A very good evening to all our friends and welcome to the Hindu News Analysis of Shankar IAS Academy for the date 31st January 2021. Before we begin our news analysis, we have an announcement. Shankar IAS Academy is launching a special program called Prefit to help the aspirants to navigate the timeline for the run up to UPSC preliminary examination 2021. Before we describe the program, know that the entrance exam for joining this new initiative will be conducted online on 7th February 2021. In this program, the Academy will provide a micro schedule that is broken into monthly, weekly and daily targets. The program will provide high intensity interval training for preliminary examination. It will help you not only to complete the syllabus, but also to enhance your skills in solving questions. The program is modeled on the scientific principle of active recall and spaced repetition to ensure maximum output. The participants will solve around 4000 questions in the period from February 15 to May 16. In the training, the participants would be given 50 questions on a daily basis on 6 days in a week. The 50 questions will be based on the steady target of that particular day, and each test will be followed by a daily detailed discussion. Once a particular subject area is completed, the daily tests will be followed by a full test of 100 questions. Under this program, the students will develop a daily routine which is specific to prelims preparation. We have also used gamification principles to incentivize regular test taking and improvement of performance. By enrolling in this program, you will get a detailed schedule for 3 months. The schedule will cover both micro and macro targets for your preparation. And you will be getting 5 weekly half tests from Monday to Friday for general studies topics. As stated already, one full revision test will be there upon the subject completion. After completion of the syllabus, you will get 4 Gs and 4 C-SAT mock tests. And in order to ensure that the participants should qualify the C-SAT paper for sure, the program includes a C-SAT test every week. And this test will be of 50 questions. In addition to this, you will be given access to detailed solution and discussion upon the completion of each test. To understand where you stand, there will be a daily and monthly leaderboard. For the assessment of performance, Shankar IAS property test analytics will also be shared. The program also covers current affairs. See Prefit divides current affairs for past one year into monthly or weekly and daily targets. And these targets will be covered across multiple tests. And know that this is a totally different program from that of pre-storming prelims test series of Shankar IAS Academy. And if you have already registered for pre-storming and now say you are enrolling in Prefit, then the tests under Prefit are in addition to the tests taken under pre-storming. The link for the brochure and detailed schedule is given in the description box and also in the comment section. Now how does Prefit work? Firstly, an entrance exam will be conducted on 7th February 2021. The syllabus and other details of the examination will be provided to you by 1st February 2021. The entrance exam will be conducted online and it will have a registration fee of 99 rupees. Students who secure top 100 ranks will be eligible for Prefit Prime. Under this Prefit Prime, the top 100 rankers will be given 50% subsidized monthly fee structure of 750 rupees plus GST. Students other than Prefit Prime will have a monthly fee structure of 1500 rupees plus GST. And subsequent months of access to Prefit Prime will be subjected to securing a position in the top 100 in the previous month. Students who secure a position in Prefit Prime will be eligible to avail 25% discount on main storming 2021 upon the qualification of prelims 2021. For more details, please visit the links which are given in the description box and also in the comment section. With this, let us move on to today's news analysis. The list of the relevant news articles taken up for today's discussion from five different editions of The Hindu newspaper along with their page numbers are given here for your reference. Also, the handwritten notes in the PDF format and timestampings for all the news articles taken up for today's discussion is given in the description box and also in the comment section for the best interest of the viewers. Let us now begin with our first news article. Now this FAQ article talks about the upcoming green tax policy of the Government of India and its efficiency in attaining clean air objectives. Let us discuss this article in detail. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. See the Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways has approved the proposal for leaving a green tax as a means to prevent vehicles from polluting the environment. It is said to be effective from April 1st, 2022. So in this regard, let us see some of the major features of this green tax. First one is that the transport vehicles which are older than eight years will be charged a green tax at the rate of 10 to 25 percentage of the road tax at the time of renewal of the fitness certificate. Second, the green tax on personal vehicles will be imposed at the time of renewal of the registration certification after 15 years. Third, a lower green tax is to be imposed on public transport vehicles such as buses. And finally, higher green tax of about 50% of road tax will be imposed on vehicles that are registered in highly polluted cities. So these are the major features. However, this green tax is exempted for farm vehicles like tractors, harvesters and tillers and also for vehicles like strong hybrids, e-vehicles, etc. and those that are powered by alternate fuels like ethanol, LPG and CNG. See the minister also approved the policy of deregistration and scrapping of government and PSU vehicles which are older than 15 years. Note that commercial vehicles comprising 5 percentage of the total vehicles contribute to about 65 to 70 percentage of the total vehicle pollution. And those vehicles manufactured before 2000, which include 1% of the vehicles cause 15% of the total pollution. So this shows that old vehicles pollute around 10 to 25 times more when compared to new vehicles. And know that the funds from green tax will be kept in a separate account and will be used by states in measuring and tackling pollution. Now what are the benefits associated with this green tax? See it includes preventing people from using vehicles that pollute the environment, then motivating people to switch to new less polluting vehicles and also to reduce the pollution levels by making the polluter pay principle. That is the polluter should pay for the pollution which they create. Now here comes the question of the benefits associated with the scrapping of old vehicles. See it is true that the policy has got the potential to boost the automobile and its related industries by increasing the demand and can also pave the way for the recovery of steel, aluminum, plastic and others through recycling. However, the challenge lies in ensuring that the newly manufactured vehicles are more environment friendly with modern safety measures and are in accordance with the emissions and fuel efficiency standards. See in the year 2016, the Minister of Power notified the first set of corporate average fuel economy that is CAFE standards. It covered motor vehicles which run on petrol, diesel, LPG, CNG, et cetera, with a weight of 3,500 kilograms and not more than nine seats including the driver's seat. The consumption standard for such vehicles was prescribed to be less than 5.49 liters per 100 kilometer. The second set which is expected to come into force from 2022 to 2023 is said to have more stringent efficiency