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Presents comments and discussion on an article by Saul Hymans on composite leading indicators. Discussion of various parts of the paper; Criticism.

This paper describes the solution of a multi-index transportation problem where there are three indices The method of solution is an extension of the modi-method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an index of various literature on rural sociology.

The present paper is an attempt to evaluate the registered data on Canadian Indians collected by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and to prepare vital rates for 1960-1970 using the adjusted data. A cursory examination of registered data for the purpose of developing various demographic indices and for making future estimates of population indicates certain anomalies that call for a careful appraisal of the data. The main problem is the inconsistency in the reporting of births, due largely to the late registration of births. One plausible reason for late registration may be the increased outward movement of Indians from their reserves. Indirect methods are used to adjust the number of births and infant deaths reported annually since 1960. On the basis of the adjusted data, vital rates for the Canadian Indians are calculated for the period 1960-1970. The crude death rate decreased from 10.9 in 1960 to 7.5 in 1970. The infant mortality rate registered a drastic decline, from 81.5 deaths per 1,000 births in 1960 to 34.9 in 1970. During this same time period the birth rate also declined, from 46.5 to 37.2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a paper that attempts to provide a fairly complete analysis of the performance of the existing composite index of leading indicators as a predictor of the major swings in economic activity in the period since the Second World War. Identification of the twelve variables that form the composite index of leading indicators (CLI) and presents a view of the rationale for constructing the CLI; Indication of how spectral analysis might be used to form a new leading indicator that overcomes some of the difficulties revealed in the current CLI, and the evaluation of two variants of such an indicator; Conclusions and suggestions for further work.

Presents a paper on capacity in manufacturing and the need for accuracy since it is used to formulate many other forecasts. Series of indexes on operating rates of manufacturers; Recent developments on measuring operating rates; Belief that operating rates promise significant clues to the most important stabilization questions of the day; Suggestion of alternate measures of capacity; Comment on the McGraw-Hill surveys; thoughts on the Federal Reserve Board index; Comments on the Wharton Index; Listing of characteristics of the measure included cyclical bias and growth in capacity; Recent hazards for estimating capacity; Disaggregating measure of capacity; Predicting capacity growth and investment; Prediction of price changes; Operating rate levels; The inflation on 1973 and its role in determining performance; Conclusions.

In this paper, which is the first step in our efforts to produce an objective standard for use in measuring the investment performance of any portfolio of securities over some period of time, we introduce the average investment performance index (AIPI). The AIPI measures the average return which could have been realized during a particular time period from some specified universe of securities. Our reasons for constructing the AIPI are presented in Section I, where we also formally define the AIPI and discuss the random portfolios which conceptually underlie it. Section II is a mathematical development of the AIPI's properties. We find that the AIPI is equivalent to an unweighted arithmetic average of all actual returns in the given universe of securities, we show how to compute the variance of returns from all possible random portfolios, and we develop a method for linking the values of the AIPI across successive time periods. The use of the AIPI and the variance of random portfolio returns for rating the investment results achieved by portfolio managers is discussed and illustrated in Section III. We feel that the objective evaluations which are the basis of our illustrations should allow the reader to assess the applicability and implications of using the AIPI as a measure of investment performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on the papers written by students of the third grade about the history of the growth of Chicago, Illinois from the time it was a trading post through its pioneer stage. It also presents the first of two sections of the papers entitled "Chicago of Long Ago" and a subject index to provide an idea about the contents of each child's book. It also presents selected sections from the children's works which are most essential in telling a brief story of Chicago's growth through the past century. The papers present correlated works in geography, industrial science, mathematics, handwork, and art.

