title: Industrial design

text: Charles and Ray Eames were most famous for their pioneering furniture designs, such as the Eames Lounge Chair Wood and Eames Lounge Chair. Other influential designers included Henry Dreyfuss, Eliot Noyes, John Vassos, and Russel Wright.


title: Industrial design

text: Dieter Rams is a German industrial designer closely associated with the consumer products company Braun and the Functionalist school of industrial design.


title: Industrial design

text: German industrial designer Luigi Colani, who designed cars for automobile manufacturers including Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Volkswagen, and BMW, was also known to the general public for his unconventional approach to industrial design. He had expanded in numerous areas ranging from mundane household items, instruments and furniture to trucks, uniforms and entire rooms. A grand piano created by Colani, the "Pegasus", is manufactured and sold by the Schimmel piano company.


title: Seth MacFarlane filmography

text: Seth MacFarlane is an American actor, animator, writer, producer, director, comedian, and singer. MacFarlane began his career as an animator and writer for Hanna-Barbera for several television series, including "Johnny Bravo", "Cow and Chicken", "Dexter's Laboratory", and created a sequel to his college thesis film "Larry & Steve".


title: Seth MacFarlane filmography

text: Since 1999, MacFarlane has served as creator, writer, executive producer, and lead voice actor in the adult animated sitcom "Family Guy" on FOX. He voices the characters of Peter Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin and among other characters. The series has garnered critical acclaim with critics and audiences and has won numerous awards. Since then MacFarlane has co-created, co-writes, executive produces, and lead voices in FOX's "American Dad!" and wrote, co-created, executive produced, and had a supporting voice role in "The Cleveland Show", which was a spin-off of "Family Guy". In 2012, MacFarlane made his feature film directorial debut for Universal Pictures with "Ted", a fantasy comedy which was well received by critics and audiences. He went on to act, write, produce, and direct two more features for Universal—the western comedy "A Million Ways to Die in the West" (2014) and a sequel to his first film "Ted 2" (2015). In 2017, MacFarlane created his fourth show, "The Orville". He has also appeared in the films "" (2008), "" (2009), "" (2010), "Tooth Fairy" (2010), "Movie 43" (2013), "Sing" (2016), and "Logan Lucky" (2017).


title: Seth MacFarlane filmography

text: MacFarlane has received numerous awards and nominations for his work on film, television, music, and video games. He has also received twenty-three Emmy Award nominations, winning five for "Family Guy". His directorial film debut in "Ted" earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. In addition, he has received five Grammy Award nominations and two British Academy of Film and Television Arts among others.


title: Proserpina

text: Proserpina ( , ) or Proserpine ( ) is an ancient Roman goddess whose iconography, functions and myths are virtually identical to those of Greek Persephone. Proserpina replaced or was combined with the ancient Roman fertility goddess Libera, whose principal cult was housed in the Aventine temple of the grain-goddess Ceres, along with the wine god Liber.


title: Proserpina

text: Each of these three deities occupied their own "cella" at the temple. Their cults were served or supervised by a male public priesthood. Ceres was by far the senior of the three, one of the dii consentes, Rome's approximate equivalent to the Greek Twelve Olympians. She was identified with Greek Demeter and Liber was identified with Bacchus and Dionysus. Libera is sometimes described as a female version of Liber Pater, concerned with female fertility. Otherwise she is given no clear identity or mythology by Roman sources, and no Greek equivalent. Nothing is known of her native iconography: her name translates as a feminine form of Liber, "the free one". Proserpina's name is a Latinisation of "Persephone", perhaps influenced by the Latin "proserpere" ("to emerge, to creep forth"), with reference to the growing of grain. Her iconography is "entirely based" on that of her Greek original, Persephone.


title: Proserpina

text: Proserpina was imported from southern Italy as part of an official religious strategy, towards the end of the second Punic war, when


title: Proserpina

text: antagonism between Rome's lower and upper social classes, crop failures and intermittent famine were thought to be signs of divine wrath, provoked by Roman impiety. The new cult was installed around 205 BC at Ceres' Aventine temple. Ethnically Greek priestesses were recruited to serve Ceres and Proserpina as "Mother and Maiden". This innovation might represent an attempt by Rome's ruling class to please the gods and the plebs; the latter shared strong cultural ties with Italian "magna Graeca". The reformed cult was based on the Greek, women-only Thesmophoria, and was promoted as morally desirable for respectable Roman women, both as followers and priestesses. It was almost certainly supervised by Rome's "Flamen Cerealis", a male priesthood usually reserved to plebeians. The new cult might have partly subsumed the Aventine temple's older, native cults to Ceres, Liber and Libera, but it also functioned alongside them. Liber played no part in the reformed cult. Ceres, Proserpina/Libera and Liber are known to have received cult in their own right, at their Aventine temple and elsewhere, though details are lacking.


title: Proserpina

text: The Roman cult of Mother and Maiden named Proserpina as queen of the underworld, spouse to Rome's king of the underworld, Dis pater, and daughter to Ceres. The cult's functions, framework of myths and roles involved the agricultural cycle, seasonal death and rebirth, dutiful daughterhood and motherly care. They included secret initiations and nocturnal torchlit processions, and cult objects concealed from non-initiates. Proserpina's forcible abduction by the god of the underworld, her mother's search for her, and her eventual but temporary restoration to the world above are the subject of works in Roman and later art and literature. In particular, her seizure by the god of the Underworld – usually described as the Rape of Proserpina, or of Persephone – has offered dramatic subject matter for Renaissance and later sculptors and painters.


title: Proserpina

text: In early Roman religion, Libera was the female equivalent of Liber Pater, protector of plebeian rights, god of wine, male fertility and liberty, equivalent to Greek Bacchus or Dionysus. Libera was originally an Italic goddess, paired with Liber as an "etymological duality" at some time during Rome's Regal or very early Republican eras. She enters Roman history as part of a so-called Triadic cult alongside Ceres and Liber, in a temple established around 493 BC on the Aventine Hill at state expense, promised by Rome's governing class to the plebs (Rome's citizen-commoners), who had threatened secession. Collectively, these three deities were divine patrons and protectors of Rome's commoner-citizens, and guardians of Rome's senatorial records and written laws, housed at the temple soon after its foundation. Libera might have been offered cult on March 17 during Liber's festival, Liberalia, or at some time during the seven days of Cerealia, held in mid-to-late April; in the latter festival, she would have been subordinate to Ceres; the names of both Liber and Libera were a later addition to Ceres's festival. Otherwise, Libera's functional relationship to her Aventine cult partners is uncertain. She has no known native iconography or mythology.


title: Proserpina

text: Libera was officially identified as Proserpina from 205 BC, when she and Ceres acquired a Romanised form of Greek mystery rite, the "ritus graecia cereris". This was part of Rome's religious recrecruitment of deities to serve as divine allies against Carthage, towards the end of the Second Punic War. In the late Republican era, Cicero described Liber and Libera as Ceres' children. At around the same time, possibly in the context of popular or religious drama, Hyginus equated Libera with Greek Ariadne, as bride to Liber's Greek equivalent, Dionysus. The older and newer forms of her names, cult, and rites, and their diverse associations, persisted well into the late Imperial era. St. Augustine (354–430 AD) wrote that Libera was a goddess of female fertility, just as Liber was a god of male fertility.


title: Proserpina

text: Proserpina was officially introduced to Rome as the daughter of Ceres in the newly Romanised cult of "Mother and Daughter". The cult's origins lay in southern Italy, which was politically allied to Rome but culturally a part of Magna Graecia. The cult was based on the women-only Greek Thesmophoria, which was a part public and part mystery cult to Demeter and Persephone as "Mother and Maiden". It arrived in Rome along with its Greek priestesses, who were granted Roman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention".


title: Proserpina

text: The exclusively female initiates and priestesses of the new "Greek-style" mysteries of Ceres and Proserpina were expected to uphold Rome's traditional, patrician-dominated social hierarchy and traditional morality. Unmarried girls were expected to emulate the chastity of Proserpina, the maiden; married women were expected to seek to emulate Ceres, the devoted and fruitful Mother. Their rites were intended to secure a good harvest, and increase the fertility of those who partook in the mysteries. Each of the Aventine triad's deities continued to receive cult in their own right. Liber's open, gender-mixed cult and festivals continued, though likely caught up in the suppression of the Bacchanalia some twenty years on. Proserpina's individual cult, and her joint cult with Ceres became widespread throughout the Republic and Empire. A Temple of Proserpina was located in a suburb of Melite, in modern Mtarfa, Malta. The temple's ruins were quarried away between the 17th and 18th centuries; only a few fragments survive.


title: Proserpina

text: The best-known myth surrounding Proserpina is of her abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother Ceres' frantic search for her, and her eventual but temporary restitution to the world above. In Latin literature, several versions are known, all similar in most respects to the myths of Greek Persephone's abduction by the King of the underworld, named variously in Latin sources as Dis or Pluto, and in Greek sources as Hades or Pluto. "Hades" can mean both the hidden Underworld and its king ('the hidden one'), who in early Greek versions of the myth is a dark, unsympathetic figure; Persephone is "Kore" ('the maiden'), taken against her will; in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, her captor is known as Hades; they form a divine couple who rule the underworld together, and receive Eleusinian initiates into some form of better afterlife. Renamed Pluto, the king of the underworld is distanced from his violent abduction of his consort. In 27 BC Vergil presented his own version of the myth, in his "Georgics". In the early 1st century AD, Ovid gives two poetic versions: one in Book 5 of his "Metamorphoses" and another in Book 4 of his "Fasti" An early 5th century AD Latin version of the same myth is Claudian's "De raptu Proserpinae"; in most cases, these Latin works identify Proserpina's underworld abductor and later consort as Dis.


