Perfact reflection for a refer dissertation Essay

Perfact reflection for a refer dissertation - Essay Example I discovered I have poor time management skills because of the fact that I was unable to fully adhere to the time schedule that I had set for myself and in most cases I was forced to carry forward certain tasks beyond the deadline that I had previously set. I should great strengths in regards to records keeping and management since I was able to refer back easily to all the records that I had collected before starting to write the dissertation. Secondly, I showed great strengths in handling people since none of the respondents was harsh to me or refused to cooperate. This showed that I knew how to convince people and engage them in conversation up to the point they willingly agree to participate in my research project. The main problem that I encountered was limited secondary resources that directly touched on my research topic or objectives. This is to say that the number of scholarly books and articles that touched of personal selling and in stores, sales of Blackberry in stores that are located in China were not easily available. The lack of scholarly books and articles that directly covered my dissertation topic or objectives did not discourage me, but rather it confirmed that my research project was unique and it was bound to help in building the body of knowledge in marketing studies. That said, I solved the problem by relying on scholarly books and articles that indirectly touched on the subject, for example sources that touched on direct marketing and personal selling were completely relevant and useful. Secondly, I applied the use of internet sources from credible sites that touched on my research topic directly or indirectly, these sources helped to bridge the gap caused by limited scholarly books and articles. The methodology that I chose incorporated the application of both primary and secondary research, which validated the research findings in the sense that secondary data were used to validate

Research Methods in Education Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4750 words

Methods in Education - Research Proposal Example This discourse seeks to investigate whether and to what extent the provisioning education incentives to further the pedagogical knowledge of teachers would help reduce the incidences of turnovers in a commercial international language school in Thailand. Context background The teacher is the most vital aspect of any educational program and the quality of the teacher is dependent upon their qualifications, which includes the extent and duration of their pre-service field experiences and the characteristics of their ongoing professional development (Decker, Decker, Freeman, and Knopf, 2009). In addition, teachers’ beliefs have an influential role in determining their professional behaviour and affect not only their teaching, but also filter new information and suggest major implications for the functioning of educational innovations and teacher development (Mohamed, 2006). The role of teachers in providing quality basic education for all children becomes increasingly pivotal in regards to developing nations seeking to achieve, consolidate and sustain progress towards economic growth and it is estimated that 18 million additional teachers are required by 2015 in order for all children to have access to a high quality education (Mpokosa and Ndaruhutse, 2008). Furthermore, the qualification, training and motivation of teachers ensure that the system is staffed with competent and dedicated professionals (Mpokosa and Ndaruhutse, 2008). These elements have a significant impact on the program’s quality and are an important factor in determining the likelihood that the curriculum will contribute to children’s growth and development as well as their success in school and beyond (Decker, Decker, Freeman, and Knopf, 2009). Labour is the most expensive aspect of any educational programs and, in a high-quality program, approximately 70% of the budget is comprised of teachers salaries and benefits (Decker, Decker, Freeman, and Knopf, 2009). For financially challenged programs, low wages result in less qualified employees at the point of entry, less incentive for employees to increase skills because of the lack of significant monetary compensation, and greater employee turnover rates (Decker, Decker, Freeman, and Knopf, 2009). Without adequate staff compensation linked to training and experience, early childhood programs will continue to be of mediocre quality and experience high staff turnover rates and the trade-off for low salaries and benefits is typically a low-quality program (Decker, Decker, Freeman, and Knopf, 2009). However, research indicates that there is a positive relationship between program quality and budget allocations for teacher salaries and benefits in that programs that spent approximately two thirds of their budgets on salaries and staff benefits tended to be of high quality, and quality diminished considerably in programs spending less than one half of their budgets on salaries and staff benefits (Decker, Decker , Freeman, and Knopf, 2009). Providing professional development and technical assistance to all staff members as a means to increase their level of performance, professional standards, performance management, ongoing continuing