Even though a single summary index of mortality can never replace the set of age-specific death rates, it has been found to be extremely useful for a wide variety of purposes. Such indexes are generally one of two types: aggregative indexes, such as directly standardized rates which reflect absolute differences between corresponding age-specific mortality rates; and average of relatives indexes which reflect proportional differences between those rates. The choice of index depends upon the purposes for which it is to be used, and is important as different indexes can produce very different results. While directly standardized rates are widely used, they depend upon the selection of an appropriate standard population and give disproportionately heavy weight to the high ages. Average of relatives indexes give equal weight to all ages, but are infrequently used as no index of that type has gained wide acceptability. This paper recommends the use of the geometric mean of the age-specific mortality rates as such an index, and shows that this index is readily calculable, unbiased, needs no standard population, is directly comparable to all other indexes so calculated, and accurately reflects exponential mortality patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a discussion on "segregation indices" which deals with issues like the way to define the amount of Negro segregation in a city. It is to define measures of association for a contingency table with only two columns, that is, where one of the attributes, like Negro and non-Negro, is dichotomous. Instead of a minority and dominant group, one may, for instance, compare men and women, an experimental and control group, and so forth. Likewise, the manifold attribute need not be location. If there is anything special about the residential segregation problem, it is that there are a large number of census tracts roughly equal in population, that is, that the row totals of the contingency table are approximate. To convert chi square for a table with two columns into an index with the range o to 1, one merely divide it by the total population. The quotient is called the mean square contingency, or phi square. Two of the proposed indices are nothing but special applications of phi, in one case for a particular fourfold table, in the other by k table. Furthermore, the familiar approach by k table is more easily generalized.

The article presents the results of a study in which analyzes the relationships between factuality and the discussion of value in an impartial sample of recent sociological writings. In this study, two sentences were chosen, by explicit routine rules, from each available page in 51 consecutive signed articles in the "American Sociological Review" and from 19 consecutive signed articles in the "American Journal of Sociology." This study considered factual and non-factual sentences dealing directly with values. The first type of non-factual sentences is referred as unsupported value judgments. The second type of non-factual sentences included all generalizations not dealing directly with values and clearly not belonging in the category. This group if informally referred as sweeping generalisations. This study involved calculation on intercorrelations between indexes representing the relative frequencies of all types of sentences. The objective of the study is to determine to what extent factual and non-factual treatments of values are correlated with each other and with factual and non-factual treatments of non-valuational matter.

Presents an index of books and related references on sociology, which appeared in the June 1970 issue of "Rural Sociology." Population, labor force, migration; Ecology, use of physical and natural resources; Social organization, community institutions.

Presents an index of books and related references on sociology, which appeared in the September 1969 issue of "Rural Sociology."

The article presents a list of papers published in the 1973 issue of the periodical. Some papers are "Announcements," "API Method Extended," "Airline Crew-Scheduling," "Air-Cargo Deployment Combat Personnel," "Aircraft Average Number Collisions," "Collision Probabilities," "Large Relative Velocity," "Special Cases, Velocity," "Air Fleet Evaluation Model (AFEM)," "Airports, Parallel Runways," "Air Routes, Potential Conflict," "Air-Route Network Planning," "Augmented Predecessor Indexing Method," "Books of Interest," "Brisbane City Council Transport Services, Note," "Broken Shifts, Bus Scheduling," "Bus Crew Scheduling," "Chesapeake Bay Bridge Traffic Control," "Column Generation Algorithm," "Combat Personnel, Equipment, Deployment," "Comparison, Steady-State and Simulation Methods," "Designing Transportation Networks," "Digital Simulation, Freeway Traffic, Long Island Expressway, New York," "Facility Location Algorithm," "Feeder Transit Lines," "Freeway Traffic, Digital Simulation," "General Networks Lemmas," "Generalized Network Problems," and "Generalized Transportation Problems."

The development of a statistically adequate set of construction price indexes is the goal of a research effort recently instituted at the Bureau of the Census. This paper describes research done to date on price indexes for single-family houses and indicates plans for future research. Using data from the Bureau's Housing Sales Survey, indexes of the price of new one-family houses sold (including value of site) have been computed by determining the most important characteristics of these houses and estimating, by regression analysis, the price change in houses with a constant "mix" of these characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a response to the article by George Perry on manufacturing capacity. How the indexes measuring capacity have been contradictory at times; Reasons for that; Explanation of the full capacity concept; Consideration of capacity utilization as an explanatory variable; Contemporary findings.

