Master of science, financial engineer personal statement

Master of science, financial engineer - Personal Statement Example One of the reasons I studied engineering is due my excellent quantitative abilities. I scored a perfect 800 on the math section of the GRE exam. Despite my background in engineering I have realized that pure engineering work might not be what I desire to do with my life. My love for math can be put to better use in a related field. I am interest in applying for the master’s degree program in financial engineering. I want to pursue a degree in financial engineering because this is a growing field that has plenty of jobs available due to the fact that there is a shortage of professionals trained in this field. My background in engineering will only enhance my ability to visualize how to apply finance to optimize the efficiency of an engineering project. All engineering projects require the assistance of accountants and financial people. As a financial engineer I can become the bridge that connects the engineering and accounting/finance departments. My technical expertise in engineering will enable me to speak the language of engineers, while at the same time being able to communicate effectively with the managers and financial people. Upon further researching the salary potential of electrical engineering I realized that even though engineers are paid a very competitive salary which hovers around $60,000 starting out, the field of financial engineering is much more rewarding. The average starti ng salary for a financial engineer is $80,000 to $90,000. Investing an extra two years of my life pursing a graduate degree in financial engineering is an investment that will provide me with a tremendous return on investment. Along with the financial incentive one of the primary reasons that I want to study financial engineering is because the type of work performed by financial engineers is more personally rewarding to me. I love performing pure math and working with numbers. My college counselor told me that based on my math

Legitimacy of Secular Authority Among Calvin, Luther and Muntzer Essay

Legitimacy of Secular Authority Among Calvin, Luther and Muntzer - Essay Example Several centuries later, Martin Luther wrote the book On Secular Authority, whose very principles are said to be the foundation of the principle of the separation of the Church and State. Luther crafted the doctrine of the two kingdoms or the theory that God wields authority in two ways: one through the laws, and; two, through the Gospel. Hard on the heels of the Lutheran Reformation was Calvinism, which was founded by John Calvin. Echoing Luther, Calvin believes that mankind is under two kinds of government, the spiritual and the secular. In the last chapter of Book V of his book Institutions, Calvin essays the role, duties and functions of secular authority. While both men acknowledge the importance of secular authority to maintain order in society, Luther cautions it from encroaching into the business of the spiritual on the ground that secular power carries no importance in the eyes of God and is confined to a kingdom separate from that of God. Calvin, on the other hand, believes that there is no sense in severing God’s laws from manmade laws considering that to do so is to ignore the ascendancy of God’s law. In this respect, it is fundamental upon secular authority to enforce God’s laws as well. ... Since Frederick was entitled to a vote in the election of the Holy Roman Emperor, Luther was almost untouchable (Noble et al 392). This call for help for secular support was not however, an easy decision for Luther and gave his writings dimensions not found in other reformists before him. Thus, although he ascribed to secular authority divinity to which people owed obedience to, he was quick to qualify this divinity as exclusive of the obligation to establish and maintain true religion (Estes 356). Prior to seeking support from secular authorities, however, Luther appealed to popes and bishops to spearhead the reform movement, believing that the responsibility belong to them although he opined that such personalities had no special authority to rule the church. Failing to get their support, Luther turned his attention to the German princes (Estes 356). In his works Treatise on Good Works and On the Papacy in Rome, Luther approaches the idea of secular authority with respect even attr ibuting it the characteristic of being a divine institution. He qualifies however, that secular authority’s jurisdiction only applies to temporal matters and the punishment of violation of the second table of the Decalogue such as murder, theft, adultery, and the like. Nonetheless, Luther believes that there are situations in which secular authorities may have ascendancy over members of the clergy, such as when a clergyman commits a crime. Matters pertaining to preaching the Gospel and giving absolution are however, beyond the authority of secular powers. However, property and property rights may be conceded by secular authorities, which exercise power over them, to members of the clergy (Estes 362). In Treatise, Luther defends the right of the secular authority to