Data Mining Analysis in the Telecommunications Industry

Data Mining Analysis in the Telecommunications Industry Abstract The broadcast communications industry was one of the first to receive information mining innovation. This is in all probability since media transmission organizations routinely produce whats more, store tremendous measures of amazing information, have a vast client base, and work in a quickly changing and exceptionally focused environment. Media transmission organizations use information mining to enhance their showcasing endeavors, distinguish extortion, and better deal with their media transmission systems. These frameworks were produced to address the intricacy related with keeping up a gigantic system foundation and the need to amplify organizes unwavering quality while limiting work costs. The issue with these master frameworks is that they are costly to create on the grounds that it is both troublesome and tedious to evoke the essential space information from specialists. Information mining can be seen as methods of consequently producing some of this information straightforwar dly from the information. Keywords: Data Mining, telecommunication, fraud detection The telecommunication industry was one of the first to get data mining development. This is more likely than not since media transmission associations routinely create besides, enormous measures of astounding data, have an inconceivable customer base, and work in a rapidly changing and extraordinarily engaged environment. Media transmission associations utilize data mining to improve their displaying attempts, recognize blackmail, and better manage their media transmission frameworks. Regardless, these associations moreover go up against different data mining challenges in light of the monster size of their enlightening accumulations, the progressive and brief parts of their data, and the need to anticipate to a great degree extraordinary event, for instance, customer coercion and framework frustrations-logically. The universality of data mining in the communicate correspondences industry can be viewed as an enlargement of the use of ace systems in the communicate correspondences ind ustry. These systems were created to address the multifaceted nature related with keeping up a tremendous framework establishment and the needs to increase compose resolute quality while constraining work costs. The issue with these ace systems is that they are expensive to make in light of the fact that it is both troublesome and monotonous to bring out the fundamental space data from masters. Data mining can be viewed as strategies of thusly creating some of this data clearly from the data. The data mining applications for any industry depend on two elements: the information that are accessible and the business issues confronting the business. This area gives foundation data about the information kept up by broadcast communications organizations. The difficulties related with mining media transmission information are moreover portrayed in this area. Media transmission organizations keep up information about the telephone calls that navigate their systems as call detail records, which contain illustrative data for each telephone call. In 2001, ATT long separation clients produced more than 300 million call detail records every day (Cortes and Pregibon, 2001) and, in light of the fact that call detail records are kept online for a while, this implied that billions of call detail records were promptly accessible for information mining. Call detail information is valuable for promoting and extortion recognition applications. Media transmission associations furthermore keep up expansive customer information, for instance, charging information, whats more, moreover information got from outside social affairs, for instance, FICO rating information. This information can be extremely useful and every now and again is solidified with media transmission specific data to upgrade the results of data mining. For example, while call detail data can be used to perceive suspicious calling outlines, a customers FICO evaluation is every now and again solidified into the examination before choosing the likelihood that deception is truly happening. Media interchanges associations moreover create and store an expansive measure of data related to the operation of their frameworks. This is in light of the fact that the framework segments in these broad media transmission frameworks have some self-symptomatic limits that permit them to make both status and ready messages. These surges of messages can be mined remembering the ultimate objective to reinforce sort out organization limits, particularly accuse control besides. Another issue emerges on the grounds that a great part of the media communications information is created continuously and numerous media transmission applications, for example, misrepresentation distinguishing proof whats more, system blame recognition, need to work in constant. As a result of its endeavors to address this issue, the broadcast communications industry has been a pioneer in the examination zone of mining information streams (Aggarwal, 2007). One approach to deal with information streams is to keep up a mark of the information, which is a rundown portrayal of the information that can be upgraded rapidly and