In the article "The Measurement of Ecological Segregation," which was previously published in the journal "American Sociological Review," an attempt was made to construct a quantitative index as an operational definition of the sociological concept of ecological segregation. It was found that not just one, but an indefinitely large number of different indices could be constructed, all, logically corresponding to the concept of ecological segregation. Furthermore, four such indices were constructed, and when applied to data for census tracts in a number of cities. In 1940, the intercorrelations between the indices varied from .48 to .96. Consequently, it was concluded that there may be more than one "correct" operational definition of the concept, depending on various assumptions and techniques adopted. The "correctness" of an operational definition was held to depend upon the specified function that it is to perform in a given research problem. These results and conclusions raise the question of how to select from among the many possible indices, the one which is "best" or most "correct" for a given research problem.

Illustrates the application of a rating index to single-engine aircraft used in non-air-carrier flying to serve as statistical guide for accident research. Features of the statistical technique; Difficulties and dangers in the use of the index when applied to aircraft accidents.

The article presents a comment on the article "Industrial growth in the Soviet Union " by G. Warren Nutter, published in the May 1958 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." According to the author, Nutter in his article presented number of different indexes of Industrial production for the Soviet union, namely, industrial materials indexes, finished goods indexes, and indexes of "All Industrial Products." Out of these he selected the industrial materials indexes as the most reliable and compared them graphically with a single comprehensive industrial production index for the U.S., consisting essentially of the Federal Reserve Board index for 1929 to 1955, the Fabricant-Barger index for 1899 to 1929. The conclusion is surprising since most students of the Soviet economy have thought that Soviet industry has been growing considerably faster than the U.S. industry. Therefore the author argues that Nutter's comparison of materials indexes for the Soviet Union with a comprehensive index for the U.S. is improper, and that a comparison of a U.S. materials index with Mutter's Soviet materials indexes does not support the conclusion that U. S. industry has kept pace with Soviet industry.

The article presents a reply in response to an article written by R.V. Greenslide and Phyllis A. Wallace, criticizing an article written by the author on industrial growth in the Soviet Union, published in the May 1958 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author clarifies that his comparisons of the Soviet Union and the U.S. industrial growth were based on three different indexes of Soviet industrial growth, each with two weight base. The indexes of industrial materials, which show a growth more or less midway between extremes, were chosen to represent the Soviet Union on a graph comparing Soviet and the U.S. industrial growth. But they were used only for a broad look into the research, immediately supplemented by a table that presented the ranges of Soviet growth rates derived from all the indexes presented in the article, and compared those ranges with growth rates derived from the author's index of industrial production in the U.S. The author argues that an index of industrial materials does not reflects adequately the total industrial growth. The author also clarifies the argument that a comprehensive index of industrial production for the Soviet Union must have a downward bias relative to a similar index for the U.S.

Presents an index of books and related references on sociology, which appeared in the December 1971 issue of "Rural Sociology." Population, labor force, migration; Social organization and community institutions; Communication, level of knowledge, diffusion, adoption, and planned change.

Presents an index of books and related references on sociology, which appeared in the September 1968 issue of "Rural Sociology." Population, labor force, migration; Ecology, use of physical and natural resources; Social organization and community institutions.

Copyright of Rural Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One method of measuring the contribution that different published manuscripts make to a discipline is to compare the number of citations made to each manuscript in subsequent papers published in the discipline. Similarly the number of citations made to the articles published in an economic journal by authors who publish in the same and other journals might be used to construct an objective quality index for economic journals. Authors of this article, have constructed such an index for fourteen economic journals using the citations in the articles of these journals for the five-year period, 1966 through 1970. Communications sections were excluded. These results are shown in two table 1 and table 2. Table 1 shows the number of and percentage of citations received by each journal from itself and from each of the thirteen other journals over the five-year period. Table 2 gives the percentage of the total number of citations per year received by each journal for each of the five years studied.

