Class VII

Unit 5 : Data Handling

Q1 : What is Census?
A : A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population.

Q2: What is the purpose of Census?

A : Census statistics help paint a picture of the nation and how we live. The main purpose of the census is to gain information on population development, population structure, households’ and living conditions and others. They provide a detailed snapshot of the population and its characteristics, and underpin funding allocation to provide public services. 

Q3 : What is the purpose of online questionnaire?

A : Online Questionnaires provide a quick way of seeking lots of opinions.

 The advantage is that they do not cost much as there is no need of postage, an envelope etc. It's available to a wide range of people, ecologically friendly (no use of paper needed), people can answer in their own free time, depending on the requirements, you can target a homogeneous or a diverse group, the computer can work out the results of the survey, people can answer anonymously, relatively cheap to conduct as there is no need to hire people to survey the public and the majority of people are able to participate in online surveys as nowadays most people have internet access.

 The disadvantage is that the people who reply are not representative of the population as a whole.  Certain populations are less likely to have internet access and to respond to online questionnaires.  Although online surveys in many fields can attain response rates equal to or slightly higher than that of traditional modes, internet users today are constantly bombarded by messages and can easily delete your advances.

Q4: What are Graphs?

A: Graphs and charts condense large amount of information into easy to understand formats that clearly and effectively communicate effective points. A graph basically summarizes how one quantity changes if another quantity that is related to it also changes.

Types of Graphs

Pie Graph

A pie graph, also known as a pie chart, is a type of graph commonly used in conjunction with percentages. A large circle is divided into sections depending on those percentages and each section represents part of the whole. In a pie chart, the arc length of each separate sector is meant to be proportional to the percentage it’s supposed to represent.

Bar Graph

A bar graph, or bar chart, is used to represent values in relation to other values. They’re often used to compare data taken over long periods of time, but they’re most often used on very small sets of data. These graphs can be horizontal or vertical. If it’s horizontal, the “categories” for what the actual data being represented is across the bottom and at the side, horizontally, are numbers that represent the actual data.

Line Graph

A line graph is slightly harder to define. They are meant to compare two separate variables and these variables are both plotted on an axis. In the end, you get a graph with lines that go from a fixed point across a chart going up and down in relation to data.

Scatter Graph

A scatter graph is a statistical diagram drawn to compare two sets of data. It can be used to look for connections or a correlation between the two sets of data. A Trend Line has been put in which is a line that shows the direction in which most points lie.

How many types of charts/graphs are there in Excel?

Column and Bar Graphs

Column and bar graphs both have bars in their charted area. Column graphs have bars that go up and down in the shape of columns. Whereas, bar graphs use rows going across the screen from left to right. You can have either a 2D or 3D design and the columns can be stacked on top of each other or side by side. Both of these graph options have more specific styles that you can pick from to make them more visually interesting.

Pie Chart

A pie chart is a chart that shows the proportions of the parts to the whole. Usually this kind of chart is used to emphasise a specific set of information, such as how one spends a monthly budget. Also, there is a sub-chart that allows you to make a pie of a pie chart by expanding one section of the pie chart into separate parts.

Doughnut Chart

This chart is similar to a pie chart because it has a round design and shows the parts of a whole. However, this particular chart allows you to show more than one set of data. The chart is made up of rings that each can display a different set of data. This is a good chart for comparing two things that happen within the same timeframe.

Scatter Chart

Also, a scatter chart is called a scatter plot. It depicts data as a series of dots. It works well for displaying data that have two variables. If there are multiple variables, you can use a 3D scatter chart. This type of chart is used commonly for scientific information. A trend line is put in which is a line that shows the direction in which most points lie.

following link will tell you how to create trend line on scatter graph.
Show how to create trend line.

 

Line Chart

A line chart is used when you are tracking something set at specific intervals. These can be trends that happen over a designated period of time or specific categories. Line charts can be straight or designed with markers noting each individual entry. They can be overlapping or stacked. It all depends on how you want to display the information.

Excel Rolling Dice Tutorial

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The machine takeover

During the worst days of the Great Depression in 1930, the famed economist John Maynard Keynes made an exceedingly optimistic prophecy.

In his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, he claimed that a few generations later, the developed world would be rich and technologically advanced enough to require from its citizens only 15 hours of work a week. As we live through the age Keynes prophesised about, it is obvious the impact technology has had on our economic being is far more complex than what Keynes could have imagined.