incrementally. Cortes and Pregibon (2001) created signature-based techniques and connected them to information surges of call detail records. A last issue with media transmission information whats more, the related applications includes irregularity. For case, both media transmission misrepresentation and system gear disappointments are moderately uncommon. Various information mining applications have been sent in the media communications industry. In any case, most applications can be categorized as one of the accompanying three classes: showcasing, misrepresentation identification, and system blame detachment and forecast. Telecommunications Marketing: Media transmission associations keep up a monstrous measure of information about their customers and, due to a to an incredible degree forceful environment, have remarkable motivation for abusing this information. For these reasons the media correspondences industry has been a pioneer in the use of data mining to perceive customers, hold customers, and extend the advantage got from each customer. Perhaps the most praised usage of data mining to get new media interchanges customers was MCIs Friends and Family program. This program, since quite a while prior surrendered, began in the wake of exhibiting pros perceived various little yet all around related sub graphs in the graphs of calling activity. By offering diminished rates to customers in ones calling circle, this promoting system enabled the association to use their own specific customers as sales representatives. This work can be seen as an early use of casual group examination and association mining. A later case uses the parti cipations between customers to perceive those customers obligated to grasp new media transmission organizations (Hill, Official and Volinsky, 2006). A more standard approach incorporates making customer profiles (i.e., marks) from call detail records and a short time later mining these profiles for exhibiting purposes. This approach has been used to perceive whether a phone line is being used for voice then again fax and to aggregate a phone line as having a place with an either business or private customer. Over the span of late years, the highlight of exhibiting applications in the communicate correspondences industry has moved from recognizing new customers to measuring customer regard and after that figuring out how to hold the most gainful customers. This move has occurred in light of the way that it is fundamentally more exorbitant to secure new media transmission customers than hold existing ones. Along these lines it is useful to know the total lifetime estimation of a custo mer, which is the total net pay an association can expect from that customer after some time. An arrangement of data mining techniques is being used to model customer lifetime regard for media transmission customers. Telecommunications Fraud Detection: Misrepresentation is intense issue for media transmission organizations, bringing about billions of dollars of lost income every year. Misrepresentation can be partitioned into two classes: membership misrepresentation and superimposition misrepresentation. Membership misrepresentation happens when a client opens a record with the goal of never paying the record and superimposition misrepresentation happens when a culprit increases unlawful access to the record of a true blue client. In this last case, the deceitful conduct will frequently happen in parallel with true blue client conduct (i.e., is superimposed on it). Superimposition extortion has been an a great deal more noteworthy issue for media transmission organizations than membership extortion. In a perfect world, both membership extortion and superimposition misrepresentation ought to be recognized instantly and the related client account deactivated or suspended. In any case, since it is regularly hard to recognize real and unlawful use with restricted information, it is not generally attainable to identify extortion when it starts. This issue is aggravated by the way that there are considerable expenses related with researching extortion, and expenses if use is erroneously named false (e.g., an irritated client). The most well-known system for distinguishing superimposition misrepresentation is to think about the clients present calling conduct with a profile of his past use, utilizing deviation identification and peculiarity location systems. The profile must have the capacity to be immediately upgraded in light of the fact that of the volume of call detail records and the need to distinguish misrepresentation in an opportune way. Cortes and Pregibon (2001) produced a mark from an information stream of call-detail records to succinctly portray the calling conduct of clients and afterward they utilized oddity recognition to measure the oddity of another call in respect to a specific record. Because new conduct does not really suggest misrepresentation, this fundamental approach was enlarged by contrasting the new calling conduct to profiles of non-specific misrepresentation-and extortion is as it were flagged if the conduct matches one of these profiles. Client level information can likewise help in distinguishing misrepresentation. For instance, value plan and FICO assessment data can be consolidated into the extortion examination. Later work utilizing marks has utilized element bunching