title: Proserpina

text: In Claudian's version, the unprepossessing Dis yearns for the joys of married love and fatherhood, and threatens to make war on the other gods if he remains alone in Erebus. The Fates (Parcae), who determine the destinies of all, arrange a future marriage for Dis, to prevent the outbreak of war. Jupiter orders Venus to bring love to Dis, in fulfillment of the prophesy. Ceres has already sought to conceal the innocent Proserpina by sending her to safety in Sicily, Ceres' earthly home and sanctuary; but Dis comes out from the volcano at Mount Etna in his chariot, seizes Proserpina at the Pergusa Lake near Enna, and takes her down into the underworld. The poem ends at this point.


title: Proserpina

text: Proserpina's mother, Ceres, seeks her daughter across the world, but in vain. The sun sinks and darkness falls as Ceres walks the earth, stopping the growth of crops and creating a desert with each step.


title: Proserpina

text: Jupiter sends Mercury to order Dis to free Proserpina; but Proserpina has melted Dis' hard heart, and eats "several" of the pomegranate seeds he offers her; those who have eaten the food of the dead cannot return to the world of the living. Pluto insists that she had willingly eaten his pomegranate seeds and in return she must stay with him for half the year. Virgil asserts that Proserpina agrees to this, and is reluctant to ascend from the underworld and re-unite with her mother. When Ceres greets her daughter's return to the world of the living, the crops grow, flowers blossom, and in summer all growing crops flourish, to be harvested in Autumn. During the time that Proserpina resides with Pluto, the world goes through winter, when the earth gives no crops.


title: Proserpina

text: The most extensive myth of Proserpina in Latin is Claudian's (4th century AD). It is closely connected with that of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Virgil's Georgics, Orpheus' beloved wife, Eurydice, died from a snake-bite; Proserpina allowed Orpheus into Hades without losing his life; charmed by his music, she allowed him to lead his wife back to the land of the living, as long as he did not look back during the journey. But Orpheus could not resist a backward glance, so Eurydice was forever lost to him.


title: Proserpina

text: Proserpina's figure inspired many artistic compositions, eminently in sculpture (Bernini, see "The Rape of Proserpina (Bernini)" ) in painting (D.G.Rossetti, a fresco by Pomarancio, J. Heintz, Rubens, A. Dürer, Dell'Abbate, Parrish) and in literature (Goethe's "Proserpina" and Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine" and "The Garden of Proserpine") The statue of the Rape of Prosepina by Pluto that stands in the Great Garden of Dresden, Germany is also referred to as "Time Ravages Beauty". Kate McGarrigle's song about the legend was one of the last things she wrote prior to her death, and received its only performance at her last concert at Royal Albert Hall in December 2009.


title: Loving Vincent

text: Loving Vincent () is a 2017 experimental adult animated biographical drama film about the life of the painter Vincent van Gogh, and, in particular, about the circumstances of his death. It is the first fully painted animated feature film. The film, written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, is a Polish-UK co-production, funded by the Polish Film Institute, and partially through a Kickstarter campaign.


title: Loving Vincent

text: First conceived as a seven-minute short film in 2008, "Loving Vincent" was realized by Dorota Kobiela, a painter herself, after studying the techniques and the artist's story through his letters.


title: Loving Vincent

text: Each of the film's 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, created using the same techniques as Van Gogh by a team of 125 artists drawn from around the globe. The film premiered at the 2017 Annecy International Animated Film Festival. It won Best Animated Feature Film Award at the 30th European Film Awards in Berlin and was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 90th Academy Awards. The film marked Helen McCrory's final film role before her death in April 2021.


title: Loving Vincent

text: One year after Vincent van Gogh's suicide, postman Joseph Roulin asks his son Armand to deliver Van Gogh's last letter to his brother, Theo. Roulin finds the death suspicious, as merely weeks earlier Van Gogh claimed through letters that his mood was calm and normal. Armand reluctantly agrees and heads for Paris.


title: Loving Vincent

text: Père Tanguy, a Montmartre art supplier, tells Armand that Theo actually died six months after Vincent. He suggests that Armand travel to Auvers-sur-Oise and look for Dr. Paul Gachet, who housed Van Gogh after his release from an asylum, shared his love for art, and attended the funeral. Once there, Armand learns that the doctor is out on business. So he stays at the same inn that Van Gogh did during his time in the area. There he meets the temporary proprietress Adeline Ravoux, who was fond of Van Gogh and who was also surprised by his death. At her suggestion, Armand visits the local boatman, who informs him that Van Gogh kept close company with Dr. Gachet's sheltered daughter, Marguerite. When Armand visits her, Marguerite denies and is angered when Armand implies that Van Gogh's suicidal mood could have resulted from an argument with her father.


title: Loving Vincent

text: Throughout the investigation, Armand begins to suspect a local boy named René Secretan, who reportedly liked to torment Van Gogh, was in possession of a gun, and had often drunkenly brandished it around town. Dr. Mazery, who examined Van Gogh, also claims that the shot must have come from a few feet away, ruling out suicide. When Armand implicates René, Marguerite confesses that she was in close, but not romantic, relations with Van Gogh, but she does not believe that René was capable of murder.


title: Loving Vincent

text: Dr. Gachet finally returns and promises to deliver Armand's letter to Theo's widow. He admits there was an argument between them – Van Gogh accused Gachet of being a coward for not pursuing his dreams, to which Gachet angrily accused Van Gogh of worsening Theo's health by overly depending on his brother. Gachet posits that this accusation drove Van Gogh to suicide in order to release Theo from the burden. After Armand returns home, postman Roulin later receives word from Theo's widow, Johanna, thanking Armand for returning the letter. Johanna attaches to her letter to Armand one of Van Gogh's letters to her – signed, "Your loving Vincent."


title: Loving Vincent

text: The filmmakers chose classically trained painters over traditional animators because, as Welchman said later, he wanted to avoid artists with "personalised styles" and employ people who were "very pure oil painters" instead. A total of 125 painters from over 20 countries travelled to Poland to work on the project following selection from around 5,000 applicants, many of whom responded to an online "recruitment teaser". The number of participants was greater than originally envisaged, which meant that due to difficulties in obtaining funding the task had to be completed in a correspondingly shorter period of time.


title: Loving Vincent

text: Creation of the film storyboard was informed by Van Gogh's paintings, sometimes with only minor alterations to the latter, but on occasions more complex transformations involving changes to the weather or time of day were carried out. Since artists typically painted over frames once they had been photographed, of the 65,000 produced during the course of the project only 1,000 survived.


title: Loving Vincent

text: The film uses a form of rotoscoping. Production for the film began with a live-action cast filming against a green screen. After filming, editors composited Van Gogh paintings into scene backgrounds, and finally cut the film together as usual. However, once the actual film was complete, they shot each individual frame onto a blank canvas, and artists painted over each image. In all the project took 6 years to complete, and in describing the laborious process involved Welchman noted that the film's creators had "definitely without a doubt invented the slowest form of filmmaking ever devised in 120 years."


title: Loving Vincent

text: The movie is considered a box office success, grossing over an estimated $42.1 million (in USD) worldwide on a budget of $5.5 million, with United States earnings totaling $6.7 million. The film has most notably grossed $3 million in South Korea, $2.1 million in Italy and $10.8 million in China.


title: Loving Vincent

text: On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus states, ""Loving Vincent"s dazzling visual achievements make this Van Gogh biopic well worth seeking out – even if its narrative is far less effectively composed." Metacritic reports a score of 62 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Loving Vincent

text: A. O. Scott, writing for "The New York Times", found the visual aspects of the film to be innovative, stating: "the viewer also becomes accustomed to the images, and astonishment at the film's innovative, painstaking technique begins to fade. But its charm never quite wears off, for reasons summed up in the title." Actress Angourie Rice had similar sentiments, writing in an essay that “it was such a fascinating experience to witness the actors’ performances turned into Van Gogh style paintings. The great thing about this film is that it also made me question what the merging of artforms meant for art, film, and everything in between.”


title: Loving Vincent

text: Giuseppe Sedia of the "Krakow Post" praised the impressive visual style of the movie. However, he added, "In their concern to keep the viewers interested, directors Kobiela and Welchman have built an over-narrated and spirit-dampening movie in which the preponderance of the dialogues hinders the viewers’ immersion into the violent beauty and materiality of Van Gogh’s oeuvre".


title: Loving Vincent

text: The film won the "Most Popular International Feature" award at the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival. It was nominated in the Hollywood Music in Media Awards 2017 for Best Original Score in an Animated Film. It won the Audience Award at the 2017 Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the Golden Goblet for Best Animation Film at the Shanghai International Film Festival.


title: Loving Vincent

text: It won the XII Festival de Cine Inédito de Mérida (FCIM) after obtaining the highest score among the projected films and also the highest score obtained in the history of the event. On 9 December 2017, the film won Best Animated Feature Film Award at the 30th European Film Awards in Berlin. The film also received Best Animated Feature nominations at both the Academy Awards and Golden Globes.