This section provides an overview of the index of the Public Opinion Quarterly's (POQ) 1937 issue. The index, edited by Norma L. Gilbertson, provides a thumbnail sketch of public opinion research in the U.S. Gilbertson relied heavily on the annual POQ indexes, prepared by the magazine's editors and assistant editors. Editors, in turn, are guided by authors, but in their selection of subject categories, they are also influenced by the prevailing winds of intellectual fashion. The index contains a record of what public opinion researchers, writers and editors think their concerns were, or should have been. On the evidence of the Index, public opinion researchers are unlikely to concern themselves with issues unless these are salient for the public. Neither retrospect nor prospect is much indulged. For example, the word urban does not appear in the index at all, though metropolitan problems does. Some matters are of perennial interest to public opinion researchers, showing fluctuation rather than change. Election studies, for example, increased from 12 to 22, then dropped slightly to 17. Articles on research methods increased from 12 to 18 and remained at the level. POQ authors, incidentally, have so far resisted the abominable temptation, elsewhere freely indulged, of escalating methods to methodology.

The article focuses on reliability of statistics in the Soviet Union. The author reflects that the distortion of statistics by party-line philosophy in Soviet Union is clearer in theoretical interpretation than in practice. He narrates on the problem of distorted statistics and independence of mathematicians in Soviet Union. He assumes that statistical data are biased in such a manner that result favorably to the communistic way of life. These biases are often used in interpreting statistical indexes of industrial production and national economy and income. He further elaborates on Soviet theory of statistics and on recent conferences on statistical theory.

The article presents a list of books received by in the September 1957 issue of the journal "Acta Sociologica (Taylor & Francis Ltd)." Some of them are, "Studies of the Family," edited by Nels Anderson, "Interpretation of Sociometric Choice Status," by Ake Bjerstedt, "The Methodology of Preferential Sociometry," by Ake Bjerstedt, "Die politische Rolle der Frau in Deutschland," by Gabriele Bremme, "Essays in Sociology and Social Philosophy," by Morris Ginsberg, "Union Democracy. The Inside Politics of the International Typographical Union," by S.M.M. Trow Lipset and J. Coleman, "Sociometry and the Science of Man," edited by J.L.Moreno, "Cruces en Chamula," by F.C. Nieto, "Sociology in the United States of America. A Trend Report," edited by Hans L. Zetterberg.

Assesses the problems faced by research workers on study of wage rate movements for individual industries. Description on the methods and sources used in compiling indexes; Types of data presented; Impact of standard working week changes on wage indexes.

The article presents a systematic and generalized summary of standardization techniques in population research, covering averages and entire distributions of population characteristics as well as the more commonly discussed standardized rates and indexes. The terminology in discussions of standardized measures is somewhat confusing and ambiguous. Discussions of methods for making mortality comparisons provide the most definitive statements available in the demographic literature concerning alternative standardization procedures. This substantive orientation, however, tends to limit consideration to those standardized measures that have been utilized in mortality analysis and these primarily in terms of their utility and validity for mortality comparisons. An arithmetic mean may be standardized for one or more compositional characteristics by treating means of subgroups of the population, where the subgroups are categories of the characteristic for which standardization is desired, as a schedule of specific rates. The arithmetic mean may also be standardized by the indirect method, and standardized indexes summarizing differences between two or more sets of subgroup means may be computed by the same procedures used to compare two or more schedules of specific rates.