Software and Data Sharing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Software and Data Sharing - Essay Example According to Tan & Payton (Eds), data sharing is different in CHIN models from Mayo clinic because CHIN uses data sharing and health IT innovations to improve partnerships between clinicians, public health leaders, policy makers, and informatics experts. CHIN community partners gain from the shared data such as centralized data warehouse a connected electronic health record. Contrary to this, Mayo clinic shares its data through creating software, tools, and services for large scale health records. The risk of a Community Health Information Network (CHIN) is that membership in it, if not controlled can lead to greater risks associated with the law. The benefits include facilitation of care, lower cost of care, and knowledgeable choice to the patients. The providers on the other hand reduce segregation of rural physicians, mange complete cost of therapy, and develop a competitive market

STATISTICAL COURSEWORK Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

STATISTICAL - Coursework Example The group Motility assay for control has the highest SD value with 0.71 and the group Motility assay: After incubation for 48h at 37oC has the lowest SD value with 0.37. From the above ANOVA table, it is found that the F value of 16.038 is highly significant (with probability 0.000). Hence it is concluded that the means of the three assay groups differ significantly. The individual comparison is given in the following table. The mean difference between the groups Motility assay: After incubation for 48h at 37oC and the group Motility assay for control organism is not significant. Hence the groups Motility assay: After incubation for 48h at 37oC and the group Motility assay for control do not differ significantly. But the group Motility assay: After incubation for 24h at 37oC is having significant difference in mean with both the groups Motility assay: After incubation for 48h at 37oC and Motility assay for control organism. Hence among all groups, the group Motility assay: After incubation for 48h at 37oC has the highest

Measuring Shareholder Value Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Measuring Shareholder Value - Term Paper Example Capital gain is the gain that if gotten above an assets original buying price upon disposal. Any realized capital gain forms an investment that has been disposed of as at a profit. An unrealized capital gain may, on the other hand, refer to an investment which is yet to be disposed of but would lead to a profit if it was disposed of. Assets that can realize capital gains may include options, bonds, shares/stock, or businesses. A buyback kind of program involves a situation where a company repurchases its bond or stock that it had issued previously. In that case, the amount of stock that is outstanding reduces and this gives the shareholders that are remaining a bigger ownership stake of that company in the process. (investorwords.com, 2011) Investors in the world over have gotten more informed and, thus, if they have made an investment in a stock and that stock has proven not of much return as they would have wanted, then, they are unlikely to continue holding on to that stock. Thus, this escalated demand for shareholder value has led to a lot of pressure upon finance managers of various organizations. They have to ensure that the companies are earning reasonable profits and besides that, they have to come up with a very appropriate measure to shareholder value. This way, shareholders can monitor the performance of their investments. The task of getting the befitting measure for that can be an uphill one to most managers. In recent times executives have adopted numerous metrics to determine shareholder value and these are with the inclusion of cash flows, operating profits, economic performance, and return on assets. All of these metrics can be applied one at a time or all of them in entirety instantaneously. In the recent past, another metric was introduced by Stern Stewart and Company and this metric was known as EVA (Economic Value Added). EVA is said to evaluate shareholder value through computing the magnitude by which profits surpass the given companyâ₠¬â„¢s cost of capital.           Ã‚  

