Measuring the New World

Measuring the New World PDF Author: Neil Safier
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226733564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Prior to 1735, South America was terra incognita to many Europeans. But that year, the Paris Academy of Sciences sent a mission to the Spanish American province of Quito (in present-day Ecuador) to study the curvature of the earth at the Equator. Equipped with quadrants and telescopes, the mission’s participants referred to the transfer of scientific knowledge from Europe to the Andes as a “sacred fire” passing mysteriously through European astronomical instruments to observers in South America.By taking an innovative interdisciplinary look at the traces of this expedition, Measuring the New World examines the transatlantic flow of knowledge from West to East. Through ephemeral monuments and geographical maps, this book explores how the social and cultural worlds of South America contributed to the production of European scientific knowledge during the Enlightenment. Neil Safier uses the notebooks of traveling philosophers, as well as specimens from the expedition, to place this particular scientific endeavor in the larger context of early modern print culture and the emerging intellectual category of scientist as author.

Measuring the New World

Measuring the New World PDF Author: Neil Safier
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226733564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Prior to 1735, South America was terra incognita to many Europeans. But that year, the Paris Academy of Sciences sent a mission to the Spanish American province of Quito (in present-day Ecuador) to study the curvature of the earth at the Equator. Equipped with quadrants and telescopes, the mission’s participants referred to the transfer of scientific knowledge from Europe to the Andes as a “sacred fire” passing mysteriously through European astronomical instruments to observers in South America.By taking an innovative interdisciplinary look at the traces of this expedition, Measuring the New World examines the transatlantic flow of knowledge from West to East. Through ephemeral monuments and geographical maps, this book explores how the social and cultural worlds of South America contributed to the production of European scientific knowledge during the Enlightenment. Neil Safier uses the notebooks of traveling philosophers, as well as specimens from the expedition, to place this particular scientific endeavor in the larger context of early modern print culture and the emerging intellectual category of scientist as author.

Measuring the Digital World

Measuring the Digital World PDF Author: Gary Angel
Publisher: FT Press
ISBN: 0134195132
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. The definitive guide to next generation digital measurement; Indispensable insight for building high-value digital experiences! Helps you capture the knowledge you need to deliver deep personalization at scale Reflects today’s latest insights into digital behavior and consumer psychology For every digital marketer, analyst, and executive who wants to improve performance To win at digital, you must capture the right data, quickly transform it into the right knowledge,and use them both to deliver deep personalization at scale. Conventional digital metrics simply aren’t up to the task. Now, Gary Angel shows how to reinvent digital measurement so it delivers all you need to create richer, more compelling digital experiences. Angel shows how to transform “raw facts” about digital behavior into meaningful knowledge about your visitors... what they were trying to accomplish...how well you helped them... how you can personalize and optimize their digital experiences from now on... how you can use measurement to provide deep personalization at scale.

Measuring the World

Measuring the World PDF Author: Daniel Kehlmann
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307496759
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Measuring the World marks the debut of a glorious new talent on the international scene. Young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s brilliant comic novel revolves around the meeting of two colossal geniuses of the Enlightenment. Late in the eighteenth century, two young Germans set out to measure the world. One of them, the aristocratic naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, negotiates jungles, voyages down the Orinoco River, tastes poisons, climbs the highest mountain known to man, counts head lice, and explores and measures every cave and hill he comes across. The other, the reclusive and barely socialized mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, can prove that space is curved without leaving his home. Terrifyingly famous and wildly eccentric, these two polar opposites finally meet in Berlin in 1828, and are immediately embroiled in the turmoil of the post-Napolean world.

Measuring America

Measuring America PDF Author: Andro Linklater
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0452284597
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In 1790, America was in enormous debt, having depleted what little money and supplies the country had during its victorious fight for independence. Before the nation's greatest asset, the land west of the Ohio River, could be sold it had to be measured out and mapped. And before that could be done, a uniform set of measurements had to be chosen for the new republic out of the morass of roughly 100,000 different units that were in use in daily life. Measuring America tells the fascinating story of how we ultimately gained the American Customary System—the last traditional system in the world—and how one man's surveying chain indelibly imprinted its dimensions on the land, on cities, and on our culture from coast to coast.