and deviation recognition to distinguish extortion (Alves et al., 2006). In this work, every mark was put inside a bunch and an adjustment in group enrollment was seen as a potential marker of misrepresentation. There are a few strategies for recognizing misrepresentation that try not to include looking at new conduct against a profile of old conduct. Culprits of misrepresentation infrequently work alone. For instance, culprits of misrepresentation frequently go about as dealers and offer illegal administrations to others-and the illicit purchasers will regularly utilize distinctive records to call a similar telephone number over and over. Cortes and Pregibon (2001) abused this conduct by perceiving that specific telephone numbers are over and over called from traded off records and th at calls to these numbers are a solid marker that the present record may be traded off. A last strategy for recognizing misrepresentation misuses human example acknowledgment abilities. Cox, Eick and Wills (1997) manufactured a suite of apparatuses for envisioning information that was customized to show calling action in such a way that abnormal examples are effortlessly recognized by clients. These instruments were then used to recognize universal calling misrepresentation. Checking and keeping up media transmission systems is a critical undertaking. As these systems got to be progressively unpredictable, master frameworks were produced to deal with the cautions produced by the system components. Be that as it may, on the grounds that these frameworks are costly to create and keep current, information mining applications have been created to recognize also, anticipate arrange flaws. Blame distinguishing proof can be very troublesome in light of the fact that a solitary blame may bring about a course of alerts-a number of which are not related with the underlying driver of the issue. Subsequently a vital some portion of blame recognizable proof is alert connection, which empowers various alerts to be perceived as being identified with a solitary blame. The Telecommunication Alarm Sequence Analyzer (TASA) is an information mining apparatus that guides with blame recognizable proof by searching for as often as possible happening worldly examples of cautions. Designs recognized by this instrument were then used to help build an administer based caution connection framework. Another exertion, used to foresee media transmission switch disappointments, utilized a hereditary calculation to mine chronicled caution logs searching for prescient consecutive furthermore, fleeting examples (Weiss and Hirsh, 1998). One confinement with the methodologies simply portrayed is that they overlook the basic data about the fundamental arrange. The nature of the mined groupings can be enhanced if topological closeness requirements are considered in the information mining process or if substructures in the media transmission information can be distinguished and abused to permit less complex, more valuable, examples to be scholarly (Baritchi, Cook, and La wrence, 2000). Another approach is to utilize Bayesian Belief Networks to distinguish issues, since they can reason about circumstances and end results. Information mining ought to play a vital and expanding part in the broadcast communications industry due to the lot of top notch information accessible, the aggressive nature of the business and the advances being made in information mining. Specifically, progresses in mining information streams, mining successive and fleeting information, whats more, foreseeing/ordering uncommon occasions ought to profit the media communications industry. As these and other advances are made, more dependence will be put on the information procured through information mining and less on the information procured through the time-serious process of inspiring area learning from specialists-in spite of the fact that we expect human specialists will keep on playing an critical part for quite a while to come. Changes in the way of the media communications industry will likewise prompt to the advancement of new applications also, the destruction of some present applications. For instance, the fundamental us e of extortion location in the broadcast communications industry used to be in cell cloning extortion, however this is not true anymore on the grounds that the issue has been generally disposed of because of innovative propels in the PDA confirmation handle. It is hard to foresee what future changes will confront the media communications industry, however as telecom organizations begin giving TV administration to the home and more advanced phone administrations turned out to be accessible (e.g., music, video, and so on.), it is clear that new information mining applications, for example, recommender frameworks, will be created and conveyed. Sadly, there is likewise one upsetting pattern that has created as of late. This worries the expanding conviction that U.S. media transmission organizations are too promptly offering client records to legislative offices. This worry emerged in 2006 due to disclosures-made open in various daily paper and magazine articles-that media communications organizations were turning over data on calling examples to the National Security Agency (NSA) for motivations behind information mining. In the event that this worry proceeds