The article presents a systematic approach to fertility measurement and describes a series of equations for estimating direct fertility measures from indirect measures. This is done by examining the empirical and analytic relations that exist among the direct and indirect measures of fertility. The principal fertility measures can be classified into two types, namely, measures derived from the combination of vital statistics and census data called direct measures and measures derived from census age data alone called indirect measures. The most useful measures of fertility are those direct measures derived from the combination of vital statistics and census data. Indirect measures of fertility have been used extensively in demographic research because they are calculable for a larger number of nations and they are more easily calculated. Unlike the direct measures, the indirect measures do not fit into a precise system for describing an area's fertility levels but are only indexes which express fertility levels along a continuous scale but one devoid of theoretical or analytic meaning.

Discusses the use of the term index to mark one of three kinds of signs that can be discriminated when a particular aspect of the triadic process of semiosis is considered. Direct physical connection of an index with its object; Compulsive influence of index on its interpreter; Linguistic expressions which function as indices.

The article discusses the application of computer processing to maintain a personal bibliography and produce a sophisticated set of printed indexes. It will discusses computer-indexing techniques to organize the information in the bibliographic entries by several types of procedures without requiring that an artificial indexing scheme be devised. Meanwhile, the use of computer processing provides some benefits not easily obtained when using index-card bibliographies. Moreover , indexes have been developed which require enormous amounts of clerical effort for the production unless they are generated by using a computer.

The article offers information about the establishment of the National Death Index in the U.S. It is stated that the National Death Index is the list of the names of all persons who died in the country in a given year together with a limited amount of additional identifying information. Because of the request of the President's Commission on Federal Statistics, a statement of concept of the National Index has been prepared by the Statistics Section of the American Public Health Association. Moreover, three main positions concerning the creation of the National Death Index has been identified by the Statistics Section.

Scientists at major schools are more likely to be productive and to win recognition than scientists at minor universities, which suggests that universities provide different environments for scientific research. Indices of productivity and recognition that differentiate between major and minor publications and major and minor honors were applied to the research careers of 150 scientists located at three universities of varying prestige. The best graduate schools select the best students, the best of whom are trained by top scientists and become the next generation's most productive scientists. Scientists trained and later hired by minor universities had difficulty developing continuity in their research activities and tended to be differently motivated than scientists trained and hired by major universities. In terms of his chances of obtaining recognition, a scientist gained more from affiliation with a major university than from high productivity or from his sponsor's prestige, probably because the major university provided better opportunities for contacts with eminent scientists in the same discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1947, social action has taken place notably decisions of the United States Supreme Court, expansion of the public housing program and anti-discrimination legislation in New York State which might be expected to lower the rates of mortality for non-whites reported for 1945 47. To determine whether or not such an effect had occurred, the vital statistics analyses were repeated using data for the years 1953-55. Each of 415 health areas was classified according to the percentage of its total non- white live births and the vital data grouped accordingly. Mortality rates were then calculated as weighted annual averages. In 1950, Negroes comprised 95.6 per cent of New York City's non-white population so that the terms non-white and Negro as used in this report are virtually synonymous. During the three year period surveyed, 17.7 per cent of the live births in New York City were non-white as compared to 10.3 per cent eight years previously. The number of non-white births increased 78 per cent during these eight years while the number of white births actually decreased by 7.2 per cent.

This article focuses on the predictive utility of several indices of social stratification in the U.S. These indices include class identification, occupation, education and index of social status characteristics among others. Besides, several other behavioral and attitudinal variables, in previous studies, have been shown to be related to some measure of stratification or class. These variables represent eight areas of life experience including migrant experience, membership in voluntary organizations, religious experiences, political behavior, radio listening and reading habits, travels outside the U.S., information and attitudes concerning pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on public school segregation and attitudes indicative of relative satisfaction with the community. The criterion employed to assess the relative utility of the several indices, the coefficient of relative predictability, ascertains how much more effectively a given variable could be predicted through a knowledge of a stratification index than on the basis of a knowledge of the variable alone. Prediction of this type posits that for a given variable, which may be distributed in two or more categories, the best prediction that can be made for each subject or respondent is in terms of the modal category of the variable.