The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a first-person narrative novel by Sherman Alexie, from the perspective of a Native American teenager, Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior", a 14-year-old promising cartoonist. The book is about Junior's life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his decision to go to a nearly all-white public high school away from the reservation. The graphic novel includes 65 comic illustrations that help further the plot.


title: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

text: Although critically acclaimed, "The Absolutely True Diary" has also been the subject of controversy and has consistently appeared on the annual list of frequently challenged books since 2008, becoming the most frequently challenged book from 2010 to 2019. Controversy stems from the novel's depiction of alcohol, poverty, bullying, violence, sexuality, profanity and slurs related to homosexuality and mental disability. As a result, dozens of schools have challenged it, and some schools have banned the book from school libraries or inclusion in curricula.


text: The book follows a fourteen-year-old Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior", living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation near Wellpinit, Washington. It is told in diary style, moving from the start of the school year to the beginning of summer. It includes both Junior's written record of his life and his cartoon drawings, some of them comically commenting on his situations, and others more seriously depicting important people in his life. "The Absolutely True Diary" begins by introducing Junior's birth defects: he was born with hydrocephalus and therefore is small for his age and suffers from seizures, poor eyesight, stuttering, and a lisp. As a result, Junior has always been picked on by other people on the reservation. Junior's family is extremely poor and has limited access to opportunities. When Junior's dog Oscar gets a heat stroke, his father must put him down (tragically, by shooting him) because they cannot afford to take him to a veterinarian. Junior's only friend is his best friend Rowdy, who is abused at home and is known as a bully on the reservation. Despite his intimidating role, Rowdy often stands up for Junior and they bond by enjoying kids' comics.


text: Junior's first day of high school is pivotal to the plot of the novel. When Mr. P, his geometry teacher, passes him his textbook, he sees his mother's name in it and realizes how old the book must be. Angered and saddened by the fact that the reservation is so poor that it cannot afford new textbooks, Junior violently throws the book, which hits Mr. P's face, breaking his nose. When he visits Junior at home, Mr. P convinces Junior to transfer to Reardan High School, sensing a degree of precociousness in the young teenager. The town of Reardan is far wealthier than Wellpinit—Junior is the only Indian at Reardan. Although Junior's family is poor, and although the school is 22 miles away and transportation is unreliable, they support him and do what they can to make it possible for him to stay in the new school. Rowdy, however, is upset by Junior's decision to transfer, and the once-best friends have very little contact during the year.


text: Junior develops a crush on the school's most popular white girl, Penelope, and becomes study friends with an intelligent student named Gordy. His interactions with the white students give him a better perspective both on white culture and his own. He realizes how much stronger his family ties are than those of his white classmates, noticing that many of the white fathers never come to their children's school events. Junior also realizes that the white students have different rules than those he grew up with, which is evident when he reacts to an insult from the school's star athlete, Roger, by punching him in the face. Junior hit him, as he would have been expected to do on the reservation, and he expects Roger to get revenge. But Roger never does; in fact, Roger and his friends show Junior more respect. Junior also gets closer to Penelope, which makes him more popular with the other girls at the school.


text: Roger suggests that Junior try out for the basketball team, and to Junior's surprise, he makes the varsity team, which pits him against his former school, Wellpinit, and specifically Rowdy, who is Wellpinit's star freshman and has been leading them to first place. Their first match demonstrates to Junior just how angry the reservation people are at him for transferring: when he enters the court, they boo and insult him. During the game, Rowdy elbows Junior in the head and knocks him unconscious and one of the fans throws a coin at Junior. While suffering some injuries from the game, Junior and his coach become closer as Coach tells him that he admires Junior's commitment to the team. Later on, his grandmother, whom Junior looks up to the most on the reservation, is hit and killed by a drunk driver. After his grandmother's funeral, a family friend, Eugene, is shot in the face by his friend Bobby while drunk after fighting over alcohol. After grieving and reflecting on his loved ones' deaths, Junior plays in his basketball team's second match against Wellpinit. Reardan wins and Junior gets to block Rowdy. Junior feels triumphant until he sees the Wellpinit players' faces after their defeat and remembers the difficulties they face at home and their lack of hope for a future; ashamed, he runs to the locker room, where he vomits and then breaks down in tears. Later, Junior receives news of the death of his sister and her husband who were killed in a fire at their trailer.


text: In the course of the year, Junior and his family suffered many tragedies, many related to alcohol abuse. These events test Junior's sense of hope for a better future and make him wonder about the darker aspects of reservation culture. Furthermore, the protagonist is torn between the need to fit in his new, all-white school and holding on to his Indian heritage, leading him to face criticism from his own community. Despite these challenges, they also help him see how much his family and his new friends love him, and he learns to see himself as both Indian and American. Meanwhile, Rowdy realizes that Junior is the only nomad on the reservation, which makes him more of a "traditional" Indian than everyone else in town. In the end, Junior and Rowdy reconcile while playing basketball and resolve to correspond no matter where the future takes them.


text: "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" is semi-autobiographical. The novel started as a section of Sherman Alexie's family memoir, but after the persistence of a young adult editor, he decided to use it as a basis for his first young adult novel. Sherman Alexie commented, "If I were to guess at the percentage, it would be about seventy-eight percent true." Like Arnold, Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Reservation in Wellpinit with an alcoholic father. He was also born with hydrocephalus, but Alexie did not have any speech impediments. Alexie was also teased for his government-issued, horn-rimmed glasses and nicknamed "The Globe" by fellow students because of his giant head. Another similarity between Alexie and his character Arnold is that Alexie also left the reservation to attend high school at Reardan High, but Alexie chose to go to Reardan to achieve the required credits he needed to go to college. Alexie became the star player of Reardan's basketball team and was the only Indian on the team besides the school's team mascot. The scene where Arnold finds that he is using the same textbook his mother did thirty years before he is drawn from Alexie's own experiences. The only difference between Alexie's life and the novel is that Alexie threw the book against the wall out of anger, and did not hit anyone as Junior did.


text: In his own writing, Alexie unapologetically describes himself as "kind of mixed up, kind of odd, not traditional. I'm a rez kid who's gone urban, and that's what I write about. I have never pretended to be otherwise." "A smart Indian is a dangerous person," Alexie states in a personal essay, "[a smart Indian is] widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike." Junior encapsulates this type of experience when he receives strong censure both from his tribal community and from his peers and teachers at his new school, Reardan. In the personal story, Alexie's continued explanation of his own experience is reflected in Junior's. Alexie recalls, "I fought with my classmates on a daily basis. They wanted me to stay quiet when the non-Indian teacher asked for answers….[W]e were Indian children who were expected to be stupid. …[W]e were expected to fail in the non-Indian world." Through Junior's success at Reardan and his realizations about life on the reservation, Alexie represents a possibility for the success of Native American children—by defeating the expectation that he is doomed to fail, Junior defeated what he thought he couldn't. Alexie's reflections again demonstrate that Junior's experiences are semi-autobiographical.


text: Junior's white geometry teacher at Wellpinit High School. He mentored Mary, Junior's older sister, and wants to help Junior leave the reservation. Mr. P regrets the way he treated his students when he was younger. He had been taught to beat the Indian out of the children. He is short and bald, and incredibly absent-minded. He often forgets to come to school, but "he doesn't expect much of [his students]." A major turning point in "Diary"s plot occurs when Junior throws his math book at Mr. P after a realization about the reservation's poverty.


text: Bruce Barcott of "The New York Times" said in a 2007 review, "For 15 years now, Sherman Alexie has explored the struggle to survive between the grinding plates of the Indian and white worlds. He's done it through various characters and genres, but "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" may be his best work yet. Working in the voice of a 14-year-old forces Alexie to strip everything down to action and emotion, so that reading becomes more like listening to your smart, funny best friend recount his day while waiting after school for a ride home."


text: "The New York Times" opined that this was Alexie's "first foray into the young adult genre, and it took him only one book to master it." "The San Francisco Chronicle" praised it as "[a] great book full of pain, but luckily, the pain is spiked with joy and humor."


text: Reviewers also commented on Alexie's treatment of difficult issues. Delia Santos, a publisher for the "civilrights.org" page, noted, "Alexie fuses words and images to depict the difficult journey many Native Americans face. … Although Junior is a young adult, he must face the reality of living in utter poverty, contend with the discrimination of those outside of the reservation, cope with a community and a family ravaged and often killed by alcoholism, break cultural barriers at an all-White high school, and maintain the perseverance needed to hope and work for a better future." Andrew Fersch, a publisher for "Vail Daily", commented, "most folks block out most of their teenage memory, [while] Alexie embraced it with humor."


text: In another review published in November 2016 by "Dakota Student" website, author Breanna Roen says that she has never seen the way that this book, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian", conveys so much happiness, love, and grief. Alexie's work in this novel can't be compared to other Native American books; it is "a whole different ball game," Roen asserts. The review continues to state that the theme regarding identity, home, race, poverty, tradition, friendship, hope and success is seen throughout the entire book, leaving the readers on the edge of their seats and wanting more. Roen says that she could hardly put the book down and is avidly looking for something similar.


text: In the review, "A Brave Life: The Real Struggles of a Native American Boy make an Uplifting Story" published in "The Guardian," author Diane Samuels says that Alexie's book has a "combination of drawings, pithy turns of phrase, candor, tragedy, despair and hope … [that] makes this more than an entertaining read, more than an engaging story about a North American Indian kid who makes it out of a poor, dead-end background without losing his connection with who he is and where he's from." In some areas, Samuels criticizes Alexie's stylistic reliance on the cartoons. However, she continues to say that for the most part, Sherman Alexie has a talent for capturing the details and overview in a well-developed and snappy way. Samuels finishes her review by stating that: "Opening this book is like meeting a friend you'd never make in your actual life and being given a piece of his world, inner and outer. It's humane, authentic and, most of all, it speaks."