to develop unchecked, it could prompt to limitations that farthest point the utilization of information digging for true blue purposes. The media communications industry has been one of the early adopters of information mining and has sent various information mining applications. The essential applications identify with showcasing, extortion discovery, and system checking. Information mining in the media communications industry confronts a few difficulties, because of the measure of the informational collections, the successive and fleeting nature of the information, and the constant prerequisites of a large number of the applications. New techniques have been produced and existing techniques have been upgraded to react to these difficulties. The focused and changing nature of the business, joined with the way that the business produces colossal measures of information, guarantees that information mining will assume an essential part later on of the media communications industry. References [1] Rosset, S., Neumann, E., Eick, U., Vatnik (2003). Client generation value models for decision support. Data Mining and Information Innovation, 7(3), 321- 339. [2] Winter Corporation (2003). 2003 Top 10 Award Winners. Retrieved October 8, 2005, from http://www.wintercorp.com/VLDB/2003_TopTen_Survey/TopTenwinners.asp [3] Fawcett, T., Provost, F. (2002). Fraud Uncovering. In W. Klosgen J. Zytkow (Eds.), Handbook of Data Mining and Information Sighting (pp. 726-731). New York: Oxford University Press. [4] Mozer, M., Wolniewicz, R., Grimes, D., Johnson, E., Kaushansky, H. (2000). Forecasting subscriber displeasure and improving retention in the wireless telecommunication industry. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 11, 690-696. [5] Weiss, G., Ros, J., Singhal, A. (1998). ANSWER: Network monitoring using object-oriented rule. Records of the Tenth Conference on Ground-breaking Applications of Artificial Intelligence (pp. 1087-1093). Menlo Park: AAAI Press. [6] Alves, R., Ferreira, P., Belo, O., Lopes, J., Ribeiro, J., Cortesao, L., Martins, F. (2006). Determining telecom fraud circumstances through mining unpredictable behavior patterns. Records of the ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Data Mining for Business Applications (pp. 1-7). New York: ACM Press. [7] Kaplan, H., Strauss, M., Szegedy, M. (1999). Just the fax-discriminating voice and fax phone lines using call billing data. Reports of the Tenth Annual ACM-SIAM Convention on Distinct Algorithms (pp. 935-936). Philadelphia, PA: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. [8] Baritchi, A., Cook, D., Holder, L. (2000). Determining organizational patterns in broadcastings data. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Florida AI Research Symposium (pp. 82-85).

Censorship: Freedom Or Suppression ? :: essays research papers

Censorship: Freedom or Suppression ? Government censorship can be looked at as a blessing or an unneeded burden. I personally feel that all censorship is completely unnecessary and should be found unconstitutional. It is the countless moral views that bring no right answer for what should and should not be censored. I know that the governments version of censorship varies greatly from mine, just as mine does from a world wide view.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The citizens of the United States are living in a pure democracy that has given us all first amendment rights. This alone should mean that their should be no government intervention on a code of ethics or morality. This should mean that we as citizens should be allowed complete freedom of our own choices. Our government was set up to make laws and to keep our society in order. They were doing a fine job until they started making decisions for us on what is or isn't decent. The most recent example of this is the Communication Decency Act of 1996(Located in the Telecommunications Act Of 1996). This act more or less states that the Internet should be censored and be given restrictions. The first issue this brings up is who owns the Internet. No one really owns it because it is really thousands of computer networked together. The main backbone of the Internet was originally made up of government funded universities and other government institutions. However that is no longer the case. Now the majority of the Internet is run and operated by independent services and everyday citizens. The Internet is a modern day symbol of the freedom of speech we have in our society. The government has no right to tell us what we can and can not do in our homes. No one is forcing anyone to go to any specific area of the Internet for anything. These are all choices made with our own free will. I feel that the government is clearly violating the fine line between church and state. The Job of the church is to keep up moral and ethical standards in our world. Obviously the government got the wrong job description for clearly they are violating the trust they have in the Church doing its job.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I know that if they put me in charge of censorship things would be a lot different from how they are today. The first step I would make would be censoring all Ex-lax and Imodium D commercials. I find it extremely peculiar that these commercials always seem to appear right during dinner.