norms with separate standards for light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles. Also it is assumed that in the second set, cars with an average weight of 1,145 kilograms will be prescribed an average fuel consumption of less than 4.77 liters per 100 kilometers. And note that the CAFE standards are prescribed by the Ministry of Powers Bureau of Energy Efficiency with an expected reduction of 22.97 million tons of fuel consumption by the year 2025. See the Bureau of Energy Efficiency was set up in March 2002 under the provisions of Energy Conservation Act of 2001. Its main function is to help in developing policies and strategies to reduce the energy intensity of Indian economy along with the active participation of all its stakeholders within the overall framework of Energy Conservation Act of 2001. So in order to help those who cannot afford a replacement of their vehicles, many countries including India have brought in vehicle replacement schemes. An example for it would be the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission under which the center provided funds to the state governments in order to increase the buses and to aid the bus industry that faced a recession back in the year 2009. Now on analyzing the scrapping policy, it was said that the owners on selling their old vehicles would be issued a certificate which can be used for availing a discount of around 30,000 to 50,000 rupees on buying new vehicles. And in the case of commercial vehicles, the estimations went up to 1.5 lakhs. However, it was in progress. Here it should be noted that not everybody would be ready to give up their old vehicles, mainly due to the high capital cost which is not affordable by many. Though in the earlier draft proposals, there were mentions on tax discounts on exchanging old vehicles. Presently the objective is limited to encouraging the owners to sell their old vehicles instead of being a green tax penalty. And it is important to understand that without a proper framework of the incentive or penalty and a careful target of vehicles by knowing their condition, the tax penalty wouldn't be effective since the tax would be lower than the resale value of the vehicle and there will be no strong compulsion to retire the old vehicles. And if the old vehicles continue to stay in operation, then it will not make any contribution to the clean air objective of the Government of India and also there won't be any boost to the automobile industry. So this is all about this news article. With this information, let us move on to the next news. Now see this article which talks about supernova, neutrinos and how neutrinos help in the death of massive stars. So in this discussion, let's try to have a very brief understanding of these concepts. The syllabus relevant for this analysis is highlighted here for your reference. Please go through it. Basically, all stars burn nuclear fuel in the cores in order to produce energy. And this heat generates internal pressure which pushes outwards and prevents the star from collapsing inwards due to the action of gravity on its own mass. A star is in balance between these two opposite forces. That is, the star's gravity tries to squeeze the star into the smallest, tightest ball possible. But the nuclear fuel which is burning in the star's core creates a strong outward pressure. And this outward pressure resists the inward squeeze of the gravity. But when the star ages and runs out of fuel to burn, it starts to cool inside and deprived of energy production, which is needed to support it, the core begins to collapse into itself. And it becomes much hotter. But hydrogen, that is the fuel, is still available outside the core. So hydrogen fusion continues in a shell surrounding the core. The increasingly hot core also pushes the outer layers of the star outward, causing them to expand and cool, transforming the star into a red jade. So this cooling causes a lowering of its internal pressure and therefore the force of gravity wins. So the star starts to collapse inwards. And this builds up shock waves because it happens very suddenly and the shock wave sends the outer material of the star flying. So this is what is perceived as supernova. And this happens in very massive stars. In very big stars, this supernova is accompanied by a collapsing of the inner material of the dying star. And this is also known as core collapse supernova or type 2 supernova. And this collapsing core may form a black hole or a neutron star according to its mass. See, if it is a very large star, it collapse to form a black hole. If the star has about the mass of the sun, it becomes a white dwarf. A star with a mass of about 1.5 to 3 times that of our sun will collapse even further, ending up as a neutron star. So remember, very large stars collapse to form black holes. Then stars about the mass of the sun will become a white dwarf. And stars with 1.5 to 3 times mass of the sun will end up being a neutron star. In neutron stars, the force of gravity has overleamed the resistance of electrons to compression and has forced them to combine with protons in order to form neutrons. For stars that end the life weighing more than a few times the mass of the sun, even the resistance of neutrons is not enough to stop the unstoppable gravitational collapse. And the star ultimately becomes a black hole, a region in the space so massive that no light or no matter can ever escape from it. Now further, the news article says that neutrinos aid the death of massive stars. So what is a neutrino? See, a neutrino is a subatomic particle that is very similar to an electron, but it has no electrical charge and a very small mass, so negligible that it is even considered as zero. So neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe. And because they have very little interaction with matter, they are incredibly difficult to detect. Here note that you should not confuse neutrinos with neutrons. See, there is no relationship between neutrons and neutrinos except that both carry no or neutral charge. That is, both have zero charge. They are separate particles in almost every other way. And know that neutrons along with the protons form the nucleus of the atom. Now talking about neutrinos, it comes in three flavors or types and each flavor is associated with a light elementary particle. For instance, the electron neutrino is associated with the electron, the neon neutrino is associated with the neon, and the tau neutrino is associated with tau particle. As they come out of the raging supernova, the neutrinos can change from one flavor to another in a process known as neutrino oscillation. So try to remember the process a star goes through while dying.  So in this discussion, we saw about supernova, black hole, white dwarf, then neutron star and also about neutrinos. With this information, let us move on to the next news. See, now this news article mentions that a union minister has urged the center to send an archeological survey of India team to carry out a detailed study and excavation at the Ekamrak Chaitra. See, this is because two days ago, the archeological survey of India has unearthed a stone structure during the excavation near the Sri Lingaraj temple in the Ekamrak Chaitra.  