text: In the review "Using "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" to Teach About Racial Formation," Miami University professor Kevin Talbert says that Alexie chose to narrate the story through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Junior to transport his readers into "uncomfortable or incongruent spaces." He continues to say that the novel's writing allows for topics about class and racial struggles to be intertwined with more common adolescent struggles like sexual desires, controlling hormones, and managing relationships with friends and family. Furthermore, Talbert believes that, unlike other Young Adult novels, this book captures issues of race and class in a way that reaches a wider audience. The article also states that Junior's narration in the novel sends a message to society, "that adolescents have important things to say, that being fourteen years old matters."


text: Dr. Bryan Ripley Crandall, director of the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University, posits in his critical essay "Adding a Disability Perspective When Reading Adolescent Literature: Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian"" that the book presents a progressive view of disability. Arnold has what he calls "water on the brain", which would correctly be referred to as hydrocephalus. Crandall points out that Arnold is never held back by his disability, but in fact laughs at himself: "With my big feet and pencil body, I looked like a capital L walking down the road." According to Crandall, the illustrations by Ellen Forney, which are meant to be the cartoons that Arnold draws, represent a new way for the disabled narrator to communicate with the readers: they "initiate further interpretations and conversations about how students perceive others who are not like them, especially individuals with disabilities." Arnold's hydrocephaly doesn't prevent him from becoming a basketball star at his new school. His disability fades as a plot device as the book progresses.


text: David Goldstein, in his paper "Sacred Hoop Dreams: Basketball in the Work of Sherman Alexie", analyses the importance of basketball in the novel. He suggests that it represents "the tensions between traditional lifeways and contemporary social realities." According to Goldstein, Junior/Arnold sees losing at basketball as "losing at life." The Reardan kids are eternal winners because of their victories on the court: "Those kids were magnificent." Goldstein notes how basketball is also a sport of poverty in America — "it costs virtually nothing to play, and so is appropriate for the reservation."


text: Nerida Weyland's article, "Representations of Happiness in Comedic Young Adult Fiction: Happy Are the Wretched" describes how Junior/Arnold is an example of the complex, not-innocent child often presented in modern young adult literature. As detailed in Alyson Miller's "Unsuited to Age Group: The Scandals of Children's Literature," society has created an "innocence of the idealized child"; Alexie's protagonist is the opposite of this figure.


text: According to Weyland, Alexie doesn't play by the rules – the use of humor in the book is directed at established "power hierarchies, dominant social ideologies or topics deemed taboo". Weyland suggests that the outsized effect of this feature of the book is revealed in the controversy its publication caused, as it was banned and challenged in schools all over the country. Weyland states that Alexie's book with Forney's black-comedy illustrations explore themes of "racial tension, domestic violence, and social injustice" in a never-before-done way. As an example, Alexie uses the anecdote of the killing of Junior's dog, Oscar, to expand on the idea of social mobility, or lack thereof – Junior states that he understood why the dog had to be killed rather than taken to the vet, because his parents were poor and they "came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people." Weyland notes how readers are likely to be uncomfortable with Junior/Arnold/Alexie making light of topics of such importance (racism, poverty, alcoholism) through the use of dark comedy.


text: Alexie won three major "year's best" awards for "Diary", a biannual award for books by and about Native Americans, and a California award that annually covers the last four years. The awards are listed below:


text: "Diary" was also named to several annual lists including three by the United States' library industry (not including being banned).


text: "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" has been at the center of many controversies due to the book's themes and content, as well as its target audience of young adults. The book has both fervent supporters and concerned protesters: "some people thought it was the greatest book ever, and some people thought it was the most perverted book ever," said Shawn Tobin, a superintendent of a Georgia school district.


text: "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" was the most-challenged book in the United States from 2010 to 2019 and was named one of the top ten most challenged books in 2010 (2), 2011 (5), 2012 (2), 2013 (3), 2014 (1), 2017 (2), 2018 (9), and 2020 (5). The book has been challenged for the following reasons:


text: Local parents caught wind of the book's references to alcoholism, sensitive cultural topics, and sexual innuendos: at the beginning of June, seven Antioch parents attended a 117th District School Board meeting to request that the book be removed from the curriculum. However, the novel was not banned from Antioch High School's curriculum following the controversy. Instead, the English Department introduced an alternative option for summer reading—students who preferred to read John Hart's "Down River" were permitted to do so.


text: In Prineville, Oregon one parent raised objections to the school board about how the book contains references to masturbation and is generally inappropriate. In response, the Crook County School District temporarily removed the book from classrooms. The removal was upheld, but the book remained available to students in school libraries.


text: A parent complained to the Stockton School District Board about the violence, language, and sexual content. The board voted to ban the book from school libraries. The decision was voted upon multiple times, but the ban was ultimately upheld.


text: In 2010, Wyoming's Newcastle Middle School attempted to include "Diary" in its 8th grade English curriculum. At first, the district allowed it under the premise that children who were not allowed to read it would bring a signed paper allowing them to read the alternate book "Tangerine". About two weeks after the announcement was made to the 8th graders, the school board banned teaching it in a curriculum, but still allowed it in the library for those who wished to read it.


text: In 2011, one parent in the Helena School District objected to the book's "obscene, vulgar, and pornographic language." However, the school district voted to retain the book in schools.


text: In 2011, a 9th grade Language Arts teacher at the Richland Public High School piloted "Diary" in his curriculum, and with the help of his students, reported to the school's board on the inclusion of the book in a high school curriculum. Parents of students in the class were notified ahead of time that the teacher was interested in the book; as a result, parents were able to opt their student out of reading the novel if they so chose.


text: In June 2011, the school board voted 3–2 to remove the book from the school entirely. Board members had not read the book but cited the split Instructional Materials Committee vote as the reason to ban the novel.


text: The board members later learned that some members of the Instructional Materials Committee had not read the book, and so the board members agreed to vote again, but read it for themselves before the vote. On July 11, 2011, the school board voted 4–1 to reverse its earlier decision.


text: In 2012, the book was removed from the Dade County school libraries and required high school reading lists due to complaints about "vulgarity, racism, and anti-Christian content".


text: In 2012 in the Old Rochester Regional Junior High School, the book was challenged as an 8th grade English assignment, but ultimately retained by the school.


text: In 2012, the book was challenged in 9th grade English classes in Westfield High School for "very sensitive material in the book including excerpts on masturbation among other explicit sexual references, encouraging pornography, racism, religious irreverence, and strong language." However, the school board decided to retain the book as part of the curriculum.


text: Sherman Alexie's "Diary" was challenged in his home state of Washington, only a few hours drive away from where the semi-autobiographical work is set. The dispute over the book's appropriateness for high school students took place in the West Valley School District in 2013. Specifically, many parents claimed that the book contains inappropriate and sexual content and language that are unsuitable for high school students.


text: As of now, there have been four official complaints about the book that have been recorded. Resultantly, Alexie's book was removed from 10th-grade classes and made supplemental literature for 11th and 12th grades, instead of required reading.


text: A middle school in Queens removed "Diary" from required reading due to the references to masturbation, which the school considered inappropriate for middle schoolers.


text: The book was challenged on the 10th grade reading list at Skyview High School, where a parent complained, "This book is, shockingly, written by a Native American who reinforces all the negative stereotypes of his people and does it from the crude, obscene, and unfiltered viewpoint of a 9th-grader growing up on the reservation." The book was not removed from the school list.


text: A Jefferson County parent complained about the novel's graphic nature, resulting in the book being pulled from all county schools.


text: Some parents of students of a Sweet Home Junior High English class voiced concerns about the book's content, specifically the objectification of women and young girls. The concerns resulted in the book being officially challenged.


text: In April 2014, "Diary" was pulled from the Meridian district's supplemental reading list after significant parental disapproval of the novel's subject matter. The book had been a part of its curriculum since 2010. Students protested to remove the ban but were unsuccessful.


text: According to Marshall University Libraries, in 2015 the text was banned from the Meridian (ID) school districts' required texts due to parents complaining that it "discusses masturbation, contains profanity, and has been viewed as anti-Christian."


text: On July 1, 2014, a grandmother in Brunswick, North Carolina, filed a complaint against "Diary" at Cedar Grove Middle School. Two weeks later, the school's Media Advisory Committee met and unanimously agreed to keep the book in its curriculum because the committee saw the value in "the realistic depiction of bullying and racism, as well as a need for tolerance and awareness of cultural differences." The grandmother, Frances Wood, appealed the decision, remaining adamant that "[t]his book is not morally acceptable… Everything in it is degrading. There's nothing uplifting in it."


text: One year later, Wood challenged the book yet again, this time at West Brunswick High School. Wood lost this protest against the book when the principal of West Brunswick High School responded a few days later that the county school board's policy was that their decision on a book held for all schools in the county, and that those decisions could not be revisited for two years.


text: In 2015, the superintendent of the Highland Park Independent School District suspended "Diary" from the school approved book list. The suspension was very brief, and the superintendent reinstated the book soon after.


text: In 2020, the book was assigned to an 8th grade English Language Arts class at Farragut Middle School. Upon a passage containing the word nigger and sexual intercourse with an animal being read aloud in class without adequate preparation by the teacher, it was reported that this caused "psychological harm" to an African American student and that members of the school community felt "uncomfortable and marginalized while reading and discussing this book." It was decided to immediately stop discussion of the book to prevent further harm. The book will be re-evaluated by the English department for future use.


text: Alexie has defended the novel by emphasizing the positive learning opportunities readers gain from exposure to these harsh aspects of contemporary life. He describes his own experience of adults trying to hide and protect him from suffering and hardship:


text: Alexie said that students were also able to connect his story to their own difficult experiences with "depression, attempted suicide, gang warfare, sexual and physical abuse, absentee parents, poverty, racism, and learning disabilities". He noted:


text: The book has been credited with addressing the experiences and issues faced by Native American students in the public school system.


