Ralston Fails Again

Ralston Fails Again

By David Braly, excerpt

Ralston smiled. He went up to the edge of the porch. Merrill stood at the vertical post where the lunch bell hung. A string of reins and bridles hung with the bell, and an old saddle was balanced beneath them on a horizontal rail that ran from the vertical post to another vertical post at the end of the porch. Ralston could smell the leather in the reins and the saddle even though they were very old.

“I need to run through that day with you again,” said Ralston.

“I’ve been over it with you four times, Ben”.

“I know. But once more. There might be something you’re saying that I’m missing the importance of. I believe in being thorough.”

Merrill shrugged. “The day began about the same as usual,” he said. “We were doing the usual things, which I’ve gone over with you before. There was no one here except myself, Amanda, my boy Buck, and Craig Lyle. There hadn’t been anybody out here since noon the previous day. The hired hands were all several miles from here driving the cattle to the corral at Guthrie’s Thicket.”

“What time did Lyle enter the barn?”

“Right after breakfast. About seven thirty.”

“Where were you and your family?”

Wigs. Illustration by Elena

“Here, at the house. I was right here on the front porch, sated here on the edge, filling up the lanterns. Amanda was in the living room sweeping the floor, which she does every morning in summer after a hot night to get out the earwigs. The kid was in his room. We heard the shot and ran out to -”

“How much time,” interrupted Ralston, “passed from the moment Lyle entered the barn until you heard the shots?”

“I’ve told you before, I don’t know. He left for the barn at the same time I brought out the lanterns, The walk to the barn only takes a couple of minutes, but that’s assuming that he didn’t stop for some reason on the way there. All I can tell you for certain, Ben, is that seven or eight minutes must’ve passed from the time we stepped out of the house until I heard the shot.”

Ralston took off his hat and rubbed the sweatband again. It was so hot he hated to wear a hat. The thought about the time gap. Up to six minutes unaccounted for. It mattered, too. If Lyle dallied on his walk to the barn and didn’t reach it until seven or eight minutes after he left the house, it probably meant that the killer was inside waiting for him. But if he went straight there and spent up to six minutes inside the barn before being shot, it could mean that the killer entered after him. But where had the man gone? Or was it a man? He put his hat back on.

“Earlier you mentioned something about your wife threatening Lyle,” said Ralston.

Merrill snorted and shook his head. “Now, don’t you try to make something out of that. It was hardly more than a joke.”

“Tell me about it anyway.”

Merrill took a deep breath and exhaled it loudly, a clear signal to the sheriff that Merrill felt his tie was being wasted.

Published in September 2000, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery magazine.

Letter from an Ill Tenant to the Owner

Example of a Letter from an Ill Tenant to the Owner

To Owners Investments Limited

Dear Madam, Sir,

On September 15, 2018 I was served with a notice of eviction in 10 days due to my antisocial behaviour. I do not deny the claim, but by the present I kindly ask you to review your decision due to the following facts:

1. I have mental health issues. A few years ago I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia, I spent time in various hospitals, including the Toronto General hospital and I’m on medication now. At your request I can immediately provide my diagnosis and the phone number of my doctor. For the last 3 years I have been stable, and my health is greatly improving.
2. Since I rented the apartment in your property, 3 years ago, I’ve never failed to pay my rent, I’ve never had any problems neither with other tenants, nor with the administration.
3. This incident was an isolated incident in the last 3 years. It is directly related to my condition. Such oubursts happen very rarely and doctors say they are very unlikely to repeat. In fact, it is almost impossible that such an incident happens again. And in the very unlikely circumstances that it repeats, I’ll be the first to ask for hospitalization, as it’s my health that I care about above all. But I reiterate, the doctor assures me that the incident is very unlikely to occur again.
4. The government of Ontario asks landords to help people with mental health issues (my case exactly). The government asks landords to accommodate persons who suffer from mental illness and to help them. I outline that I am not asking for any help, nor do I require special conditions for me. The only thing I ask you is to cancel the notice of eviction due to the reasons explained. I’d like to assure you that I care about my neighbours and about myself.