Paranormal: Personality Psychology and Carl Jung Essay

Topic Area: This study looks at the relation between the belief in the paranormal and different personality traits. There are two ways of looking at belief in the paranormal this study will look at the people who believe and those who somewhat believe and analyze their personalities traits. Hypothesis: This study examined two contrasting views of paranormal belief which suggest, in one camp, that belief in the paranormal is indicative of psychopathology. On the other hand, a number of researcher have disagreed with this viewpoint, suggesting that such a belief is not an indicator of psychopathology, but the fulfillment of some other underlying need. This study was designed to assess the personality traits of those we would we would consider to be high and low believers in parapsychology. Method: The participants in this study were undergraduate college students mostly freshmen and sophomores who were enrolled in introductory level psychology classes. There were 105 students involved in the study with an age range from 18 to 44 the gender breakdown of participants consisted of 46 men and 59 women whose average age was 20. 19 years old. The participants were administered the Paranormal Belief Scale (Tobacyk & Milford, 1983), The Anomalous Experience Inventory (Kumar, Pekala, & Gallagher, 1994), the Personality Research Form (Jackson, 1984), and a general questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of basic questions about demographics and any experience or preconceptions about the paranormal. The coefficient alphas for the Paranormal Belief Scale were . 93 and . 91. Alphas for the subscales range from . 69-. 85 and . 49-. 74. Using the Paranormal Belief Scale participants were broken into groups of high and low believer’s base on a scale of 25-125 with high believers obtaining a score of 80 and low believers obtaining a score of 63. Each scale was administered in a class room setting and was untimed although the study took approximately 60 minutes to complete. Upon completion each participant was released and received a debriefing letter after the study. Results and Discussion: The results of this study showed that the high believers of the paranormal were more than likely to have friends with similar beliefs; they also are more likely to watch shows and read books based on paranormal subjects. The study also showed that more of the high believers had imaginary friends as they were growing up. Also high believers attended church less than those in the low believer’s category and didn’t look at themselves as very religious in comparison to low believers. The test also shows a distinct difference in gender with females scoring significantly higher than males on the (PBS) scale. There was also a series of ANOVAs (analysis of variance) that revealed a significant difference on four of the PRF scales Abasement, Aggression, Defendence, and Sentience these finding represent that there was not a strong enough relationship between these scales and the PBS to suggest a significant difference when examining high vs. low believers. However women scored higher than the men on Aggression and Defendence while men scored higher on Abasement. Critique: When initially reviewing this study to make a determination on which research example that I was going to focus on for my paper. I found that I was really interested in what the outcome of this research would be based on the amount of research that I am aware of that has been done on the study of the paranormal. This particular research was really interesting to me as it attempted to assess the personality traits of those who could be considered either high and/or low believers in parapsychology. According to other studies a person who believes in the paranormal is considered psychologically dysfunctional. This study used what I feel was a small segment of the population for such a broad subject that seems to have so many followers. The fact that they used 105 undergraduates from the age of 18 – 44 makes me think that they may have limited themselves when it comes to the broad perspective of people that they could have used. If I were conducting the study I would have opened it up to males and females with age not being a factor in the study. I also would have went outside of the classroom to get my participants by looking for people who were of all different walks of life and backgrounds, from those with a high school education only to those in under graduate and graduate programs. I would have also attempted to recruit people from different professions from warehouse worker to executive. Another thing that I would have looked into would be the ability to get people to participate with whom I knew where members of the Wiccan community and also some people who believe in Psi, Esp. , and others who believe in poltergeist. I feel this would have produced some validity to base the answers of the non-believers against the answers of the known (or high) believers to form some sort of median to the answers instead of just basing the answers off of people with whom are just here for their extra credit in their Psychology class. Another factor of the test that could have affected the outcome was the fact that it was administered in a