text: Some have even discussed the merits of the book while also mentioning the risks of exposing children to the harsher scenes. In an essay on censorship, young adult fiction author Raquel Rivera wrote:


text: The autobiographical nature of the novel reflects the internal struggle for identity that Alexie dealt with as a child. His personal experiences then tie into the idea of the trauma that Native American tribes live with as they still struggle to balance assimilation with identity. This phenomenon has been explored and analyzed since the publication of the novel.


text: Jan Johnson, clinical assistant professor of American Indian and African American Literatures at the University of Idaho, utilizes Alexie's novel to explore the idea of marginalization and oppression in Native American communities in her article, "Healing The Soul Wound". Johnson identifies the "soul wound," the deep-seated trauma Native Americans have endured since colonization and continue to struggle with. This term explains how the consistent depiction of Native American people as suffering and helpless has become ingrained into their identity. Johnson writes, "Alexie feels that—as a result of this grim history—suffering and trauma are fundamental to the experience of being Native American. Ceaseless suffering attains an epistemological status." Johnson uses the novel to illustrate her thoughts about the future of the Native American culture. The Spokane Indians, and tribes like them, face the trauma of searching for an identity in a world that attempts to envelop one's culture. Johnson argues that Alexie uses "Diary" to represent the potential for healing the traumas that Native American tribes have faced throughout history.


text: In "Sherman Alexie, A Collection of Critical Essays", critics Jeff Burglund and Jan Roush interpret Jan Johnson's definition of the soul wound as "intergenerational suffering." On pages 10 and 11 of "Diary", Alexie elaborates on the concept of generational poverty when he reveals that Junior's family is too poor to care for the family's sick dog: "My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people," he writes. Junior is "wounded," which Alexie shows through Junior's alcoholic father, his misguided sister, and his defeating social life. Through "Diary", Alexie aims to make a larger statement about the need for change in both the internal structure and the external perception of Native American communities in the United States. Columbus and his men colonized the new land they encountered in horrid ways that diminished Native people of anything they had. Violent invasions by Columbus and his crew left the Indians with nothing to call their own. Sacred land, animals, plants, and relatives were all lost during the time of what Maria Yellow Brave Heart and Lemyra DeBruyn called the "American Indian Holocaust." The ones that were somewhat fortunate enough to stay alive were brainwashed of everything they knew, and were forced to believe and follow the religious practices of the Christian faith despite the fact it was not what they believed in. The Indians were also forced to relocate and leave everything, which led to many of them dying due to illness or unbearable conditions they had to walk in. Some Native peoples are still affected by this trauma. Many argue that "historical unresolved grief" is the cause of high crime rates and mental health issues among Native American people today. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart and Lemyra DeBruyn explain the meaning behind "historical disenfranchised grief" and how it is overlooked by Americans. American Indians are experiencing disenfranchised grief because of how this group of people was and still is seen as savage, emotionless, and lacking of right or reason to mourn and grieve.


text: There are many arguments for why "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" is an example of multicultural literature. A textbook called "Sherman Alexie in the Classroom" was recently published in order to help teachers and educators explore how multicultural texts can impact the learning outcome of students––especially for Native Americans in the modern times. This text explores the significance and the message behind the works of Sherman Alexie, including poetry, novels, films strips, and much more.


text: "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" is a multicultural text that many English teachers use in order to educate their students about the Native American heritage. The author, Alexie, himself is of the Spokane heritage, and as a result, he uses his own background and personal experiences to write this specific novel in a semi-autobiographical format. Teachers refer to the textbook, "Sherman Alexie in the Classroom", to claim that the book provides an opportunity to educate non-Native American students to "work through their white guilt and develop anti-racist perspectives."


text: In an interview, Alexie stated that, "The primary audience is college-educated white women, so that's who reads everything. If you want to talk about an indication of that--certainly this book is geared towards young adults, but I was at the American Library Association convention in DC a couple of weeks ago, and there were something like 15,000 librarians there and 99 percent of them were white women so ... Thank God ... they seem to be the people most willing to ignore barriers and boundaries and to reach across, so that's who my audience is in reality. In this book, specifically, I'm really hoping it reaches a lot of native kids certainly, but also poor kids of any variety who feel trapped by circumstance, by culture, by low expectations, I'm hoping it helps them get out."


text: Alexie also wants his "literature to concern the daily lives of Indians. [He] think[s] most Native American literature is so obsessed with nature that [he doesn't] think it has any useful purpose". Alexis was quoted saying, "There's a kid out there, some boy or girl who will be that great writer, and hopefully they'll see what I do and get inspired by that".


text: Furthermore, Alexie's texts encourage educators to initiate discussions in their classrooms about the Native American culture as a whole. Many stereotypes of Native Americans exist in the United States; therefore, many people have erroneous views of what modern Native Americans' lives are like. 11th and 12th grade English teacher, Bryan Ripley Crandall, believes that learning about different cultural backgrounds creates a diverse learning environment. Crandall also states that the Native American narrative of Alexie's book is a way of giving minority students an access to their own background and heritage within an American education. Therefore, Alexie's multicultural literature of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" provides an expanded perspective of the daily lives of Native Americans living on the reservation in today's world.


text: The author Sherman Alexie himself narrates the audiobook of "The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part-Time Indian", which has won many awards for its creation of an idiosyncratic, first-person voice. "Alexie is the perfect choice to read his own story," notes critic Kristi Jemtegaard. Alexie is able to convey the messages that the missing cartoons, caricatures, and sketches reveal in the printed text. Alexie, who has experience as an orator, won the Taos Poetry Circus World Heavyweight Championship award three years in a row for his oratorical virtuosity.


text: According to "The Hollywood Reporter", in December 2016, Fox 2000 Pictures acquired the rights to produce "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian". The producing team consists of Hugh Jackman, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, and Lauren Shuler Donner. The film is currently under development, and a set release date has not been announced as of yet.


title: Psychometrics

text: Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities. Psychometrics is concerned with the objective measurement of latent constructs that cannot be directly observed. Examples of latent constructs include intelligence, introversion, mental disorders, and educational achievement. The levels of individuals on nonobservable latent variables are inferred through mathematical modeling based on what is observed from individuals' responses to items on tests and scales.


title: Psychometrics

text: Practitioners are described as psychometricians, although not all who engage in psychometric research go by this title. Psychometricians usually possess specific qualifications such as degrees or certifications, and most are psychologists with advanced graduate training in psychometrics and measurement theory. In addition to traditional, academic institutions, practitioners also work for organizations such as the Educational Testing Service and Psychological Corporation. Some psychometric researchers focus on the construction and validation of assessment instruments including surveys, scales, and open- or close-ended questionnaires. Others focus on research relating to measurement theory (e.g., item response theory; intraclass correlation) or specialize as learning and development professionals.


title: Psychometrics

text: Psychological testing has come from two streams of thought: the first, from Darwin, Galton, and Cattell on the measurement of individual differences, and the second, from Herbart, Weber, Fechner, and Wundt and their psychophysical measurements of a similar construct. The second set of individuals and their research is what has led to the development of experimental psychology and standardized testing.


title: Psychometrics

text: Charles Darwin was the inspiration behind Sir Francis Galton, a scientist who advanced the development of psychometrics. In 1859, Darwin published his book "On the Origin of Species". Darwin described the role of natural selection in the emergence, over time, of different populations of species of plants and animals. The book showed how individual members of a species differ among themselves and how they possess characteristics that are more or less adaptive to their environment. Those with more adaptive characteristics are more likely to survive to procreate and give rise to another generation. Those with less adaptive characteristics are less likely. These ideas stimulated Galton's interest in the study of human beings and how they differ one from another and, more importantly, how to measure those differences.


title: Psychometrics

text: Galton wrote a book entitled "Hereditary Genius". The book described different characteristics that people possess and how those characteristics make some more "fit" than others. Today these differences, such as sensory and motor functioning (reaction time, visual acuity, and physical strength), are important domains of scientific psychology. Much of the early theoretical and applied for work in psychometrics was undertaken in an attempt to measure intelligence. Galton often referred to as "the father of psychometrics," devised and included mental tests among his anthropometric measures. James McKeen Cattell, a pioneer in the field of psychometrics, went on to extend Galton's work. Cattell coined the term "mental test", and is responsible for research and knowledge that ultimately led to the development of modern tests.


title: Psychometrics

text: The origin of psychometrics also has connections to the related field of psychophysics. Around the same time that Darwin, Galton, and Cattell were making their discoveries, Herbart was also interested in "unlocking the mysteries of human consciousness" through the scientific method. Herbart was responsible for creating mathematical models of the mind, which were influential in educational practices for years to come.


title: Psychometrics

text: E.H. Weber built upon Herbart's work and tried to prove the existence of a psychological threshold, saying that a minimum stimulus was necessary to activate a sensory system. After Weber, G.T. Fechner expanded upon the knowledge he gleaned from Herbart and Weber, to devise the law that the strength of a sensation grows as the logarithm of the stimulus intensity. A follower of Weber and Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt is credited with founding the science of psychology. It is Wundt's influence that paved the way for others to develop psychological testing.


title: Psychometrics

text: In 1936, the psychometrician L. L. Thurstone, founder and first president of the Psychometric Society, developed and applied a theoretical approach to measurement referred to as the law of comparative judgment, an approach that has close connections to the psychophysical theory of Ernst Heinrich Weber and Gustav Fechner. In addition, Spearman and Thurstone both made important contributions to the theory and application of factor analysis, a statistical method developed and used extensively in psychometrics. In the late 1950s, Leopold Szondi made a historical and epistemological assessment of the impact of statistical thinking on psychology during previous few decades: "in the last decades, the specifically psychological thinking has been almost completely suppressed and removed, and replaced by a statistical thinking. Precisely here we see the cancer of testology and testomania of today."