I hope you’ll understand the situation, as if I have to leave and look for another dwelling, it may have a very strong negative effect on my health. On the other side, I can only repeat that this incident will not happen again.

A big real estate. Photo by Elena

For more information about my illness and the policy of the Ontario Ministry of Health regarding the tenants with the same illness you can consult the Ontario Ministry of Health and long term care: http://www.health.gov.on.ca (specifically their vision of Housing for people with mental health issues – http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/minds-matter-report-consultation-human-rights-mental-health-and-addictions/11-housing

You can also consult the Canadian Mental Health Association – http://cmha.ca/, specifically Ontario’s position on Housing of people with mental health issues: https://ontario.cmha.ca/documents/housing-and-mental-health/

Sincerely yours,
Tenant

September 18th, 2018
Toronto, ON

Tips on Writing Essays

Tips on Writing Essays

Most college and undergraduate courses require writing essays. In general, instructors will give detailed guidelines on what they expect in a term paper. Some essays, such as those in political science classes, tend to be more argumentative in scope, and thus require an approach that proves (or argues) a position with supporting arguments. Alternatively, a research paper’s main purpose is to inform, describe, review the existing literature on the subject and stimulate discussion.

Pointers on how to write a successful essay are numerous, but some simple rules do exist. For example, a good essay requires a thesis. A thesis is a very short summary, typically one or two sentences, which briefly summarizes what the paper is about. Likewise, each paragraph must have a topic sentence, which could be viewed as a mini thesis, to simplify things. As a rule, each idea gets a paragraph, and thus a topic sentence. Also, a paragraph is made up of at least two sentences. Grammar, syntax and linguistic structure are beyond the scope of the present short article, and are thus omitted from the present discussion.

A very important part of writing academic essays is to avoid plagiarism! Indeed, most higher learning institutions, as well as schools, have very strict policies regarding plagiarism. But what constitutes plagiarism? Plagiarism refers to taking someone’s writing and presenting it as your own, without proper citation and referencing. In fact, even copying another person’s idea without giving the original author credit represents plagiarism, a very serious academic offence, which could get a student to receive a failing grade on an assignment, fail the course or even get expelled from college or university in some cases.

Instruments for good writing in the past. Photo by Elena

Confusing? Some students wonder how they are supposed to review existent research and present scientific findings, or discuss literary works, without repeating what others have said. The answer is actually quite simple: paraphrasing, citing sources and properly referencing the authors and works text appeared in. Interestingly, several referencing styles exist, such as the APA, MLA and Chicago. More often than not, a professor will be clear about which style is best to use in the field, or for a particular assignment. Tips on how to properly reference may even be found in the course syllabus.

Another key factor in writing essays is a balance between broad scope vs. specialization. To illustrate, during my first year of undergraduate studies, a professor teaching perception introduced himself on the first lecture. I remember he talked briefly about his specialization in the field, a depth of inquiry most students in the introductory class will not ever reach for several reasons. Mostly, because specialists are valued precisely because specializing in the study of a particular subject permits one to gain insight and experience to a level unreachable to most, not only because of talent and natural abilities, but also because of personal interests, and also time invested. Actually, there is a theory in psychology stating that anyone can become an expert on a subject, provided they invest and spend 10,000 hours practicing, learning and mastering the topic or task at hand. But we digress…

To make a long story short, the professor also talked about his personal interests, such as scuba diving and alpine hicking. Therefore, a well-rounded essay is somewhat similar to a person with varied interests. To get a good mark, it is important to answer the question and fulfill the requirements of the assignment, but also to become an expert (term used lightly here as a metaphor) on the topic, to specialize and yet, to look at the issue from different viewpoints, hence the broad scope analogy. An outline may come in handy to organize points and statements one wishes to go over. Further, a first or rough draft may also be helpful before the revised, final draft is handed in. Hopefully, the present paper has achieved its purpose, which was to attempt to briefly describe the main tips, pointers and guidelines on how to survive in academia by writing successful essays and term papers.