Measuring the Networked Nonprofit

Measuring the Networked Nonprofit PDF Author: Beth Kanter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118137604
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The tools nonprofits need to measure the impact of their social media Having a social media measurement plan and approach can no longer be an after-thought. It is a requirement of success. As nonprofits refine their social media practice, their boards are expecting reports showing results. As funders provide dollars to support programs that include social media, they too want to see results. This book offers the tools and strategies needed for nonprofits that need reliable and measurable data from their social media efforts. Using these tools will not only improve a nonprofit?s decision making process but will produce results-driven metrics for staff and stakeholders. A hands-on resource for nonprofit professionals who must be able to accurately measure the results of their social media ventures Written by popular nonprofit blogger Beth Kanter and measurement expert Katie Delahaye Paine Filled with tools, strategies, and illustrative examples that are highly accessible for nonprofit professionals This important resource will give savvy nonprofit professionals the information needed to produce measurable results for their social media.

Measuring Poverty Around the World

Measuring Poverty Around the World PDF Author: Anthony B. Atkinson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191220
Category : BUSINESS & ECONOMICS
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
The final book from a towering pioneer in the study of poverty and inequality—a critically important examination of poverty around the world In this, his final book, economist Anthony Atkinson, one of the world’s great social scientists and a pioneer in the study of poverty and inequality, offers an inspiring analysis of a central question: What is poverty and how much of it is there around the globe? The persistence of poverty—in rich and poor countries alike—is one of the most serious problems facing humanity. Better measurement of poverty is essential for raising awareness, motivating action, designing good policy, gauging progress, and holding political leaders accountable for meeting targets. To help make this possible, Atkinson provides a critically important examination of how poverty is—and should be—measured. Bringing together evidence about the nature and extent of poverty across the world and including case studies of sixty countries, Atkinson addresses both financial poverty and other indicators of deprivation. He starts from first principles about the meaning of poverty, translates these into concrete measures, and analyzes the data to which the measures can be applied. Crucially, he integrates international organizations’ measurements of poverty with countries’ own national analyses. Atkinson died before he was able to complete the book, but at his request it was edited for publication by two of his colleagues, John Micklewright and Andrea Brandolini. In addition, François Bourguignon and Nicholas Stern provide afterwords that address key issues from the unfinished chapters: how poverty relates to growth, inequality, and climate change. The result is an essential contribution to efforts to alleviate poverty around the world.

Measure What Matters

Measure What Matters PDF Author: John Doerr
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 052553623X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
#1 New York Times Bestseller Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive. In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress—to measure what mattered. Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization. The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention. In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

Measuring What Counts

Measuring What Counts PDF Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 162097570X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A bold agenda for a better way to assess societal well-being, by three of the world's leading economists and statisticians "If we want to put people first, we have to know what matters to them, what improves their well-being, and how we can supply more of whatever that is." —Joseph E. Stiglitz In 2009, a group of economists led by Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen issued a report challenging gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of progress and well-being. Published as Mismeasuring Our Lives by The New Press, the book sparked a global conversation about GDP and a major movement among scholars, policy makers, and activists to change the way we measure our economies. Now, in Measuring What Counts, Stiglitz, Fitoussi, and Martine Durand—summarizing the deliberations of a panel of experts on the measurement of economic performance and social progress hosted at the OECD, the international organization incorporating the most economically advanced countries—propose a new, "beyond GDP" agenda. This book provides an accessible overview of the last decade's global movement, sparked by the original critique of GDP, and proposes a new "dashboard" of metrics to assess a society's health, including measures of inequality and economic vulnerability, whether growth is environmentally sustainable, and how people feel about their lives. Essential reading for our time, it also serves as a guide for policy makers and others on how to use these new tools to fundamentally change the way we measure our lives—and to plot a radically new path forward.

Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination

Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination PDF Author: Joyce Appleby
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393239519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Recounts the triumphs and mishaps of Columbus and other explorers, following the naturalists--both famous and obscure--whose investigations of the world's fauna and flora fueled the rise of science and technology that propelled Western Europe towards modernity.

Measure of the Earth

Measure of the Earth PDF Author: Larrie D. Ferreiro
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465017231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Describes the early 18th-century expedition of scientists sent by France and Spain to colonial Peru to measure the degree of equatorial latitude, which could resolve the debate between whether the earth was spherical or flattened at the poles.