title: Psychometrics

text: More recently, psychometric theory has been applied in the measurement of personality, attitudes, and beliefs, and academic achievement. These latent constructs cannot truly be measured, and much of the research and science in this discipline has been developed in an attempt to measure these constructs as close to the true score as possible.


title: Psychometrics

text: Figures who made significant contributions to psychometrics include Karl Pearson, Henry F. Kaiser, Carl Brigham, L. L. Thurstone, E. L. Thorndike, Georg Rasch, Eugene Galanter, Johnson O'Connor, Frederic M. Lord, Ledyard R Tucker, Louis Guttman, and Jane Loevinger.


title: Psychometrics

text: The definition of measurement in the social sciences has a long history. A current widespread definition, proposed by Stanley Smith Stevens, is that measurement is "the assignment of numerals to objects or events according to some rule." This definition was introduced in a 1946 "Science" article in which Stevens proposed four levels of measurement. Although widely adopted, this definition differs in important respects from the more classical definition of measurement adopted in the physical sciences, namely that scientific measurement entails "the estimation or discovery of the ratio of some magnitude of a quantitative attribute to a unit of the same attribute" (p. 358)


title: Psychometrics

text: Indeed, Stevens's definition of measurement was put forward in response to the British Ferguson Committee, whose chair, A. Ferguson, was a physicist. The committee was appointed in 1932 by the British Association for the Advancement of Science to investigate the possibility of quantitatively estimating sensory events. Although its chair and other members were physicists, the committee also included several psychologists. The committee's report highlighted the importance of the definition of measurement. While Stevens's response was to propose a new definition, which has had considerable influence in the field, this was by no means the only response to the report. Another, notably different, response was to accept the classical definition, as reflected in the following statement:


title: Psychometrics

text: These divergent responses are reflected in alternative approaches to measurement. For example, methods based on covariance matrices are typically employed on the premise that numbers, such as raw scores derived from assessments, are measurements. Such approaches implicitly entail Stevens's definition of measurement, which requires only that numbers are "assigned" according to some rule. The main research task, then, is generally considered to be the discovery of associations between scores, and of factors posited to underlie such associations.


title: Psychometrics

text: On the other hand, when measurement models such as the Rasch model are employed, numbers are not assigned based on a rule. Instead, in keeping with Reese's statement above, specific criteria for measurement are stated, and the goal is to construct procedures or operations that provide data that meet the relevant criteria. Measurements are estimated based on the models, and tests are conducted to ascertain whether the relevant criteria have been met.


title: Psychometrics

text: The first psychometric instruments were designed to measure intelligence. One early approach to measuring intelligence was the test developed in France by Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon. That test was known as the .The French test was adapted for use in the U. S. by Lewis Terman of Stanford University, and named the Stanford-Binet IQ test.


title: Psychometrics

text: Another major focus in psychometrics has been on personality testing. There has been a range of theoretical approaches to conceptualizing and measuring personality, though there is no widely agreed upon theory. Some of the better-known instruments include the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Five-Factor Model (or "Big 5") and tools such as Personality and Preference Inventory and the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator. Attitudes have also been studied extensively using psychometric approaches. An alternative method involves the application of unfolding measurement models, the most general being the Hyperbolic Cosine Model (Andrich & Luo, 1993).


title: Psychometrics

text: Psychometricians have developed a number of different measurement theories. These include classical test theory (CTT) and item response theory (IRT). An approach that seems mathematically to be similar to IRT but also quite distinctive, in terms of its origins and features, is represented by the Rasch model for measurement. The development of the Rasch model, and the broader class of models to which it belongs, was explicitly founded on requirements of measurement in the physical sciences.


title: Psychometrics

text: Psychometricians have also developed methods for working with large matrices of correlations and covariances. Techniques in this general tradition include: factor analysis, a method of determining the underlying dimensions of data. One of the main challenges faced by users of factor analysis is a lack of consensus on appropriate procedures for determining the number of latent factors. A usual procedure is to stop factoring when eigenvalues drop below one because the original sphere shrinks. The lack of the cutting points concerns other multivariate methods, also.


title: Psychometrics

text: Multidimensional scaling is a method for finding a simple representation for data with a large number of latent dimensions. Cluster analysis is an approach to finding objects that are like each other. Factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and cluster analysis are all multivariate descriptive methods used to distill from large amounts of data simpler structures.


title: Psychometrics

text: More recently, structural equation modeling and path analysis represent more sophisticated approaches to working with large covariance matrices. These methods allow statistically sophisticated models to be fitted to data and tested to determine if they are adequate fits. Because at a granular level psychometric research is concerned with the extent and nature of multidimensionality in each of the items of interest, a relatively new procedure known as bi-factor analysis can be helpful. Bi-factor analysis can decompose "an item's systematic variance in terms of, ideally, two sources, a general factor and one source of additional systematic variance."


title: Psychometrics

text: Key concepts in classical test theory are reliability and validity. A reliable measure is one that measures a construct consistently across time, individuals, and situations. A valid measure is one that measures what it is intended to measure. Reliability is necessary, but not sufficient, for validity.


title: Psychometrics

text: Both reliability and validity can be assessed statistically. Consistency over repeated measures of the same test can be assessed with the Pearson correlation coefficient, and is often called "test-retest reliability." Similarly, the equivalence of different versions of the same measure can be indexed by a Pearson correlation, and is called "equivalent forms reliability" or a similar term.


title: Psychometrics

text: Internal consistency, which addresses the homogeneity of a single test form, may be assessed by correlating performance on two halves of a test, which is termed "split-half reliability"; the value of this Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient for two half-tests is adjusted with the Spearman–Brown prediction formula to correspond to the correlation between two full-length tests. Perhaps the most commonly used index of reliability is Cronbach's α, which is equivalent to the mean of all possible split-half coefficients. Other approaches include the intra-class correlation, which is the ratio of variance of measurements of a given target to the variance of all targets.


title: Psychometrics

text: There are a number of different forms of validity. Criterion-related validity refers to the extent to which a test or scale predicts a sample of behavior, i.e., the criterion, that is "external to the measuring instrument itself." That external sample of behavior can be many things including another test; college grade point average as when the high school SAT is used to predict performance in college; and even behavior that occurred in the past, for example, when a test of current psychological symptoms is used to predict the occurrence of past victimization (which would accurately represent postdiction). When the criterion measure is collected at the same time as the measure being validated the goal is to establish "concurrent validity"; when the criterion is collected later the goal is to establish "predictive validity". A measure has "construct validity" if it is related to measures of other constructs as required by theory. "Content validity" is a demonstration that the items of a test do an adequate job of covering the domain being measured. In a personnel selection example, test content is based on a defined statement or set of statements of knowledge, skill, ability, or other characteristics obtained from a "job analysis".


title: Psychometrics

text: Item response theory models the relationship between latent traits and responses to test items. Among other advantages, IRT provides a basis for obtaining an estimate of the location of a test-taker on a given latent trait as well as the standard error of measurement of that location. For example, a university student's knowledge of history can be deduced from his or her score on a university test and then be compared reliably with a high school student's knowledge deduced from a less difficult test. Scores derived by classical test theory do not have this characteristic, and assessment of actual ability (rather than ability relative to other test-takers) must be assessed by comparing scores to those of a "norm group" randomly selected from the population. In fact, all measures derived from classical test theory are dependent on the sample tested, while, in principle, those derived from item response theory are not.


title: Psychometrics

text: The considerations of validity and reliability typically are viewed as essential elements for determining the quality of any test. However, professional and practitioner associations frequently have placed these concerns within broader contexts when developing standards and making overall judgments about the quality of any test as a whole within a given context. A consideration of concern in many applied research settings is whether or not the metric of a given psychological inventory is meaningful or arbitrary.


title: Psychometrics

text: In 2014, the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA), and National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) published a revision of the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing", which describes standards for test development, evaluation, and use. The "Standards" cover essential topics in testing including validity, reliability/errors of measurement, and fairness in testing. The book also establishes standards related to testing operations including test design and development, scores, scales, norms, score linking, cut scores, test administration, scoring, reporting, score interpretation, test documentation, and rights and responsibilities of test takers and test users. Finally, the "Standards" cover topics related to testing applications, including psychological testing and assessment, workplace testing and credentialing, educational testing and assessment, and testing in program evaluation and public policy.


title: Psychometrics

text: In the field of evaluation, and in particular educational evaluation, the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation has published three sets of standards for evaluations. "The Personnel Evaluation Standards" was published in 1988, "The Program Evaluation Standards" (2nd edition) was published in 1994, and "The Student Evaluation Standards" was published in 2003.


title: Psychometrics

text: Each publication presents and elaborates a set of standards for use in a variety of educational settings. The standards provide guidelines for designing, implementing, assessing, and improving the identified form of evaluation. Each of the standards has been placed in one of four fundamental categories to promote educational evaluations that are proper, useful, feasible, and accurate. In these sets of standards, validity and reliability considerations are covered under the accuracy topic. For example, the student accuracy standards help ensure that student evaluations will provide sound, accurate, and credible information about student learning and performance.


title: Psychometrics

text: Because psychometrics is based on latent psychological processes measured through correlations, there has been controversy about some psychometric measures. Critics, including practitioners in the physical sciences, have argued that such definition and quantification is difficult, and that such measurements are often misused by laymen, such as with personality tests used in employment procedures. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Measurement gives the following statement on test validity: "validity refers to the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests". Simply put, a test is not valid unless it is used and interpreted in the way it is intended.