A part of Keynes’ prediction obviously came to fruition: we have seen technological advances undreamt of during his time. On the other hand, we also work 60 hours a week. Somehow, at the same time as automatons do an increasing amount of our work, we are working an ever-greater number of hours for a decreasing real wage. What explains this contradiction?

Classical economists would explain the increased work hours in the face of greater technological innovation through income-driven demand. As societies become richer, they claim, an increase in income enables people to demand more products and services. This in turn forces an increase in production and creates new jobs for workers. However, this explanation leaves a fundamental question unanswered. What happens when production can be increased without creating new jobs?

David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics who came to public light during the Occupy Wall Street movement, strongly criticises the classical approach to the relation of technology and employment. In his article “The Modern Phenomenon of Nonsense Jobs”, he explains how Keynes’ vision was perverted by an explosion in the number of “nonsense” jobs. “Huge swathes of people…” he says, “spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed.” He argues that the production industry largely has been mechanised (or outsourced) as predicted, but now the largely-useless-yet-massive service sector serves to provide employment for people who would no longer have any work otherwise.

An obvious confirmation of Graeber’s thesis would be a great increase in unemployment once service jobs start to get automated. This is reflected in recent research conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Erik Brynjolfsson. Along with his collaborator Andrew McAfee, Brynjolfsson argues that recent advances in computer technology and artificial intelligence are behind the sluggish growth of employment in the last 15 years. He predicts a dangerous future not only for manufacturing jobs, which are universally accepted to be a target for automation, but service jobs such as education, law and finance, as well. Even more alarmingly, his research finds that leaps in artificial intelligence and robotics are destroying jobs at a greater rate than they create new ones. He foresees not only sluggish growth in employment, but also stagnant wages and falling real incomes. Robots, the research suggests, are going to be replacing us for good.

Taken together, the work of Graeber and Brynjolfsson builds the picture of a world increasingly unemployed. In a recent TED Talk, MIT researcher Kevin Slavin outlined technology-driven unemployment related to the world of trading. More than 50 per cent of equity and futures trading on the financial market is conducted today through automated decision-making software with minimal human input. In some cases this software leads to outcomes its human operators do not understand, leading to anomalies such as the Flash Crash of 2010 when Dow Jones plunged 9 percent in a few minutes for no apparent reason. It is obvious that the algorithmic trading software have replaced several traders and brokers. A service profession, in other words, is being taken over by a machine.

The recent successful trial of the Google self-driven car, for example, also spells professional death for the reasonably skilled taxi drivers, chauffeurs, and delivery men of the world. Taking matters further into the moral grey, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, in a recent article in First Look report on how the United States Army uses algorithmic tracking via mobile phones to direct drone strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen. Military robots are, it seems, even deciding who to kill.

There are two obvious problems with the increasing proliferation of robots into the decision making sphere. The first is ethical. Is a robot manning the kill switch really as inhumane as it sounds, or is the horror merely an artefact of our evolutionary psychology? Is a robot deciding the financial fate of corporations prudent, or is it irresponsible of investors to relegate their responsibility to a machine? The answer is, one suspects, that robotic decision making would never have been used if it weren’t really effective. As unethical as it may sound, the robots are taking their masters’ whims to their logical conclusion and making market worthy decisions.

The second problem, of course, is the incredible amount of jobs being replaced by decision-making robots. According to Graeber’s work, the only reason Keynes’ vision of the future wasn’t realised was the growth in “nonsense” service jobs which offset the lack of demand from manufacturing jobs. With the exponential advancement in technology, the largely middle-class service jobs too will be taken over by automatons. Labour will become far too expensive relative to capital, and will therefore be increasingly irrelevant for the economy. In a free-market system, the one percent capitalist class will be able to take away a much greater percentage of the increase in productivity by commanding robots. In a chillingly science-fiction-like scenario, everyone else will be left unemployed and rendered irrelevant simply because there isn’t any space left for them in the economy. They will not be required for either production or growth.

There is hardly any government in the world prepared for this collapse. This is largely due to the unprecedented nature of the problem: for the first time in history, we are moving towards a post-scarcity society. There are two solutions in sight: socialism or basic income.