The Triumph of Science Over Religion In the West Essay Example for Free

The Triumph of Science Over Religion In the West Essay By the sixteenth century, the Western experience with religion had turned bitter. The Catholic Reformation, also referred to as a Counter Reformation, was a response to the great Protestant Reformation in Europe during this period of time. There were two elements of the Catholic Reformation. First of all, Catholics were being called for a renewal of piety and of virtue in the form of renewed commitments to prayer as well as mysticism. This component of the Reformation was particularly evident in the clerical orders. The ordinary folks had nothing whatsoever to do with this component of the Reformation, seeing that even the clerical orders were not looked upon as worthy guides. Secondly, the Church was being asked to reform in order to deal with unparalleled as well as swift changes in society, and abuses that accompanied those changes. There was turbulence witnessed in the societal structure, and one of the reasons why it was necessary to initiate the Catholic Reformation was that the humanists had revived classical pagan philosophy in the fifteenth century, using the new miracle of printing to shift the attention of society from the after life to the present. At the same time as the classical pagan philosophy was being circulated, the Church was going through a period of decline with a desiccation of scholastic thinking. Internal abuses at the Church were also well-known, and these involved simony, the sale of indulges, multiple benefices, and much more. The Church could not be trusted as much as it was meant to be. As a matter of fact, the condition of religion in the sixteenth century was characterized by turmoil. King Henry VIII of England created the Church of England in the year 1533 A.D. by splitting from the Roman Catholic Church. Around the same time, the French Wars of Religion were waged between the Catholics and the Huguenots in France. How much confusion such chaos would have given birth to in the minds of Western Christians with respect to their religion could only be imagined. Christianity was, after all, supposed to be a religion of peace and unconditional love. The Western religion around 1500 A.D. was chiefly Christian, and the sixteenth century has been described as â€Å"probably the most intolerant period in Christian history.† It was not the scientists that were killed during this time because they came up with new ideas. Rather, in the sixteenth century, there were thousands of people that were killed because they were called heretics. Michael Servetus was only one such individual. He was burned in 1553 A.D., alive, on the order of John Calvin in addition to the city authorities, because he had made theological speculations that Calvin was sure were falsehoods. To put it another way, the religious authorities of the time would not allow people even to deviate in their thinking with respect to religion. Christians of the West were required to think of Christianity in the way that the religious authorities felt was appropriate. Critical thinking or questioning was not allowed by any means. What is more, the religious authorities themselves were known to be corrupt enough for places of worship to be closed down. Lindsay Clarke reports: In January, 1535, the newly appointed Vicar-General of the English Church, Thomas Cromwell, sent out his agents to conduct a commission of enquiry into the character and value of all ecclesiastical property in the kingdom. Overtly, they were reformers, exercising the new powers accorded to the Crown by the Act of Supremacy: from time to time to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities . . . which ought or may be lawfully reformed. But Dr. Richard Layton, Dr. Thomas Legh, Dr. John London, and the other tough-minded and venal officials chosen for the job had no doubt what the Crown expected of them. It took them only six months to submit for Cromwells scrutiny an accurate and detailed tax-book, the Valor Ecclesiasticus. Along with it came evidence of corruption and scandalous immorality in Englands monasteries. Such evidence was not hard to find, for by the 16th century many of the religious houses had long since lost their sense of purpose. The religious turbulence of the sixteenth century was continued into the seventeenth century. The government of England had become known for its harassment of Catholics as well as Jesuits. On 20 May 1604, certain religious men began to plot the destruction of the government after having heard Mass. A priest knew of this plotting, and was made to pay the price of this knowledge later on. And yet, the religious authorities of the Near and Far East were not facing religious turmoil around this time. Nor were the people of the advanced civilizations of the Near and Far East being confronted with religious confusion. Furthermore, scientists of the Near East were especially involved with their work during the sixteenth century, as for a number of centuries before. The Ottoman astronomer, Taqi al-Din, created astronomical tables in the sixteenth century. These tables were considered as accurate as the ones made by Tycho Brahe in Denmark during the same period of time. All the same, the Ottomans are known to have ceased their support for scientific innovations and research a century later, as their priorities took a shift. The West, however, continued scientific explorations even after the sixteenth century. The East had maintained its religions. It was only the West that had showed immense intolerance toward different religious beliefs and practices, even with respect to its own faith. Whereas religious authorities stopped Westerners from thinking and reasoning, science opened up a new world to the ordinary people. They were not called heretics because of their new scientific ideas. Rather, people who came up with new scientific ideas were in the company of many others who came up with great new ideas in the scientific arena. Giordano Bruno, Girolamo Cardano, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, William Gilbert, Johannes Kepler, Paracelsus, John Napier, and Andreas Vesalius are only few of the important Western scientists of the sixteenth century. Besides, this century saw the birthing of Copernicus’ theory, the import of new plant species from the Americas into Europe, and new inventions that revolutionized manufacturing and other features of living. The wheel-lock musket, the helicopter, the spinning wheel, the pocket watch, the diving bell, the seed drill, the camera obscura, the knitting machine, the compound microscope, the Gregorian Calendar, and the enameling of pottery were all brought into the world in the sixteenth century. So, while religion disappointed people, science brought renewed hope of existence through new products and discoveries. No scientist could be killed in the name of science. Hence, science was safely meant to stay on in the West despite the good or bad luck of religion. Bibliography 1. Clark, Lindsay. â€Å"The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th Century.† Available from http://www.historynet.com/. Internet; accessed 31 March 2007. 2. Hogge, Alice. God’s Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth’s Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005. 3. MacroHistory. â€Å"How the Idea of Religious Tolerance Came to the West.† Available from http://www.fsmitha.com/review/index.html. Internet; accessed 31 March 2007. 4. Lewis, Jone Johnson. Women Saints: Doctors of the Church. London: Penguin, 1998. 5. Magic Dragon Multimedia. â€Å"Timeline 16th Century.† Available from http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/timeline16.html. Internet; accessed 31 March 2007. 6. Olin, John. Catholic Reformation: From Cardinal Ximenes to the Council of Trent, 1495-1563. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990. 7. Pollen, J. H. â€Å"The Counter Reformation.† The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: K. Knight, 2004.