title: Psychometrics

text: Two types of tools used to measure personality traits are objective tests and projective measures. Examples of such tests are the: Big Five Inventory (BFI), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), Rorschach Inkblot test, Neurotic Personality Questionnaire KON-2006, or Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R). Some of these tests are helpful because they have adequate reliability and validity, two factors that make tests consistent and accurate reflections of the underlying construct. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), however, has questionable validity and has been the subject of much criticism. Psychometric specialist Robert Hogan wrote of the measure: "Most personality psychologists regard the MBTI as little more than an elaborate Chinese fortune cookie."


title: Psychometrics

text: Lee Cronbach noted in "American Psychologist" (1957) that, "correlational psychology, though fully as old as experimentation, was slower to mature. It qualifies equally as a discipline, however, because it asks a distinctive type of question and has technical methods of examining whether the question has been properly put and the data properly interpreted." He would go on to say, "The correlation method, for its part, can study what man has not learned to control or can never hope to control ... A true federation of the disciplines is required. Kept independent, they can give only wrong answers or no answers at all regarding certain important problems."


title: Psychometrics

text: Psychometrics addresses "human" abilities, attitudes, traits, and educational evolution. Notably, the study of behavior, mental processes, and abilities of non-human "animals" is usually addressed by comparative psychology, or with a continuum between non-human animals and the rest of animals by evolutionary psychology. Nonetheless, there are some advocators for a more gradual transition between the approach taken for humans and the approach taken for (non-human) animals.


title: Psychometrics

text: The evaluation of abilities, traits and learning evolution of "machines" has been mostly unrelated to the case of humans and non-human animals, with specific approaches in the area of artificial intelligence. A more integrated approach, under the name of universal psychometrics, has also been proposed.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: I Spit on Your Grave 2 is a 2013 American rape and revenge horror film directed by Steven R. Monroe. It is a standalone sequel to the 2010 film "I Spit on Your Grave", also directed by Monroe, which in turn was based on Meir Zarchi's 1978 film of the same name.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: The film was given a limited theatrical release at one theater, and was also received negatively by critics. It is also the only film in the franchise not to feature an American cast, or the series main protagonist Jennifer Hills.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: Missouri-born model Katie Carter works a part-time job as a New York City restaurant receptionist to make ends meet. Desperate to update her modeling portfolio, she answers an advertisement offering a free photography session. She then meets three Bulgarian siblings, photographers Ivan, Nicky and Georgy, who becomes infatuated with Katie. She leaves the photoshoot after disagreeing with Ivan about a topless shot. At Katie's apartment Georgy apologizes for Ivan and hands her a flash drive containing her photos.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: That night, Katie wakes to find Georgy filming her, so she shocks him in self-defense. Georgy binds, gags and sodomizes her. Katie's neighbor, Jayson, tries to stop the rape but Georgy stabs and kills him. Nikolay and Ivan arrive and clean up all evidence of the crime. Ivan then force-feeds Katie ketamine, rendering her unconscious.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: Katie wakes and finds herself naked and handcuffed to a pipe in a basement as the brothers relentlessly rape and torture her. She overpowers Georgy and escapes, but discovers that she is now in an unknown city. When she approaches Bulgarian police, she is taken into safe custody by Detective Kiril, who informs her that she has been kidnapped and taken to Sofia, Bulgaria‘s capital city. After an interview, Detective Kiril hands her over to Ana, who claims to be from a rape crisis center but is really Nikolay and Georgy's mother. Katie is returned to the basement and Valko, a friend of the family's father, electroshocks her genitals then brutally rapes her, leaving her bloodied. Ivan then beats her.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: Katie is then placed in a box with her crucifix necklace and Valko's electroshock gun and buried alive. The ground beneath the makeshift coffin breaks and she falls into the sewer system below. Naked and hungry, Katie makes her way through the tunnels to a nearby church convent where she takes food and is soon found by its rector, Father Dimov, who recognizes her as a rape survivor. He gives her food, clothing, and a Bible. Katie approaches the U.S. Embassy, but leaves before going inside. Back at the church, Dimov offers support. As Katie goes back to the sewers, she leaves her Bible open for Dimov to read. After reading the passage "vengeance is mine", Dimov realizes that Katie seeks revenge against her rapists.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: Katie first steals money from Ana's house and buys clothes, weapons, and supplies. She lures Georgy into the sewers, captures him and hangs him by his arms on the wall. She tortures him with a large switchblade and smears fecal matter into his wounds to cause infection, then leaves him to die slowly. Meanwhile, Dimov contacts Kiril and informs him of Katie's condition and her intention to seek revenge on her attackers, and Kiril realizes that she is still in trouble. Both men aim to stop Katie from committing crimes and to persuade her that she would have legal justice. At a nightclub, Katie laces Nikolay's drink with ecstasy. He runs to the bathroom where she drowns him in an unflushed toilet. The next day, Valko sees Katie during a church service and chases after her into the basement where Katie strikes him with a rock. When he regains consciousness, he is strapped to a metal bed frame. Katie electroshocks his genitals with a stun stick, puts a large plumber's snake into his mouth, turns it on and it snakes its way down into his throat. She then attaches electrical cables to the bed and rooter and electrocutes him.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: Ana discovers the burglary, but Katie pushes her into the sewers and binds her to watch Georgy die. Ivan realizes that Katie has escaped; she captures him, ties him to a table and tortures him by crushing his testicles until it bursts out violently. Kiril hears Ivan and Ana's screams and follows them to the sewers. During the torture, Ivan reveals that Ana is his stepmother, who herself was raped by her future husband, Ivan's father while Nikolay and Georgy were products of Ana's rapes. Katie understands Ana's sadistic nature and begins to torture Ana and Ivan, but at that moment Kiril arrives and holds his gun up to Katie. Ivan grabs and begins to strangle Katie, but Kiril shoots Ivan in the head, allowing Katie to escape. As Ana, the sole survivor, is arrested by Kiril for her part in her family's crimes, Katie leaves and takes refuge at the U.S. Embassy.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: When seen by the British Board of Film Classification in a rough cut form for a video classification, Anchor Bay was informed that 27 cuts were needed to secure an 18 certificate for the film. The film was given a limited theatrical release in the United States on September 20, 2013, followed by an immediate home media release on DVD and Blu-ray on September 24. The uncut version (106 minutes) is available in Region 1 territories while the BBFC "18" version is sold in the UK in Region 2.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: In the US, the film was given a theatrical release in only one theater for one week. At the box office, the film made . Internationally, it grossed $587,648 in Russia, $10,485 in Singapore, and $79,662 in Turkey.


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: Critical response to the film was very negative. All eight reviews on the website, Rotten Tomatoes, are negative, resulting in a rating of 0%. Dennis Harvey of "Variety" wrote that the film is "exactly the kind of bottom-feeding exploitation trash one expected the last time around". Kim Newman of "Screen Daily" wrote, "Monroe’s first working-over of this material was at least competent, but this is, at once, too ugly to laugh at and too ridiculous to take seriously." Annlee Ellingson of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that the film starts off promising but degenerates into a "mount of toxic trash". Serena Whitney of Dread Central rated it 2/5 stars and wrote, "Although the initial premise is frightening and the film is competently shot, "I Spit on Your Grave 2" pales in comparison to the original remake." Pat Torfe of Bloody Disgusting rated it 2.5/5 stars and wrote, "Everything about this film feels like a 'been there, done that' deal, and largely, that's what it is."


title: I Spit on Your Grave 2

text: In March 2015, Anchor Bay Entertainment announced "", the third installment of the film series. Sarah Butler returned to her role as Jennifer Hills and R.D. Braunstein served as director of the film. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 20, 2015.


title: Samsung Galaxy Buds series

text: The Samsung Galaxy Buds are a line of wireless Bluetooth earbuds designed by Samsung Electronics. They were first released on March 9, 2019 as the successor to the Samsung Gear IconX.


title: Samsung Galaxy Buds series

text: The original Samsung Galaxy Buds (SM-R170) launched on March 8, 2019. The launch price was $129.99, and included a wireless charging case.The Buds were discontinued when the Buds Plus was released.


title: Samsung Galaxy Buds series

text: The Galaxy Buds Plus (SM-R175) were announced on February 11, 2020 at the spring Galaxy Unpacked event. The Buds Plus were released on February 14, priced at $149.99, a $20 price increase from the original Buds. The Buds Plus maintained the same design as the original Buds, but reviewers praised the improved sound and microphone quality and significantly increased battery life. Additionally, a second driver for bass was included to enhance audio quality at lower frequencies.


title: Samsung Galaxy Buds series

text: The Galaxy Buds Live (SM-R180) were announced on August 5, 2020 during a virtual Galaxy Unpacked event. The Buds Live were notable for their "bean" like on-ear design, a departure from the previous in ear design used in the buds lineup. The Buds Live were the first Galaxy Buds device to launch with active noise cancellation. The Buds Live were praised for their design, but criticised for the ineffective active noise cancellation.


title: Samsung Galaxy Buds series

text: The Galaxy Buds Pro (SM-R190) were announced on January 14, 2021 and launched the following day on January 15th. The Buds Pro improved upon the design of the Galaxy Buds Plus and included improved audio, head tracking technology, and active noise cancellation. They were praised for their improved design and sound quality, but criticized for their 5-hour battery life when active noise cancellation is on.


title: Samsung Galaxy Buds series

text: The Galaxy Buds 2 (SM-R177) were announced on August 11, 2021 at Galaxy Unpacked alongside the Galaxy Watch 4. The Buds 2 were seen as the successor to the Buds Plus, which were discontinued following the announcement. The Buds 2 include active noise cancellation, and cost less than the Buds Pro, and were praised for their all around performance for the price.