The more traditional counterpoint to a failure of capitalism, as the growing irrelevance of everyone but the one percent capitalist class would be socialism. State ownership of key resources would ensure a more equitable distribution of the gains from technology. The state could, in this case, provide full employment to everyone and regulate education to fall in line with the demand. However, due to historical reasons, this solution will likely be unwelcome in the West, particularly in the United States.

A far more attractive and novel solution is that of basic income. According to the research of Duke University Professor Kathi Weeks, our notion of labour is defined in relation to a society where it was needed for people to work. Keeping in line with advancing technology, work’s domination of life can be shunned in favour of basic income, which means ensuring everyone has a base standard of living regardless of what they contribute to the economy. In this work-optional society, she argues, people will have time to cultivate interests in science and art. This is perhaps closest to what Keynes had in mind when he talked about a 15-hour work week.

The idea of basic income has been gaining ground. In 2012, a Swiss basic-income advocacy group collected more than a hundred thousand signatures on a petition and therefore triggered a referendum in Switzerland on whether to guarantee every Swiss citizen an unconditional monetary gift every year. This vote will be the first of its kind in the world. A similar initiative has been supported by the Green Party of the United States and the Liberal Party of Norway among others. It is important to note that the idea itself is not new: Martin Luther King Jr. supported a basic income in 1967. Extraordinary advances in technology have made the idea more practical now than it has ever been in history. Indeed, it can be argued that it is the only way to prevent massive social unrest in the coming years.

In the meantime, society will find itself sorely tested as greater fissures appear between the skilled and unskilled and the gulf widens between the haves and the have-nots. Although it will be a problem related exclusively to affluent societies at first, slowly but surely the technology will permeate towards developing countries. At worst, we will hurtle towards a system with concentrated wealth, nonsense jobs and great social unrest. At best, we will fulfil Keynes’ prophesy and work very little while cultivating our interests in art and science. What is certain is that the next decade will be tremendously interesting to watch, and the path it takes will shape the world’s economic future for centuries to come.

Gun Control

The school boy from Karachi knew he wasn't supposed to, but he got hold of it anyway.

It was his father’s handgun, and he was showing it to a classmate who was visiting him at home. What happened next was tragic. The gun went off accidentally, shooting the visiting youngster in the head and killing him.

This was nearly twenty years ago, and gun fatalities at the hands of youngsters in Pakistan have only worsened. GunPolicy.org estimates that at least 18,000,000 guns are owned by civilians in Pakistan. The same website indicates that in 2011, there were nearly 14,000 homicides.

Alarmingly, the statistic has been growing every year. Although most of these deaths are probably unavoidable, perhaps some, especially those at the hands of young people who had no business handling a gun, could be avoided in the future, thanks to what is being called ‘smart guns’ technology.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers are working on a design which personalises a handgun to the point where it only works in the hand of the owner. This means that stolen guns, which are often used in crimes, will be useless in the hands of perpetrators.

How does the NJIT smart gun distinguish between a friend and foe? Well, the ‘dynamic grip’ of the smart gun boasts sensors which are similar to those on the fingerprint scanner of a laptop, just more advanced. There are sixteen sensors to be exact, and according to American politician Jon Corzine, who backs the technology, the smart gun is ‘cutting edge’. Donald H. Sebastian, senior Vice President for Research & Development at NJIT, elaborates on the smart gun’s biometric technology, “Fingerprints and retinas number among the best known markers. Identifying a person by such attributes is called the science of biometrics.”

Such biometrics is the pillar of the Dynamic Grip Recognition, measuring the physical signatures of a person’s hand. These signatures not only scan the size of a person’s hand, but the way he/she shoots as well, “This technology is similar to how electronic machines read an individual’s signature upon completing a credit card transaction.”

Another such company is Armatix USA, which is currently selling weapons to customers worldwide. Their smart guns are activated by a watch and a PIN, and only those wearing the watch can use the guns. According to Armatix, after the PIN is entered by the authorised person, the digital key and the blocking device exchange encrypted data in a process to unlock the weapon that only takes place “slightly longer” than normal. If the Armatix smart gun falls into the wrong hands, the weapon deactivates thanks to a retrofitted blocking device which is fitted into the barrel of the gun.

Not everyone considers smart guns to be a surefire hit, however. For example, many people with fingerprint scanners on their laptops have trouble logging into their computers because the scanner refuses to work the first time. Although a few seconds’ delay is merely frustrating for computer users, such a delay could mean the difference between life and death during an emergency where a smart gun is required.

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