So what is Ekamrak Chaitra? See, Ekamrak Chaitra represents the old city core of Bhuvaneshwar. As you know, Bhuvaneshwar, called as the temple city, is the capital of Odisha, which is the evidence to an ancient architectural and historical heritage covering almost 2000 years from 3rd century BC to 15th century AD. They represent a complete record of the Kalinga architecture, almost from its nascent to its culmination. And in this, the Ekamrak Chaitra comprises the area of the old city of Bhuvaneshwar that forms the center of this temple architecture. It is considered as a Hindu holy city. See, in Odisha, there are five different Chaitras or religious centers celebrated for the so-called Panchadevata, which include Ganesha, Vishnu, Shiva, Durga, and the sun. And they are the Vinayaka or Ganesh Chaitra at Maha Vinayak Hills in Katak. Then Vishnu or Sankar Chaitra at Puri. Then Shiva or Ekamrak Chaitra at Bhuvaneshwar. Durga or Viraja Chaitra at Jaipur or Yajnapur. And Surya or Arka Chaitra at Konark. In this, the Ekamrak Chaitra started being celebrated as a Shaiva center at least from 7th century AD. And this is because it is the seat of Tribhuvaneshwara. See, Tribhuvaneshwara is another name for Lord Lingaraja of the famous Lingaraja temple of Odisha. And according to some sources, the Lingaraja temple was the center of Ekamrak Chaitra. Also note that Ekamrak Chaitra was divided into Ashta Ayatana, which means eight sacred precincts. And these precincts are ritualistically and symbolically connected to the Lingaraja temple. See, if you take the name Ekamrak Chaitra, in this, Chaitra means simply area or a religious center in our context. And Ekamra means mango tree. So Ekamrak Chaitra can loosely be translated to mean an area adorned with mango trees. And according to Ekamrapurana, which is a 13th century Sanskrit treatise, the preceding deity of Lingaraja was originally under a mango tree. Hence the name Ekamrak Chaitra. Further note that Ekamrak Chaitra is an outstanding example of Hindu city planning based on the application of the Mandala concept. See, Mandala concept is a unique system of planning. It is a spiritual and ritual symbol of Hinduism and Buddhism that represents the universe. So graphically it denotes any plan or chart which symbolically represents the cosmos. Hence the basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. You can see this in an image. Now the present heritage zone of Ekamrak Chaitra consists of around 140 temples, which vary in size as some are gigantic structures like the great Lingaraja and some are miniatures. And these temples are still functional and they are home to numerous intangible living traditions, rituals, festivals and other observances that are believed to be centuries old. Also note that Ekamrak Chaitra is the synthesis of multi-religious systems namely Brahminical, Buddhist and Jain. Also note that it has been included in the tentative list of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. So this is all about the Ekamrak Chaitra. With this information, let us move on to the next news. See this news article which says that China is the largest source of critical imports for India. China remains the largest source of critical imports for India from mobile phone components to pharmaceutical ingredients. And India is working on a multi-pronged strategy in order to reduce this reliance on China. For example, 85% of mobile components are coming from China. And even in the health sector, if China stops the active pharmaceutical ingredients or APIs for penicillin, then we would not be able to produce penicillin in our country. So in order to overcome this dangerous reliance on China, the Indian government is working on a multi-pronged strategy. For example, India has started the production-linked incentive or PLI scheme to boost domestic manufacturing and a global effort involving India's foreign missions to find alternatives to China and also the use of free trade agreements with other trading partners. The article noted that COVID-19 pandemic has helped to accelerate this change. See when production in China was hit early in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, India shared the list of items critically dependent on China with its foreign missions. The foreign missions linked up with supplies in other country resulted in diversification of sources. And in addition to PLI scheme, there's the hope to capture that particular diversification. PLI for large-scale electronic manufacturing proposes a financial incentive to boost domestic manufacturing. It also aims to attract large investments in electronic value chain, including mobile phones, electronic components, and also assembly, testing, marking, and packaging units or simply ATMP units. Now under the scheme, an incentive of 4 percentage to 6 percentage on incremental sales of goods manufactured in India and covered under targeted segments will be given to eligible companies over five years. The base year is financial year 2019-20. And in this regard, Apple has started manufacturing in India utilizing this PLI scheme. Further, the steel imports have fallen from a high of 2.8 billion US dollars to less than 1 billion dollars. And this is with South Korea replacing China in India's steel imports. See, this is because of an FDA and this FDA resulted in diversification of steel imports for free. Now coming to figures, China still remains the biggest source of India's imports. But imports last year fell 10.8 percentage, which is the lowest since 2016. The two-way trade reached 87.6 billion US dollars in 2020 down by 5.6 percentage. While the trade deficit declined to a level which is 5 year low of 45.8 billion US dollars. So this figure of economic survey 2021 summarizes India's import dependence. Among the top countries for import origin, China continues to be the largest import source for India in April-November 2020 with the share of imports rising to 17.7 percentage up from 14.5 percentage in April-November 2019. And not that while Switzerland does not appear to be among the top 10 import sources, Germany is the new addition in the list, accounting for 3.7 percentage share of total imports. So this is all about this news article. With this, let us move on to the next news. Now this news article talks about a statement made by the Andhra Pradesh State Election Commissioner on free and fair elections, which would pave way for the downtrodden to be a part of governance. In this context, let us have a brief understanding about the State Election Commission. Before that, you should know about Election Commission of India. The Election Commission of India is an autonomous constitutional authority that is responsible for administering the union and state election processes in India. It administers elections to the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, state legislative assemblies, then the legislative assemblies of union territories with the legislature and the offices of the president and vice-president in the country. So similarly, at the state level, we have the State Election Commission which performs the duty of conducting municipal and Panchayati Raj elections. Note that Article 243K of the Indian Constitution deals with the State Election Commission and its powers. Due to the lack of responsibility shown by the states in empowering the Panchayati Raj institutions and because of the irregular conduct of elections, the powers were given to the local rural bodies or Panchayati Raj institutions by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992. And according to this, the Article 243K close one provides the State Election Commission with the powers to conduct the elections for the Panchayati Raj institutions. It also mentions about the State Election Commissioner who will be appointed by the governor of the state. As per Clause 2 of the Article 243K, the conditions of service and tenure of the State Election Commissioner will be determined by the governor. And regarding removal, the State Election Commissioner will be removed from the office in the similar manner and grounds as prescribed for the removal of judge of a high court. As mentioned in Clause 3 of the article, on the request of the State Election Commission, the governor of the state is entitled to provide the State Election Commissioner with the available staff that are needed