Essay Writing Tips

To write an essay, it’s important to first decide what is the purpose of said essay. Some essays are argumentative, others informative. For example, an essay written in a political science course is likely to be argumentative, while one written in psychology is more likely to be informative. Also, it’s important to keep within the scope of an essay. Some topics are so broad that it is impossible to cover everything in a mere 1500 words.

If you’re writing for academic purposes, in the sense that you are writing for school, the most important point is to follow the assignment’s instructions. A professor usually gives a hand out describing what is expected of students writing the essay. A crucial, fundamental point is to avoid plagiarism at all costs. Plagiarism is any instance when you portray someone else’s idea as your own, thus not necessarily a verbatim copy.

Writing tips for smart ladies. Photo by Elena

To avoid plagiarism, use references in the text and in the references section at the end. The way you reference your sources depends on the citation style that you choose. Again, if the essay is for school, college or university, the assignment hand out or digital file will usually specify the referencing style to use. The style also depends on the subject being studied. Political science uses MLA or Chicago School, whereas psychology employs APA.

Finally, in choosing sources make sure you have reliable information. A good way to find authoritative sources in a subject is to use Google Scholar, where many academic articles from journals are published free of cost. In the advanced search box you can specify the date of publication and where key words should be (as in appearing in title). The recommended time range is usually five years, to get recent, relevant articles. In conclusion, to write a good essay you must become an expert in the subject, so it is fundamental to read a lot before starting to write, it will also help with writer’s block.

Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street. One of the world's most known streets.

1 Wall Street. On one of the world’s most expensive corners – 1 Wall Street and Broadway – architect Ralph Walker conceived his zig-zag Art Deco Skycraper for the Irving Trust Company as a “curtain wall” – not the typical sheet of glass hanging from a steel cage, but a limestone wall rippling like a curtain descending on a Broadway stage.Because of the curves in the wall, the bank doesn’t completely occupy its full building lot, and by law unoccupied and unmarked land reverts to the public – not too many square inches are left unused here, but each one is worth gold. So a slender metal line in the sidewalk makes clear who owns what. 1 Wall Street: Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker, Architects, 1928-1931.

The Wall Street entrance of 1 Wall Street leads into a dazzling, two-story banking hall whose ceiling sparkles in red and gold mosaics designed by Hildreth Meiere, rivaling the mosaics in the Golden Hall of Stockholm’s City Hall, and manufactured by the same company, the Ravenna Mosaic Company, in Berlin.

14 Wall Street. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus piled on top of the bell-tower of St. Mark’s in Venice, at the corner of Wall and Broad – that’s the design concept behind 14 Wall Street. In its day the world’s tallest bank building, the 539-foot-high skyscraper originally housed the headquarters of Bankers Trust, one of the country’s wealthiest financial institutions.

14 Wall Street: Trowbridge & Livingston, Architects, 1910-1912. Addition: Sherve, Lamb & Harmon, Architects, 1931-1933. Many early skyscrapers took the Venetian bell-tower as a logical model for a modern office tower, but 14 Wall Street was the first to top it off with a temple in the sky, a seven-story stepped pyramid modeled on one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The bank the adopted the pyramid as its trademark, and took as its slogan “A Tower of Strength.”

Instantly a standard-bearer in the fabled Downtown skyline, 14 Wall Street went on to become a widely recognized symbol of Wall Street and American capitalism.

Wall Street Bull, the symbol of the most famous street in the world

Cipriani Society on Wall street

Express Row: The stretch of Broadway from Exchange Alley to Rector Street once housed the companies – like Adams Express, at 61 Broadway – that carried packages too heavy for the mails but too insubstantial for the railroads. American Express built 65 Broadway in 1917 (Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker, architects). It was here in 1958 that, among its many other innovations, the company issued the first American Express credit cards.