title: Samsung Galaxy Buds series

text: The Galaxy Buds 2 Pro (SM-R510) were announced on August 10, 2022 at Galaxy Unpacked alongside the Galaxy Watch 5. The Buds 2 Pro were seen as the successor to the Buds Pro, which were discontinued following the announcement. The Buds 2 Pro include active noise cancellation, 24-bit Hi-Fi audio support (only for Samsung device with One UI 4.0 or above) and enhanced 360-degree audio. They were released on August 26, 2022 with a launch price of $229.99, a $30 price increase compared to the original Galaxy Buds Pro.


title: Battle of Huế

text: The Battle of Huế (31 January 1968 – 2 March 1968), also called the Siege of Huế, was a major military engagement in the Tết Offensive launched by North Vietnam and the Việt Cộng during the Vietnam War. After initially losing control of most of Huế and its surroundings, the combined South Vietnamese and American forces gradually recaptured the city over one month of intense fighting. The battle was one of the longest and bloodiest of the war, and the battle negatively affected American public perception of the war.


title: Battle of Huế

text: By the beginning of the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive on 30 January 1968, which coincided with the Vietnamese Tết Lunar New Year, large conventional American forces had been committed to combat operations on Vietnamese soil for almost three years. Highway 1, passing through the city of Huế, was an important supply line for Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and United States forces from the coastal city of Da Nang to the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the de facto border between North and South Vietnam only to the north of Huế. The highway also provided access to the Perfume River (Vietnamese: "Sông Hương" or "Hương Giang") at the point where the river ran through Huế, dividing the city into northern and southern parts. Huế was also a base for United States Navy supply boats. Due to the Tết holidays, large numbers of ARVN forces were on leave and the city was poorly defended.


title: Battle of Huế

text: While the ARVN 1st Division had cancelled all Tết leave and was attempting to recall its troops, the South Vietnamese and American forces in the city were unprepared when the Việt Cộng (VC) and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched the Tet Offensive, attacking hundreds of military targets and population centers across the country, including Huế. The PAVN-VC forces rapidly occupied most of the city. Over the next month, they were gradually driven out during intense house-to-house fighting led by the Marines and ARVN. In the end, although the Allies declared a military victory, the city of Huế was virtually destroyed, and more than 5,000 civilians were killed, including more than 2,000 of them executed by the PAVN and VC. The PAVN-VC lost an estimated 5,133 killed, while Allied forces lost 668 dead and 3,707 wounded.


title: Battle of Huế

text: Huế, the ancient imperial capital city of Vietnam, had a population of nearly 140,000, making it the third largest city in the Republic of Vietnam, commonly known as South Vietnam. The Citadel, or Imperial City, is the walled-in portion of Huế sitting on the north bank of the Perfume River. The walls of the Citadel form a square with sides of 2,500 meters. The outer stone wall is one meter thick, five meters high and is separated from the inner wall by dirt fill. The distance between the walls varies from 75 meters to 17.5 meters. Half the population lived within the Citadel in 1 or 2 story houses surrounded by stone walls.


title: Battle of Huế

text: On the south side of the river was the new city of Huế, which contained most of the government buildings, schools, and the university, set on wide boulevards. Connecting the Citadel and new city were the Trường Tiền Bridge (), which carried Highway 1, and further west the Bach Ho rail bridge. Huế had great symbolism, having been the capital of Vietnam under the Nguyễn dynasty from 1802 to 1945. Hồ Chí Minh, Phạm Văn Đồng, Võ Nguyên Giáp and Ngô Đình Diệm had all attended the lycée in the city. Huế had been at the center of the Buddhist crisis of 1963 and the Buddhist Uprising of 1966 and other than the city's Catholics, its population of Buddhists and intellectuals were lukewarm supporters of the Nguyễn Văn Thiệu-Nguyễn Cao Kỳ government.


title: Battle of Huế

text: The North Vietnamese plan for the Tet Offensive was known as the "General Offensive-General Uprising". The General Offensive was to comprise conventional and guerilla military action aimed primarily at the "puppet" South Vietnamese military and government, attempting to destroy their legitimacy among the South Vietnamese population. The General Uprising was the expectation that the oppressed South Vietnamese population would then spontaneously rise up and overthrow the Thiệu-Kỳ government and that this would force the United States to withdraw in the face of the will of the people. The strategic objective at Huế was to capture (or "liberate") and hold the city, leading to the establishment of a revolutionary government. While some senior PAVN leaders were skeptical about the plan, believing that the population was unlikely to rise up and that they could only hold out against the ARVN and U.S. forces for a few days before they would be forced to withdraw, they followed their orders. Younger soldiers were convinced by the party propaganda that they were on the verge of a great victory that would end the war. When the PAVN and VC forces left their base camps west of Huế to commence the attack they had no intention of returning.


title: Battle of Huế

text: The ARVN and Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) were largely unprepared for the Tet Offensive. MACV's focus was on the Battle of Khe Sanh, where a PAVN assault was believed to be imminent. In preparation for this, MACV was in the middle of Operation Checkers: moving the 1st Marine Division to Quảng Trị Province in order to support Khe Sanh and defeat any other PAVN attack across the DMZ.


title: Battle of Huế

text: The headquarters of ARVN Brigadier General Ngô Quang Trưởng's 1st Division was located in the Mang Ca Garrison, a minifortress in the northeast corner of the Citadel. Apart from the headquarters staff and a handful of support units, the only combat units in the Citadel were the division's 36-man Reconnaissance Platoon and its reaction force, the elite "Hac Bao" (Black Panther) Reconnaissance Company. southwest of the Citadel, on the north bank of the Perfume River, was the Van Thanh divisional training center and a two-gun detachment of 105mm howitzers. south of the Perfume River and just west of Highway 1 was the Tam Thai military camp, headquarters of the ARVN 7th Armored Squadron Regiment equipped with M41 Walker Bulldog tanks. About to its southwest was the 101st Engineering Company compound (). The 1st Division's units were spread throughout I Corps, two battalions of the 3rd Infantry Regiment were west of Huế, one on a routine sweep mission and the other undergoing training at the Van Thanh center, while the remaining two battalions of the regiment were searching for the PAVN-VC near the coast southeast of Huế. The 1st Regiment was stationed near Quảng Trị to the northwest and the 2nd Regiment was another twelve kilometers farther up Highway 1 near Đông Hà. Under I Corps command, but available to Trưởng upon his request were two battalions of the ARVN 1st Airborne Task Force and a troop of armored personnel carriers from the 7th Armored Cavalry Squadron at PK-17, the ARVN base located near a road marker on Highway 1, north of Huế.


title: Battle of Huế

text: The Marine's Phu Bai Combat Base, south of Huế on Highway 1, included Task Force X-Ray, a brigade-size component of the 1st Marine Division built around the 1st and 5th Marine Regiments. The U.S. Army 1st and 3rd Brigades, 1st Cavalry Division and the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, operated out of a series of firebases and landing zones between Phu Bai and Quảng Trị. Both the Marine and the airmobile units operating near Huế were in a state of flux as the Tết holiday began. The 1st Cavalry Division was in the midst of relocating from Bình Định Province in II Corps to Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên Provinces in I Corps. By the last week of January, most of its combat units had arrived, but many of the division's logistical components were still in transit. When the headquarters of 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division arrived at Camp Evans, northwest of Huế on 26 January, it found that the site held no stocks of ammunition or fuel. Supplies would remain tight for the next week as the Division's helicopters tried to build up a reserve of materiel. Within Huế, approximately 100 U.S. Army advisers and administrative personnel, as well as a few Marine guards, were headquartered in the new city in the lightly defended MACV Compound () a block and a half south of the Perfume River on the east side of Highway 1. A rotating group of staff personnel from the compound was stationed at Trưởng's headquarters day and night. Other advisers were in the countryside accompanying ARVN units. A small group of Army technicians manned a communications facility a few hundred meters to the east of the MACV Compound. Several dozen Army technical specialists and military intelligence personnel were billeted in the Huong Giang Hotel several blocks to the west. Finally, a small detachment of U.S. Navy personnel was stationed at a boat ramp just north of the MACV Compound.


title: Battle of Huế

text: At least two PAVN regiments, two sapper battalions, and an assortment of VC local forces were based in Thừa Thiên Province. The headquarters of the PAVN 6th Regiment and two of its battalions were thought to be in Base Area 114, southwest of Huế, while the third battalion from the regiment was approximately northwest of the city, operating on the coastal flats. The Huế City Sapper Unit and the 12th Sapper Battalion were also located in Base Area 114. Several local force companies operated in the districts surrounding Huế. The 804th Battalion of the newly created 4th Regiment was reported to be near Phú Lộc District, southeast of the city. A second unit from the regiment, the 810th Battalion, and several local force companies roamed the coastal plain north and east of Huế. Unknown to Allied intelligence, the PAVN had recently shifted several more regiments and support units from Quảng Trị Province to the vicinity of Huế. Among the new arrivals was the 7th Battalion of the 29th Regiment, 325C Division, a unit that until recently had been laying siege to Khe Sanh. Also new to Thừa Thiên Province was the 5th Regiment, a three-battalion unit that normally operated from Base Area 101 near Quảng Trị. The PAVN B5 Front created a special logistical and administrative zone known as the Huế City Front to manage the upcoming battle. The new combat headquarters, staffed by high-ranking officials from the Trị-Thiên-Huế Front, local party members, and military officers from the units involved in the attack, had authority over the city and the three districts that surrounded it.