to disturb the functions which are vested upon it. And the Clause 4 gives the state legislatures the powers to make laws with respect to all the matters relating to the elections to Panchayats. Now, when we talk about State Election Commission, you should remember the case of Kishan Singh Thomas versus Municipal Corporation of the city of Ahmedabad case. Since in its judgment, the Supreme Court stated that the state governments need to follow or abide by the laws which are provided by the State Election Commissions in the conducting of municipal and panchayat elections. And this is just like how the states follow the instructions of the Election Commission of India during the assembly and parliamentary polls. And note that even though the Central and State Election Commission has got a similar mandate, they are independent of each other and they draw their powers from different laws. So in this discussion, we are so about the State Election Commission. Now, with this, we have analyzed almost all the relevant news articles from today's The Hindu Newspaper. Now, let us move on to the Practice Questions Discussion section based on today's news analysis. See this first question. Consider the following statements about the State Election Commissioner. Here, three statements are given and you have to identify the correct statement or statements. The first statement reads, he or she is appointed by the governor of the state. Yes, this statement is correct. So you can easily eliminate option B. Now, the second statement reads, his or her terms of conditions and tenure is determined by the governor. Yes, this statement is also correct. And the third statement reads, he or she is removed similar to the manner or grounds as prescribed for the removal of the judge of a high court. Yes, this statement is also correct. So the correct answer for this question is option D, all of these. So in this regard, we have a previous year prelims question which was asked in 2011. The Constitution 73rd Amendment Act 1992, which aims at promoting the Panchayatiraj institutions in the country, provides for which of the following. Here also three statements are given. The first statement is, constitution of district planning committees. The second is, state election commissions to conduct all Panchayatiraj elections. And the third statement, establishment of state finance commissions. Here you would know that the first statement that is the constitution of district planning committees is incorrect, because it comes under the 74th Amendment Act and not under the 73rd Amendment Act. Then statement two and three are correct. So the correct answer for this question is option C, two and three only. Now, see the second question. The term Ekamra Chetra, recently seen in news, is associated with which of the following? Here the correct answer is option C, an old city core of Bhubaneshwar. Now there is another question with regard to Ekamra Chetra. With reference to Ekamra Chetra, consider the following statements. Here three statements are given. It represents the old city core of Varanasi. See this statement is incorrect. As we have seen Ekamra Chetra represents the old city core of Bhubaneshwar in Odisha. Now the second statement reads, it is the synthesis of Brahminika, Buddhist and Jain religious systems. Yes, this statement is correct. And the third statement reads, it is an example of Hindu city planning based on application of Mandala concept. Yes, this statement is also correct. So in this question, we have to identify the correct statement or statements. Since statement one is incorrect and statement two and three are correct, the correct answer for this question is option B, two and three only. Now see this fourth question. Which of the following is the correct order of sequence of a big star at the end of its life? Here option A is the correct answer. The correct order is, first the star becomes a super giant, then it becomes a supernova, then a neutron star. Now see this question. The following countries are the largest import sources for India in April to November 2020. Arrange them in decreasing order of the value of imports. Here four countries are given, China, USA, UAE and Hong Kong. And the correct decreasing order is one, two, three and four. That is option A. Now we have this mains practice question. Please write your answers and post it in the comment section. Now we have come to the end of analysis of all the news articles taken up for today's discussion and also the discussion of practice questions. 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Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva. I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Jacques Franco, who is the co-chair of the focus group for digital fiat currency and also chair of the security working group. Jacques, welcome to the studio. Thank you. Now, I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about the main security concerns of digital currencies. You were, when you spent about 20 years in Silicon Valley, you're now a co-chair of the security working group. What are the main security concerns for digital currencies, especially central bank digital currency? Well, certainly all the traditional concerns don't disappear. And perhaps what happens in the money use case, or even the digital fiat currency use case, is that it perhaps needs a lot more confidence of security than one would typically find in other systems that we have today, even in the financial industry systems. Certainly those systems are protected at much higher levels, but the question becomes, does digital fiat currency require even higher levels of protection and higher levels of assurance? Are there things like acceptable loss in this new form of currency? Today, in credit card transactions, there's a built in acceptable loss, and it's just part of doing business. Those kinds of losses would not be tolerated in the money system, or especially in the fiat currency system, because confidence and trust is probably the number one characteristic that is fundamental to adoption of this new form, and if that confidence is lost, it could have dramatic effects on the population. So is this a use case where we cannot tolerate any highly visible breach of some kind? Otherwise, people will lose confidence in this currency, and that could be extremely problematic. What are the key recommendations of the focus group regarding security for central bank digital currency? Well, if you look at the security space, it's one that's evolved over time, and as a result, everything also evolves, standards, controls, and we have, in essence, a very large mixture of things that we have to contend with, and they're generally speaking they're called security controls, and they're in the worded form, and there's lots of frameworks of these controls that we have to deal with, and they're written by different groups, by different levels of expertise in different countries, and it's in words, so there's a loss of clarity, because the words and paragraphs have to be interpreted, validated, verified by auditors and so on, so because security controls are traditionally worded descriptions, basically apply this security to this business value, and it's in the word format, there's a large amount of human effort required to interpret what is required, let alone do it. So one of the things that I believe is missing is something that would solve this visibility, lack of visibility between objectives, regulatory objectives that say, you know, if you can do fiat currency, you must protect it to this level, and the actual controls that you, technologies you put in place to affect those objectives, that very specific technical bottom part and the very sort of objective general top part, there's a lack of clarity between