class like setting. I feel that while the test should be structured maybe they should have administered it in a less formal manner. When looking at the different tests that were administered to the participants there seemed to be one consistent outcome on all of them. This outcome was that there was very little or no difference in the personality traits of believers compared to those of non-believers. The only measurable differences between the groups were the fact that females scored significantly higher than males when it came to the PBS Psi scale and on aggression and defendence. Males scored higher than females on abasement. Once again I believe other than the gender based scores that the other scores could have been affected by the fact that all the participants in this study were college students in the same program at the same school. Even though there was an age difference and there were students of opposite genders the scores seem to close to me to rule out any relevance to this argument. Relationship of the study to personality theory: The central relationship which was studied came in chapter 4 of our textbook, titled Jung: Analytical Psychology. Carl Jung, in my opinion, seemed to be open to many things that could be considered paranormal. Jung related dreams and past experiences to paranormal thoughts as well as ESP and he also associated levels of a person’s personality traits to different levels of the paranormal. Carl Jung was a strong believer in paranormal activity like spirits, e. s. p. , and the occult. Jung was raised around religion and the  occult from an early age, many members of his family were pastors and his mother’s family practiced spiritualism and mysticism. Jung’s grandfather was a believer of the occult, so much so that he kept a chair for the ghost of his dead wife and would often have intimate talks with her. One might conclude that these childhoods encounters shaped Jung’s beliefs lead him to associate personality traits and paranormal beliefs with one other. Jung’s theories were largely based around his study of the interpretations of dreams, both regular and paranormal. â€Å"Jung was puzzled by paranormal dreams. He could not classify them the way normal dreams could be, but the mystery did lead him to expound on his principle of synchronicity. This concept is that events occur together in time but are not linked through cause and effect connections. For instance, a clock might stop at the moment of its owner’s death, but these are purely synchronistic and unrelated events. Jung concluded that perhaps there is some sort of order in the universe, where a manifestation appears psychically while the related manifestation in physical reality happens at the same time. † (Carl Jung) Jung theorized that there were people, based on personality traits that were more likely to be influenced by paranormal thought and ideologies and came to the conclusion that introverts tend to have the best link to the paranormal. â€Å"Besides the levels of the psyche and the dynamics of personality, Jung recognized various psychological types that grow out of a union of two basic attitudes-intro-versions and extraversion-and four separate functions-thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting. † (Feist, 2009) Intuiting, in general, is often most associated with the paranormal, as illustrated in our textbook on page 120Ã'Ž Table 4.1, introverted intuition is associated with prophets, mystics and religious fanatics. Hurst states that â€Å"Introverted intuitive people are guided by unconscious perception of facts that are basically subjective and have little or no resemblance to external reality. Their subjective intuitive perceptions are remarkably strong and capable of motivating decisions of monumental magnitude. Introverted intuitive people such as mystics, prophets, surrealistic artist, or religious fanatics, often appear peculiar to people of other types who have little comprehension of their motives. Actually, Jung believed that introverted intuitive people may not clearly understand their own motivations, yet they are deeply motivated by them. †(Feist, 2009) It is my opinion that these personality theories prove that paranormal belief is not something that is only suffered by psychopaths. The study states, â€Å"Paranormal belief is indicative of psychopathology, as suggested by the current study. † (Auton, Pope, Seeger) I think that Jung’s theories illustrate that though a person may experience a paranormal instance it does not necessarily mean that there is a mental disorder present. Paranormal experiences may rather be a result of one’s social environment, as often people who believe in the paranormal have acquaintances that share in that belief. It was also referenced that people with such beliefs tend to watch more television and read more books that are based on the paranormal and occult. Relationship of the study to your own life and personality: Paranormal belief is something that has intrigued me ever since I was a young child. You might say that I am a skeptical believer, as I like to think that everything that happens has a reason for taking place and there is usually a way to explain any situation that people might consider paranormal. I have had many strange experiences throughout my