A Wall street corner

A typical Wall Stree view.

Equinox, another famous fund and society

The Wall Street Exchange.

Liberty Place

A nice morning on Wall Street

A new modern-looking building on Wall Street

Our Lady of Victory Church on Wall Street

The Empire Building: The great, granite-faced, 20-story building at 71 Broadway (Kimball & Thompson, 1898) – narrow end on Broadway, broad end opposite Trinity Church – served as headquarters for U.S. Steel from its birth in 1901 until 1976.

Many early skyscrapers took the Venetian bell-tower as a logical model for a modern office tower.

The Trinity Church at the end of Wall Street

Corner of Wall street and William Street

The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus piled on top of the bell-tower of St. Mark’s in Venice, at the corner of Wall and Broad – that’s the design concept behind 14 Wall Street. In its day the world’s tallest bank building, the 539-foot-high skyscraper originally housed the headquarters of Bankers Trust, one of the country’s wealthiest financial institutions.

48 Wall Street: Benjamin Wistar Morris, Architect, 1927-1929.Museum of American Finance: What more appropriate home for the Museum of American Finance than the grand, 30-foot-high banking hall of the former Bank of New York building? The museum – an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution – is the only one of its kind in America. Effectively serving as the New York Stock Exchange`s de facto visitor`s center, the museum displays permanent interactive exhibits on finance, money, entrepreneurship and banking. These feature rare examples of Colonial currency; stock and bond certificates dating from the 18th century to the present; high denomination currency including $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills; and hundreds of images of the financial district. The museum includes a room dedicated to Hamilton, founder of the bank and the country`s first Treasury Secretary. 

The Bank of New York – oldest bank in the city, founded in 1784 by Alexander Hamilton – commissioned a new headquarters (their third on this site) in 1927. The bank instructed architect Benjamin Wistar Morris to incorporate something of the institution`s Colonial history in the design. That history is evident inside the main banking hall, where eight murals by J. Monroe Hewlett illustrate the story of American commerce and the life of the Bank. Outside, the building`s major Colonial reference is meant to be seen from a distance: a tower reminiscent of an 18th-century church, but thirty stories up in the air – definitely the only Colonial tower in the Downtown skyline. 

There are two murals in the main banking hall: Foreign Trade shows a ship`s captain, manifest in hand, disembarking, while his ship is secured at the East River docks. National Credit 1861 symbolically represents the financial backing The Bank of New York lent the federal government during the Civil War – the classical building in the background was the old Custom House at 26 Wall Street, today`s Federal Hall. Twin carving staircases with decorative wrought-iron railings lead from the building`s entrance foyer up to the grand former banking hall, which now serves as an elegant backdrop for the Museum of American Finance.

The earliest known photograph of Wall Street was taken circa 1860 from the deck of a ship at the South Street docks on the East River. It shows the famous vista closed by Trinity Church at Broadway. In the pre-skycraper era Trinity Church towered above the Street`s commercial buildings – while today it is dwarfed by its neighbors.

Business Statistics

Business Statistics

Whether they are called quantitative methods, econometrics, psychological or business statistics, statistical methods are an indispensable tool in many scientific endeavors. Statistics are profusely used in business, while econometrics is a whole field that applies mathematical and statistical techniques to economic reality. Statisticians’ methodology is used extensively in financial analyses, marketing and even accounting.

A sample is a subset of a larger population that is supposed to accurately estimate some aspect of the population. A characteristic referring to the sample is called a statistic, while its population counterpart is a parameter (easy to remember since the words share the first letter in both cases). By convention, capital N refers to population while lower case n describes the sample. Random sampling, in which every item has an equal chance of being selected, is usually considered a prerequisite to unbiased reliable results.