those two layers, and that has resulted in a huge amount of audit and human effort, so one of the recommendations that I've made in this focus group is an innovation that I'm contributing to ITU in the world related to a syntax language that is able to describe the general terms and the highly specific terms under the same architectural construct, which is a single parent tree, so the recommendation is that we have to adopt an architectural model to describe security controls that is unique and unambiguous, so that we can have a higher confidence and assurance that we have protection. I make a clear distinction between security and protection, security delivered is not necessarily protection received, and therefore you have to be able to articulate things quite specifically so that you can measure things quite specifically so that you could articulate a state of security with confidence to those who at the end of the day have to provide the resources to provide more security or at the same level, so you have to be able to communicate effectively to the fiduciary layer that provides the funding for security, that's the amount of security, and then the chief information security officer will implement that and that's in a sense the quality of security, so what gives you protection is a combination of enough security and quality of security to give the protection that you're seeking. And finally, how would the work in the security working group lead to new work in ITUT study groups in your opinion? Well, in this particular case, the deliverables that were submitted through a liaison state were submitted to the Julfiak Currency Focus Group going to study group 17 security, in particular question 14 on DLT security, so this method that I have proposed is being transmitted to a focus group and adopted by one of the key areas of activity, in this case, DLT security, which is critical. Great, okay, well, thanks for coming up. Thank you very much for joining us today and giving us a few insights into the work and hopefully we'll catch up with you again some station in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.


The reason why we need Cutie Cinderella's opinion is because we need a woman's opinion, okay? We don't have a woman's touch to this house. And there's, like, it's just life. It's just how it is. It is just natural. Like, we don't know what we're doing. The house is just gonna be full of men. Yeah. Which isn't good. And you need to have a woman's, like a third party woman's touch. Something, girls are better at this thing, guys.


Preoperative administration of alpha-2 agonists reduces postoperative opioid consumption and pain intensity. However, further research with larger sample sizes is needed to confirm these findings. This article was authored by Ji Yun-ju, Kai Min Kim, and Sang Sik Lee.


Statistics and Excel. Binomial distribution coin flip random number generation. Got data? Let's get stuck into it with statistics and Excel. First, a word from our sponsor. Yeah, actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers, they don't want to be seen with us. But that's okay, whatever.  Like our Accounting Rocks product line. If you're not crunching cords using Excel, you're doing it wrong. A must-have product. Because the fact as everyone knows of accounting being one of the highest forms of artistic expression means accountants have a requirement, the obligation, a duty to share the tools necessary to properly channel the creative muse. And the muse, she rarely speaks more clearly than through the beautiful symmetry of spreadsheets. So get the shirt. Because the creative muse, she could use a new pair of shoes. If you would like a commercial free experience, consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com. You're not required to, but if you have access to one note, we're in the icon. Left hand side, one note presentation, 1560 binomial distribution coin flip random number generation tab. We've also been uploading our transcripts so that you can go to the view tab, immersive reader tool, change the language if you so choose, be able to read or listen to the transcripts in multiple different languages, and use the timestamps to tie into the video presentation. In prior presentations, we've been thinking about how we can represent different data sets, both with mathematical tools, such as using calculations of the average or mean, the median, quartiles, and with pictorial representations like the box and whiskers, and histogram, the histogram being the primary tool we use to envision the spread of data, and we can describe the spread of data on a histogram using terms like it's skewed to the left, it's skewed to the right. We're now looking at smooth curves that have formulas related to them that sometimes can represent data in real life, at least approximating that data set, and if we can do that, then the curves give us more predictive power into the future because we have a mathematical formula related to them. Prior presentations, we looked at the uniform distribution, Poisson distribution. We're now looking at the binomial distributions, which you will recall are those that we need to break out into whatever we're looking at have basically two outcomes related to them that we can define as basically success or failure. Let's look at a coin flip type of scenario to apply our concepts here. So we're going to say that the probability of a coin flip is going to be 50-50 because we're going to imagine it's a fair coin flip. Now let's just imagine if we were to plot out our binomial distribution with just x as zero and then we'll increase the number of flips and we'll see because that will give us more of an intuitive feel of what is going on. So if we just simply have x being zero, meaning we don't actually flip the coin at all, then that means that the likelihood of us getting zero successes and if we define success in terms of a coin flip, we can define it as either heads being a success or sales being a success and the other being a fail, we will define it here as heads being a success. Well, if there's no flips then of course then there's going to be 100% chance that we have no successes. We're using the binomial.dist.range and we'll talk more about the binomial.dist.range versus the binomial.dist in future presentations but the range is the latest and most flexible one of the two binomial functions. So we have the trials and the trials are going to be zero. In this case the probability per trial 50% and then the numbers we're looking at are going to be then the zero. So let's take a look at a scenario this time where we have the probability of success is still 50% because it's a coin flip situation but we flip the coin one time. Well if we only flip the coin one time and we're defining success as heads, then as you would expect the likelihood of having zero heads out of two flips is 50%. The likelihood of having one success out of two flips is 50%. So that means and again we're doing this with our binom.dist.range and this is a spill array. So we just once again took the trials, the probability of the 50% and then the numbers being this range and it spilled out these two ranges. We'll do that. We have done this in Excel if you want to check it out in Excel as well. Let's add it to two. So now you've got the number of rounds is two. So if we have two numbers of rounds, what's the probability that we get zero successes, zero heads, out of two rounds or two flips? 