as propose a way to answer remaining questions on this crucial topic.

Random-Number Generation

1991 ◽  
Vol 02 (01) ◽  
pp. 296-299
Author(s):  
A. COMPAGNER
Keyword(s):  
Monte Carlo ◽  
Monte Carlo Simulations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Random Number ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Random Number Generation ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Random Numbers ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

In large-scale Monte Carlo simulations, reliable random numbers will soon be needed at bit rates of 1 GHz or more. Therefore, existing recipes for the generation of random numbers have to be improved. This is not easy, due to the many unrelated and laborious statistical tests needed to compensate for the lack of an accepted and operational definition of randomness. When however the notion of randomness as a complete absence of all correlations is made precise, a practical approach results.

scholarly journals A Brief Synthesis on Complex Systems

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abicumaran Uthamacumaran
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Complexity Science ◽  
General Properties ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Emergent Behaviors

What is a complex system? The definition of a complex system remains somewhat ambiguous. A complex system can be defined as a system consisting of many interacting parts exhibiting emergent behaviors. The emerging field of complexity science entails a change in the language of scientific research and thinking. As such, the general properties, tools and definitions pertaining to complex systems must be made accessible to multi-disciplinary systems scientists and thinkers. With this intention, this literary survey presents the development and glossary of essential concepts steering complex systems.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
J. Ladyman ◽  
K. Wiesner
Keyword(s):  
Complex Systems ◽  
Systems Theory ◽  
Intelligent Systems ◽  
Complexity Science ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

This introductory chapter provides an overview and a brief history of complexity science, which is the study of complex systems. All living systems and all intelligent systems are complex systems. Complexity science is relatively new but already indispensable. Many of the most important problems in engineering, medicine, and public policy are now addressed with the ideas and methods of complexity science. However, there is no agreement about the definition of 'complexity' or 'complex system', nor even about whether a definition is possible or needed. The conceptual foundations of complexity science are disputed, and there are many and diverging views among scientists about what complexity and complex systems are. Even the status of complexity as a discipline can be questioned given that it potentially covers almost everything. The origins of complexity science lie in cybernetics and systems theory, both of which began in the 1950s. Complexity science is related to dynamical systems theory, which matured in the 1970s, and to the study of cellular automata, which were invented at the end of the 1940s. By then computer science had become established as a new scientific discipline.

scholarly journals Complex Systems, Emergence, and Multiscale Analysis: A Tutorial and Brief Survey

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5736
Author(s):  
Jianbo Gao ◽  
Bo Xu
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Complex Systems ◽  
Complexity Science ◽  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Highly Nonlinear ◽  
Course Material ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
The Many ◽  
Abnormal Behaviors

Mankind has long been fascinated by emergence in complex systems. With the rapidly accumulating big data in almost every branch of science, engineering, and society, a golden age for the study of complex systems and emergence has arisen. Among the many values of big data are to detect changes in system dynamics and to help science to extend its reach, and most desirably, to possibly uncover new fundamental laws. Unfortunately, these goals are hard to achieve using black-box machine-learning based approaches for big data analysis. Especially, when systems are not functioning properly, their dynamics must be highly nonlinear, and as long as abnormal behaviors occur rarely, relevant data for abnormal behaviors cannot be expected to be abundant enough to be adequately tackled by machine-learning based approaches. To better cope with these situations, we advocate to synergistically use mainstream machine learning based approaches and multiscale approaches from complexity science. The latter are very useful for finding key parameters characterizing the evolution of a dynamical system, including malfunctioning of the system. One of the many uses of such parameters is to design simpler but more accurate unsupervised machine learning schemes. To illustrate the ideas, we will first provide a tutorial introduction to complex systems and emergence, then we present two multiscale approaches. One is based on adaptive filtering, which is excellent at trend analysis, noise reduction, and (multi)fractal analysis. The other originates from chaos theory and can unify the major complexity measures that have been developed in recent decades. To make the ideas and methods better accessed by a wider audience, the paper is designed as a tutorial survey, emphasizing the connections among the different concepts from complexity science. Many original discussions, arguments, and results pertinent to real-world applications are also presented so that readers can be best stimulated to apply and further develop the ideas and methods covered in the article to solve their own problems. This article is purported both as a tutorial and a survey. It can be used as course material, including summer extensive training courses. When the material is used for teaching purposes, it will be beneficial to motivate students to have hands-on experiences with the many methods discussed in the paper. Instructors as well as readers interested in the computer analysis programs are welcome to contact the corresponding author.