Descriptive and Inferential Statistics

Data values can be quantitative or qualitative (categorical). Further, qualitative data can be subdivided into non-numeric and numeric, such as when each response, for example undergraduate business major, is assigned a number (finance – 1, marketing – 2, economics – 3, and so on). Both numeric and non-numeric can be nominal and ordinal. Quantitative data, in turn, can only be numeric but is subdivided into interval and ratio. Temperature would be interval, while age corresponds to ratio because someone who is 60 years old is exactly twice as old as a 30-year-old, but 10 degrees does not necessarily represent double the warmth of 5 degrees. The ratio versus interval is perhaps the most confusing of statistical concepts at an introductory course level.

Data

Many of the pictorial representations of statistics fall into the following common categories: pie chart, histogram, bar graph plus stem and leaf display. As mentioned above, the finance industry uses statistics to determine such items as price earnings ratios and dividend yields. Testing of theories such as arbitrage pricing also involves the fields of financial mathematics and financial econometrics. Excel is an excellent program to create charts. To create a stock chart in Excel one must know volume traded, opening and closing, as well as high and low, prices. Below are some examples of different displays using the software.

Graphs

The main visual difference between a histogram and a bar graph is that in a histogram columns touch, whereas in a bar graph they do not. Percentages are usually depicted in a pie chart, while for relative quantitative, relative categorical and cumulative frequencies, histograms, bar charts and ogives, respectively, are preferred.

Pie Chart

To draw a pie chart manually one must multiply the percentage of an element by 360 degrees. Thus, a 25% A would take 0.25  360= 90 degrees in the circle. Pie charts are often used in business for their clarity and impact. A marketing survey enquiring how many television sets households own may present their findings in this way (i.e. relative percentages of no TVs, 1 TV, 2 TVs, and 3 TVs).

Line Graphs

Of the examples provided here, the scatter plot is most similar to the line graph. The scatter plot contains dots corresponding to, usually, two variables (X and Y) and their interrelation is demonstrated by the regression, or best fit, line. If X and Y move in the same direction (as X increases, Y increases) they are said to be positively correlated, if their movements are reversed (as X increases, Y decreases or as X decreases, Y increases) then they are negatively correlated. Also, one never hears enough of this sentence: a correlation does not guarantee a causal effect.

In a corporate style presentation, a line graph would most likely be used to compare the fluctuation of the average price of gasoline and alternative energy sources (for instance Diesel, Regular, Premium and say Ethanol). None of the data in the pictures presented here is real; it is hypothetical, for illustrative purposes only. Conversely, a scatter plot may signify the relationship between average stay at a resort and food consumed (positive correlation) or price and quantity purchased (as price goes up, quantity goes down).

Stem & Leaf Display

In a stem (left) and leaf (right) display, first digits constitute the stem and the rest form the leaf. Unless otherwise specified a leaf unit equals one. So for instance the following set [90, 92, 92, 94, 97, 97, 97, 98, 99] would be portrayed as such:

9 | 0 2 2 4 7 7 7 8 9

Measures of Central Location

MEAN – perhaps the best-known statistical concept, the average. The mean is written as X bar (bar on top) for the sample, and the lower-case Greek alphabet letter Mu for the population. The mean is calculated by summing up all individual observations, and then dividing the sum by the total number of observations. Although decidedly useful, the mean can hide part of the picture. For instance, if one finds the average salary of marketing professionals, one outlier who was immensely more successful than everyone else may distort the number.

MEDIAN – to locate the median, one must first arrange the data in ascending order and find the middle position (number of data points + 1 / 2). If the sample is even, then it is necessary to take the average of the two middle values. In the case described above (advertizing specialists’ income distribution), the median would render a better picture of the true state of affairs.

MODE – from the French word meaning fashion, it is simply the value that appears most often in a collection (pun intended) of values. There can be more than one mode, and the sample can consequently be called unimodal (1 mode), bimodal (2 modes) and multimodal (3 or more). A mode would likely be the best measurement choice for a cosmetics’ retailer trying to determine which color of lipstick the store should stock up