25%. What's the likelihood that I get one success defined as a heads out of two flips? We have the 50% and then what's the likelihood that we get two successes out of two flips, two heads? In other words, 25%. You'll notice that the total adds up in all these cases to 100% which is kind of our check figure. What if we bring it up to three then? So now we've got the likelihood that we get zero successes out of three flips, zero heads, that is 12.5% likelihood that we get one success out of three flips, 37.5 likelihood that we get two successes, 37.5, three successes, three heads, 12.5. And if we can also ask questions of course, what's the likelihood that I get either zero or one successes? And that would be a cumulative type concept, 12.5 plus 37.5. We're coming to the 50 if I added those correctly. Let's do one more. If we bring it up to four rounds, each individual flip being at 50%, we have the 6.25% that we get in zero successes, zero heads. We get 25% that we get one success, exactly one success, one heads out of four. We have the 37.5% that we get two heads out of four. We have the 25% that we get the three heads out of four and then the 6.25 that we get four successes or heads out of four. Now we did this with a coin flipping scenario, but you can imagine just like we talked about in the prior presentation, other scenarios, many different scenarios actually, there's a lot of applicability here. If you can break out the outcomes to success or fail, we talked about sales calls in a prior presentation. Now let's think about a situation where the probability of success is the 50% and the number of rounds is 12. So we have a coin flipping situation, success is heads. We're now flipping it 12 times. So now we have zero, if we have zero out of 12 successes, that's very unlikely that we don't flip any heads, one head or a success out of 12.29 and so on and so forth. If we were to plot this out, then we get something that looks like this and it looks somewhat like a bell shaped curve in this case because as we looked at in prior presentations, the percent of success is at that 50%. And this looks kind of like what you would expect in a coin flipping scenario, right? Because you're saying, okay, that means if I flipped it 12 times, you would kind of think that six, the data would be formatting around six and basically is tapering off given those conditions. And if I look down here, we can do a similar kind of chart with a line type of chart as opposed to with the bar chart or a histogram type of chart. All right, now let's actually approximate this. Let's say that we simulate this situation in Excel. We have some tools instead of using just the equals random function that we did when we did a normal, like a coin flip in prior presentations to represent a heads or a tails. We're going to represent the outcomes for the sets of flips that we have. So we're going to say that we flip them 12 times. So when we run these tests, I'm going to say that we're flipping the coin 12 times each round and see how many heads we're defining as successes that we get every 12 times we flip. So in the first 12 times, we flip the coin, we've got five successes. And the second 12 times, we flip the coin, seven successes or seven heads out of 12. The third time, seven successes out of 12. Fourth time, four successes or heads out of 12 and so on. So in the past, you know, the teachers union and the colleges, you know, they had people that just sat in there and flipped coins all day and it was like a union job and whatnot. But even they couldn't even hold on to that, right? They moved over to write for Hollywood and whatnot. But now we have this number generator and you could check out how to do that in Excel to kind of simulate these models. So now we're going to imagine a real-life scenario or in practice, we actually did this test and see how closely it matches what we did theoretically with the binome.dist, which would be the smooth curve. So if we break this out into our bends, we're going to say, all right, how many times are we going to get zero? How many times are we going to get one success out of 12 flips? How many times did we get two successes out of 12 flips? We're using our frequency, which is taking our outcomes here of 12 flip outcomes. I can't remember exactly how many. We did it a thousand times, a thousand 12-time flips. And we're saying out of a thousand 12-time flips, how many times did we get zero out of 12? Two. Out of a thousand 12-time flips, we never got exactly one success or a head. We got how many times did we get two successes or heads out of 12 when we flipped it a thousand times, 13 times, and so on. Now again, you might ask, why don't I use the COUNTIF function? I could do that. I could say, Excel, I would like you to count all the items in this column if there's a zero. However, because we use this random number generator, sometimes it kind of throws out that COUNTIF or throws it off. Therefore, this frequency usually picks up all the numbers. It's an array function, so it's kind of a fancier function. So if you want to check that out in Excel, we will do it there. But if I sum up the columns, it should come out to a thousand. Why? Because we ran a thousand 12 flip tests. So that's our check figure. Then we can also look at the percent of the total. So for example, how many times, what's the percent of times that we got four successes or heads out of the thousand trials that we did? Well, we have 119 divided by a thousand, and that's going to give us the 11.9. Now remember that if we actually run the test, I can make a graph about the frequency, and I can make a similar graph about the percentages. When I look at the Poisson distribution data that we have over here, I didn't actually run the tests. What we got instead is simply the frequency. So over here, if I got the frequency, I would predict then the number of flips if I ran a thousand tests by doing it this way. I would say, okay, how many times would I get a five if I ran the test a thousand times, one thousand times the point 1934 or so on. And over here, what we did is we actually ran the test and got the frequency, and then we divided by the total to get the percent of the total that outcome to that five percent. If we compare the two, I'm subtracting this number from what we got over here to see how close it lines up to a binomial distribution. And we can see it's not perfect, but it looks pretty close to the binomial distribution. So as we would basically expect, and if it is, if it was a real-life situation like phone calls or something like that, then we would be likely to be able to use the binomial formula to make predictions about outcomes on sales calls. So if I was doing my own sales calls, I can kind of figure out what would be expected and see if my data is lining up to that or if you're supervising someone, you might have some expectations that are designed in a similar fashion. So if I graph these two things together, meaning this is the percent of the total of the actual data in blue and this is the actual smooth curve from the function that we graphed, or basically we graphed this data that we generated from the function or formula, we could see they're pretty smooth. So we have a similar situation that we've seen in prior presentations. We're saying we could say whatever scenario we're looking at, does it fit the conditions to be a binomial distribution? If it does, then maybe we can use the function. If we actually plot data outcome and say does the data outcome look like it ties out to what we would get from using the binomial distribution, again, good evidence that we could use the binomial distribution. If we plot the data that we actually got versus what we would get with the smooth binomial distribution curve and those two things line up, again, we would say, okay, now maybe I'm convinced that I can use the binomial distribution curve to make predictions about whatever we're talking about, in this case coin flips and future presentations, we'll talk about the sales calls and whatever we're talking about might be able to be predicted with this smooth curve or formula.