life that one might call paranormal and some I have had explanations for and others I have not. When I began reviewing the article, Paranormal Belief and Personality Traits, for this assignment I was in complete disagreement with the portion that stated that paranormal belief was synonymous with† psychological dysfunction ( i.e. psychotic, neurotic, and depressive. ) (Auton, Pope, Seeger) I found myself identifying with Carl Jung’s theories regarding the paranormal which are a sharp contrast to those presented in this article. I feel and have been categorized by the Big 5 assessment as an extrovert and I feel that this may be the reason why I am so skeptical about paranormal experiences. I tend to look for the rhyme and reason of things that I have experienced in my life and am very skeptical about everything including ghosts, ESP and religion. Whether my paranormal experiences have affected my life or personality has yet to be said, though, I feel that these experiences were most certainly not a symptom of psychopathology. References: Feist, J. & Feist, G. (2009). Theories of Personality (7th Edition). McGraw Hill. Carl jung; his theories on archetypes, dreams, and the collective unconscious. (n. d. ). Retrieved from http://www. ucmeta. org/Pages/Articles/Dreaming/Carl-Jung-His-Theories-Archetypes-Dreams-Collective-Unconscious. phpÃ'Ž

Like Riding a Bike

The saying â€Å"it is just like riding a bike† is very commonly used to describe a skill that virtually everyone masters and usually at an early age.   It also means that once the skill is mastered it is never forgotten.   For me, however, this skill was not easy and I still would not consider it mastered.   The difficulties I had in learning how to ride a bicycle not only haunted much of my childhood, but carried over into learning how to drive a car.   The challenging experience began when I was five years old. My mom bought me a new bicycle with the intention of teaching me how to ride it, I learned to ride at age ten and at sixteen was reminded of the difficulties when it was time for me to get my driver’s license.   My struggle was not due to a lack of coordination or ability, because I have been very active in varying sports beginning with football at the age of four.   I excelled at baseball, lacrosse, basketball, roller hockey, and football, but feared the bicycle. I loved the brand new bicycle Mom bought for me and was anxious to learn to ride.   When I actually got on the bike however, I did not feel like I was in control.   As a person who needs to feel in control of situations, I was not comfortable.   Mom said I would gain control as I became better and learned to balance.   I tried to learn and she tried to teach for years.   These attempts usually ended in a screaming match between us and never seemed to get me any closer to mastering the art of bike riding.   I was embarrassed to be the only person my age who did not know how to ride a bicycle, but the fear of injury and lack of control always won out over the embarrassment. By the age of ten, Mom had given up trying to teach me, because we were both tired of it.   I had outgrown the bicycle Mom had bought me without ever riding it.   Through the many battles over it and failed trials, though, it looked like it had been through a war.   I had three younger siblings by this time and all of them had learned to ride bicycles with no more than the usual struggles of learning.   When my four-year-old brother, Dominic, mastered the skill, I knew it was time I overcame my fear and learned.   Somehow, I took strength and courage from my little brother and managed to keep a bicycle in the upright position long enough to say I could ride a bike.   I continue to struggle with the balance and would not say the skill is something I ever mastered, but at least I got over feeling like a failure. When it came time for me to learn to drive a car, the fear of not being in control returned.   I put off getting my permit in attempt to make excuses for not getting my license.   Everyone else my age seemed very excited to have the opportunity to drive, but I found ways to avoid it. I used the same courage I had gained with the bicycle to tackle my fear of driving and met the challenge.   I did not want to be the only teenager around that could not drive a car. At age sixteen I did get my license and have become a good driver.   It did not require balance as the bicycle did and control was easier to gain. Although the fear of not being in control has played a part throughout my life to this point, I have not let it take over my life.   With courage and determination, I have overcome the difficult challenges in my life and plan to take on any new challenges that come along with the same determination.   When people are faced with challenging situations, they have two choices. They can either give up and accept defeat or they can face their fears and the challenge and triumphantly overcome them.   Now when I hear the phrase â€Å"it’s like riding a bike† I know the task might not be easy, but it can be accomplished and once it is learned it will never be forgotten.   It is very easy for young children to be permanently affected by childhood experiences and although I laugh about it now, it did play a role in my learning to drive a car.