The article presents information related to the four indices of segregation designed by sociologist Julius Jahn to show the ecological pattern of residential segregation in a particular community. These indices utilized census tracts as the ecological units of study. One of the indices has two faults, firstly it was very massive to compute, secondly it didn't measure the differences in concentration and scatter accurately. The operational index defined by authors meets all the basic specifications, as it was defined as the complete lack of segregation will lead to an index of zero and complete segregation to an index of 1.000. It was concluded that the measure of ecological segregation based on census tracts doesn't reflects the degree of segregation, accurately.

The article focuses on a study of suicide and homicide with especial emphasis on the U.S. It presents a set of facts involving great variations in rates of each for 48 states and 86 selected cities. It gives some attention to variations in rates of a more inclusive group of 105 cities to which the 86 belong, to rates in other countries and to time series. It "highlights" certain contrasts in indices of the two responses, especially by Southern and non-Southern areas. And, finally, it outlines some problems as implicated in the data presented in the article. The author concludes that indices of suicide and homicide are highly variable in the U.S. by states and cities. Suicide in every non-Southern city exceeds homicide ratios ranging from 1.19 to 18.60, while suicide rates exceed homicide rates in only 8 of the 43 Southern and Southwestern cities, of these being in the Southwest. Southern cities, however, do not always have lower suicide rates than the non-Southern group. In 24 instances the non-Southern city exceeds its Southern mate, falls behind it in 18 and ties it once in indices of suicide.

This article presents a statistical analysis of production from the standpoint of marginal productivity is a notable event. The attempt to isolate and measure the marginal efficiencies of labor and capital depends naturally on the provisional assumption that the effect of the change in the proportions of the factors is not confused by any other fundamental change taking place at the same time, and that the failure of product to keep pace with capital is due to the relative shortage of labor, just as the increase in product per laborer is due to the relative plenty of capital and not, for instance, wholly or in large part due to technical progress. Viewed the other way round, this implies that if capital and labor had increased at the same rate, product would have kept exact pace with either or both of them. While this function is mainly governed by the long-run trend of the figures, it also shows a remarkably high coefficient of correlation with the short-time fluctuations, higher than is afforded by simple indexes such as labor alone, pig iron production alone, etc.

Early in 1968 the ORSA Publications Committee decided to develop a comprehensive index of the 829 articles published in the first fifteen years of OPERATIONS RESEARCH, covering the pioneering period from 1952 through 1967. The Committee accepted a proposal made by the author at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to develop chronological, subject, and author indexes, and the result was published as Operations Research: 15 Year Index, Volumes 1-15, 1952-1 967, Operations Research Society of America, Baltimore, Maryland, 1970. The major part of this task turned out to be the development of detailed subject classifications to cover every article published. The resulting taxonomy has much broader application than just as an indexing tool, sod for this reason the author has felt that the readers of the Journal could benefit from a discussion of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cumulative index for volumes 1-50 of the journal "Social Forces" is presented.

This article focuses on the measurement of similarity in social profiles. The comparison of states with respect to a series of characteristics simultaneously, when interest lies in the similarity between profiles of the series values rather than between composite indexes representative of each series, introduces the need for other measures of similarity. By similarity in profile is meant here similarity in the relative sizes of all values in a series. The method which proved most satisfactory in measuring similarity in profiles was based on the well-known fact that the process of squaring values in a series increases the relative weight of the larger values. Accordingly, two profiles with a given total of differences between corresponding component values in their series would be considered most similar when this total difference was distributed more evenly among the individual component value differences rather than occurring as a lump difference between corresponding values of only two of the components. Distributed evenly, the total difference would be broken down into smaller differences, the sum of whose squares would be less than the square of the few lumped differences would be if the total difference were concentrated in two or three pairs of components instead of being distributed in small amounts among all the component pairs. The chi square measure of dissimilarity between an observed and expected distribution seemed to offer a possibly appropriate inverse measure of similarity.

Presents reference sources for the December 1971 issue of "Annals of the Association of American Geographers."