Everybody for us here ripping a box of 2022 top sterling baseball hobby for Gregory M. Here we go Gregory some sterling Let's see a cut auto. I'd love to pull a cut out right now. Yeah, he's a good dog All right, 80s all-stars and tops all-star rookie cup team. That's what we got. I Believe this is our last box of sterling also Let's go 80s first Totally 80s. It's kind of thick. Should we save it? Let's see what this one looks like I don't say we'll go this one first. It's all-star rookie cup team save the thick I'm just I can guess myself now dual Jersey auto. Shohei Otani 7 of 15 nasty 6 Shohei Congrats Gregory. I Think I had my I think I was right the first time. Yeah, I was like over. I overthought everything Beautiful Shohei to game war in Jersey relics there 7 to 15 on the auto clean auto as well That's pretty good. That's my MVP right there. That's my MVP. All right, 80s all-stars. Let's see what We're going first and change our mind on Let's see. Oh, that's pretty sweet too though quad bat relic auto Donnie baseball three of five Don Mattingly a really good box There you go Gregory Congrats That might have to go into a There you go, Gregory Congrats on the Donnie baseball the Shohei Otani box there. We'll get it right out to you


So it's my great pleasure to introduce to you Urs Gasser. Urs is someone who has been with the Berkman Center for a long time now. We're extremely lucky that he's our executive director. He was a professor at the University of St. Gallen, and an expert in what we think of as information law. He also comes from a tradition of studying this matter from a methodology that's actually somewhat distinct from the way that we study information and the way we study internet and technology. So we're incredibly lucky that he is both our executive director and a great expert on this. This is his core topic of information quality. He's going to run us through a very brief presentation, and then I will turn it over to Ethan Zacherman, our close colleague from the MIT Center for Civic Media. Professor Gasser, thank you. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. Welcome back. As John mentioned, this is somehow a dream come true for me. The topic of information quality has been one of my pet topics, one of my pet topics for many years. I'm really excited that we are all coming together here today. I would like to thank first our colleagues and friends at the Ford Foundation for making this possible, but then of course also our colleagues and friends, in particular Ethan over at MIT. I'm thrilled that over the next few years we will for sure strengthen our collaboration, and I think this is a terrific start. So thank you, Ethan, to you and your team. And then finally, of course, also thanks to the Berkman team for pulling this together after especially last week's event with Lady Gaga, which was kind of quite a challenge for us. And a big thank especially to Susan, who did a great job moderating the morning session. Thank you, Susan, for that. So what I would like to do over the next few minutes is really to do two things. First of all, to highlight some of my key findings from this morning. I'm sure you have many others to add, so this is kind of just one interpretation of what I've heard. And to try to map these insights on this kind of emerging theory of information quality, which as John mentioned, is more of a European framework or approach to the topic here. I'd like to cluster my thoughts and structure them into four categories. One is what I would call foundational issues. Second, a few words and observations regarding methods. Third, a few areas of application that we touched upon this morning and maybe also highlighting one or two that we haven't talked so much about, but that I think are increasingly important. And then finally, also as a segue to the following sessions, a few words about potential points of intervention. But before I do that, just a very quick question or provocation. Why do we have this conversation right now about truthiness, about truth in the digital network environment? I remember distinctly when I arrived here roughly 10 years ago, information quality was not a very popular topic here. Actually, no one was really interested in it. So again, I'm really glad to see so many colleagues here today at the law school coming together. And it's really a question. Why do we talk about that today? The question of truth online. I offer three possible explanations. One is that we feel collectively that it's time to re-adjust our navigation systems as we are confronted with a new technology, but also of course with new players, old intermediaries disappearing and new intermediaries entering the information ecosystem. We've covered a lot of that ground this morning. A second possible explanation why we have the conversation about quality of our information ecosystem. Now from that particular angle, angle may be the understanding of power of misinformation. As it was noted this morning, we even started wars based on misinformation recently. And finally, and that's perhaps more European provocation, it's not so clear to me whether the diverse ecosystem that we have today, the diverse information environment that we live in, produces always good outcomes necessarily and automatically. So whether this vision and idea of just creating enough speakers and enough information sources and then the marketplace of ideas through this kind of invisible mechanism will lead to the truth and to the good outcomes that this trust may be eroded in today's environment. So these are, I think, three offerings from my personal perspective. But now more switching to a summary of the mapping mode. First, we got a reminder from our colleague from the Kennedy School this morning that we should be more specific about the language used, about definitions. I've heard a couple of things this morning that were extremely helpful in clarifying my own thinking. We had different notions of information actually that were used, sometimes information as bits and bytes. The raw data that we are concerned about, the quality of the raw data, but then of course also about information as message and effect, some of the things Jochai was talking about. We also covered, I think, different types and addressed the nuances between different types of information. We talked about factual information but of course also opinions and beliefs. So I truly believe also from a theoretical perspective it's very important to distinguish these nuances. One other thing I want to highlight here is really what I like so much about this morning's conversation is that we have been rethinking in many ways the information model and the information flow model. So the question how we are exposed to information or actually how we find information be it through search engines, be it through browsing plays very much a role, of course, in this conversation. So it's no longer that we just are exposed to information that someone has selected for us and to see search as part of the process, information process that has a relevance with regard to truth and quality and truthiness as one quality criteria I think is important. Also the recreation and reuse part that we interact with information with digital content and that this again shapes our skills and ability to make quality judgment. So I really like this enriched model of information flow that is very different from the conversations we had even 15 years ago with focus on newspapers. So I truly think this reflects the shift from a analog to a truly digital model this kind of more nuanced understanding of how we interact with information. Just another quick observation point from this morning. Truthiness or truth has been