Understanding functional illiteracy from a policy, adult education, and cognition point of view: Towards a joint referent framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-122
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Bulajić ◽  
Miomir Despotović ◽  
Thomas Lachmann
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Functional Illiteracy ◽  
Scale Levels ◽  
Components Of Reading ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract. The article discusses the emergence of a functional literacy construct and the rediscovery of illiteracy in industrialized countries during the second half of the 20th century. It offers a short explanation of how the construct evolved over time. In addition, it explores how functional (il)literacy is conceived differently by research discourses of cognitive and neural studies, on the one hand, and by prescriptive and normative international policy documents and adult education, on the other hand. Furthermore, it analyses how literacy skills surveys such as the Level One Study (leo.) or the PIAAC may help to bridge the gap between cognitive and more practical and educational approaches to literacy, the goal being to place the functional illiteracy (FI) construct within its existing scale levels. It also sheds more light on the way in which FI can be perceived in terms of different cognitive processes and underlying components of reading. By building on the previous work of other authors and previous definitions, the article brings together different views of FI and offers a perspective for a needed operational definition of the concept, which would be an appropriate reference point for future educational, political, and scientific utilization.

“The Unconscious” in Current Psychology

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Norman
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Verbal Report ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Unconscious Processing ◽  
Unconscious Processes ◽  
Intermediate States ◽  
Definition Of

A series of vignette examples taken from psychological research on motivation, emotion, decision making, and attitudes illustrates how the influence of unconscious processes is often measured in a range of different behaviors. However, the selected studies share an apparent lack of explicit operational definition of what is meant by consciousness, and there seems to be substantial disagreement about the properties of conscious versus unconscious processing: Consciousness is sometimes equated with attention, sometimes with verbal report ability, and sometimes operationalized in terms of behavioral dissociations between different performance measures. Moreover, the examples all seem to share a dichotomous view of conscious and unconscious processes as being qualitatively different. It is suggested that cognitive research on consciousness can help resolve the apparent disagreement about how to define and measure unconscious processing, as is illustrated by a selection of operational definitions and empirical findings from modern cognitive psychology. These empirical findings also point to the existence of intermediate states of conscious awareness, not easily classifiable as either purely conscious or purely unconscious. Recent hypotheses from cognitive psychology, supplemented with models from social, developmental, and clinical psychology, are then presented all of which are compatible with the view of consciousness as a graded rather than an all-or-none phenomenon. Such a view of consciousness would open up for explorations of intermediate states of awareness in addition to more purely conscious or purely unconscious states and thereby increase our understanding of the seemingly “unconscious” aspects of mental life.

Religious Narrative

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-9
Author(s):  
Armin Geertz
Keyword(s):  
Special Issue ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Religious Narrative ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

This introduction to the special issue on narrative discusses various ways of approaching religious narrative. It looks at various evolutionary hypotheses and distinguishes between three fundamental aspects of narrative: 1. the neurobiological, psychological, social and cultural mechanisms and processes, 2. the many media and methods used in human communication, and 3. the variety of expressive genres. The introduction ends with a definition of narrative.

An Analysis of the Demand for Reporting on Internal Control

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather M. Hermanson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Financial Statement ◽  
Individual Investors ◽  
Internal Auditors ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
User Groups ◽  
Definition Of

The purpose of this study is to analyze the demand for reporting on internal control. Nine financial statement user groups were identified and surveyed to determine whether they agree that: (1) management reports on internal control (MRIC) are useful, (2) MRICs influence decisions, and (3) financial reporting is improved by adding MRICs. In addition, the paper examined whether responses varied based on: (1) the definition of internal control used (manipulated as broad, operational definition vs. narrow, financial-reporting definition) and (2) user group. The results indicate that financial statement users agree that internal controls are important. Respondents agreed that voluntary MRICs improved controls and provided additional information for decision making. Respondents also agreed that mandatory MRICs improved controls, but did not agree about their value for decision making. Using a broad definition of controls, respondents strongly agreed that MRICs improved controls and provided a better indicator of a company's long-term viability. Executive respondents were less likely to agree about the value of MRICs than individual investors and internal auditors.

Shape Dynamics and the Linking Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavio Mercati
Keyword(s):  
Phase Space ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Line Element ◽  
Hamiltonian Formulation ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Extended Phase Space ◽  
Extended Phase ◽  
Problem Of Time ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Matter Fields

This chapter explains in detail the current Hamiltonian formulation of SD, and the concept of Linking Theory of which (GR) and SD are two complementary gauge-fixings. The physical degrees of freedom of SD are identified, the simple way in which it solves the problem of time and the problem of observables in quantum gravity are explained, and the solution to the problem of constructing a spacetime slab from a solution of SD (and the related definition of physical rods and clocks) is described. Furthermore, the canonical way of coupling matter to SD is introduced, together with the operational definition of four-dimensional line element as an effective background for matter fields. The chapter concludes with two ‘structural’ results obtained in the attempt of finding a construction principle for SD: the concept of ‘symmetry doubling’, related to the BRST formulation of the theory, and the idea of ‘conformogeometrodynamics regained’, that is, to derive the theory as the unique one in the extended phase space of GR that realizes the symmetry doubling idea.

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