two of the quality criteria we mentioned a lot. Others mentioned, for instance, correctness of information information that is not misleading and I think indeed there are a broad range of information quality criteria that we could also look at in the context of our conversation today. One colleague of mine did a mapping and came up with 70 different quality criteria. Some of them again more on the subjective side where your previous knowledge for instance plays a big role or some of the subjective factors we talked today and some of them more on the objective side either way also the acknowledgement this morning that context matters so much when we talk about these quality criteria be it truthiness or be it correctness of information. The second outcome certainly of this morning's session what are key factors of influence and I just listed a few here. Of course the new actors that are shaping our information experiences online we have put a lot of emphasis on that. Not so much actually and I'm a little bit surprised by that we didn't talk so much about social networking sites but maybe we'll come back to that later this afternoon social search engines have been certainly mentioned. Economic factors have been addressed arguably one could make the case that in the attention economy the incentives for misinformation may actually grow. We also talked quite a bit about the technological factors the logic of distribution as well as aggregation network effects affect the current information ecosystem in a way that is directly irrelevant with respect to the notion of quality. Then in the later part of the morning of course the discussion of the importance of the human psychological factors some of them even hardwired the role of emotion the role of the amygdala in our brain right but some of them of course also through learned behavior and socialization cultural biases and other aspects were helpfully highlighted this morning and perhaps we can think about the brainstorm about tools and design choices that shake things up a little bit especially where it's more learned behavior rather than hardwired biology. Charlie made a great point on the importance of the legal system how the legal environment shapes actually the notion of truth and other quality criteria in a very direct way but there are also indirect ways in which law shapes are in full quality environment. One thing I want to add or highlight is the data quality act you didn't mention that this morning but that's a piece of legislation that applies to federal agencies and tries to regulate the quality of information and data these agencies put out there and if you go back to this idea of open data and open government you see the relevance of that that's just kind of as a footnote an interesting way in which law can actually be helpful sometimes although Herbert Burkett, my friend summarized it at a different conference that information quality is the topic best to be avoided by law. A few words on methods what is really different than actually the stuff in Italic is what I think has changed in the digital environment is we have different methods and tools and techniques available to understand the phenomenon we're discussing today Jochai with his team did a great presentation how we can track the flow of information over time how we can map and analyze relationships of course the truthy tool that we had is a similar idea I think that was not possible to the same extent or at the same scale at least in the paper world but of course also as we learned this morning and when they all started with that provocation the tools and techniques of manipulation have also changed and of misinformation and finally and I'll return to that on the last slide of course also the methods of intervention what we can do about it we had several great ideas and starting points for sure addressed this morning very briefly only areas of application where truth matters and still matters of course there are many areas we could look into and given the contextuality of the information phenomenon I argue it's really important to not only have these kind of horizontal conversations as we have it today but get sector specific and look into different areas of course today we have a certain emphasis on news and political information we have also addressed the question of science and policy making and the importance of maintaining quality in those debates trade and commerce are another important area we talked a little bit Kathleen addressed the advertisement issue one that I would add is personal information personal well-being as including health information that is a key area where arguably these quality considerations are extremely important again last week we had here this conference on cyberbullying and other forms of problematic behavior online and there again you see the relevance of the same type of question about the quality of personal information finally intervention points finally in terms of the summary it's almost following the elastic framework for modes of regulation with of course technological means and tomorrow is the hackathon we'll certainly experiment with that can we create filters, aggregation tools how helpful can visualization techniques be to address some of the challenges to sort through the truthiness problem what are navigation aids for cyberspace but then also another key area we highlighted this morning the role of human beings the role of actually people doing fact-checking the potential and power of large-scale cooperation peer review mentioned by Jochagen but also the role of education and training of journalists more people, young people more broadly and Denise wrote the great piece on the blog leading up to this conference on this topic of course there may be also a emerging market for truth NGOs are playing a big role in that supported through foundations of course new types of information brokers emerge because obviously accurate information has a high value there is a broad range of instruments and also opportunities to think creatively about the use of market forces and incentives available we identified some of them and of course also finally being at a law school some legal topics these and legal strategies despite Herbert Burkert's words of warning truth in advertisement regulations seems to be kind of one possible contribution privacy laws also looking at recent White House roadmap with potential right to correct information if it's not correct personal information these are possible tools and instruments in the toolbox last slide challenges ahead from now from a research perspective first this morning confirmed my at least working hypothesis that we have a relatively good understanding already and insights into various bits and pieces that are highly relevant so take for instance what we know about the psychology of information processing or what we know about network analysis what we know about how for instance information travels in social networking sites but bringing these things together and develop some sort of holistic view and work towards a more comprehensive understanding and understand also the interplay among the factors including trade off seems to be a research challenge second challenge I would encourage all of us to think both strategically as well as pragmatically about where can we make a difference where can we improve the current ecosystem and what are strategies that we can apply longer term I would argue both one and two require the creation of spaces for experimentation and learning and also spaces where activists and researchers can meet and think together and in that sense I believe today's conference has been a great starting point so thank you for being here