Negative Effects of TV on Young People

Negative Effects of TV on Young People As we can see, television is playing a very big role in our life. Television has its good side. It can be entertaining and educational, and can open up new worlds for children, giving them a chance to travel the globe, learn about different cultures, and gain exposure to ideas they may never encounter in their own community. However, parents need to understand the negative influence of childrens TV, even childrens programming, because children are likely to learn things from TV that parents dont want them to learn. Television can affect childrens health, school work and behavior in negative ways. Excess television viewing can influence childrens physical and mental health. On one hand, it could affect badly childrens physical health. It is easy for children to be myopic if they watch TV more than two hours in a day. Children will spend less time on sports and TV time also takes away from participating in sports, music, art or other activities that require practice to become skillful. And they may have high caloric intake if they are watching TV at dinner. A person would burn fewer calories while watching TV than when just sitting quietly, doing nothing (Langholt, 2010). So it may contribute to obesity problems. Children who watch more TV are more likely to be overweight. TV is a bigger factor than diet. Estimates of risk indicate that more 60% of overweight incidence in this population can be linked to excess television viewing time (Dietz, 1996). Many TV ads encourage unhealthy eating habits. Two-thirds of the 20,000 TV ads an average child sees each year are for food and mo st are for high-sugar foods. After-school TV ads target children with ads for unhealthy foods and beverages, like fast food and sugary drinks. On the other hand, watching TV has bad influence on childrens mental health, too. Children who are addicted to TV are hard to communicate with their family members and classmates. One study found that TV viewing before age three slightly hurt several measures of later brain development. Before the age of three, childrens brain develops rapidly, forming connections and pathways that will assist with learning later in life. Studies indicate that exposure to television, with its fast-moving images and rapid actions, actually rewires childrens brain to crave this hyperactive stimulation. The benefits of parent-child interactions are proven, and under age three, talking, singing, reading, listening, to music or playing are far more important to childrens development than any TV show. The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommends that pare nts keep their kids away from all TV until after the age of two (Bushman, 2010). Children under age eight cant tell the difference between reality in our lives and fantasy on TV. In this case, children may be frightened or upset by TV stories easily, and the symptoms include bad dreams, anxious feelings, being afraid of being alone, withdrawing from friends, and missing school. TV viewing may replace activities that we know help with school work, such as reading, doing homework, pursuing hobbies, and getting enough sleep. First, it makes children read fewer books and have lower grades in school. Watching TV at age four is one factor to be associated with bulling in grade school. Second, children may become more seeing than thinking. It may prevent children from the development of their imagination and creativity. Finally, one research study found that TVs effects on education are long term. The study found that watching TV as a child affected educational achievement at age 26. Watching more TV in childhood increases chances of dropping out of school and decreased chances of getting a college, even after controlling for confounding factors (Bushman, 2010). Children who watch more sensitive TV may have behavior problems. First of all, they will imitate the violence they see on TV. Programs designed for children more often contain violence than adult TV. Young children may even try to emulate the things they see on TV, not realizing that they risk injuring themselves or others. According to the AAP, Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence (Bushman, 2010). Watching violent shows is also linked with having less empathy toward others. A university of Michigan researcher demonstrated that watching violent media can affect willingness to help others in need (Bushman, 2010). Whats more, alcohol advertising, including TV ads, contributes to an increase in drinking among youth. TV ads are a major factor in normalizing alcohol use in the minds of children, adolescents and college students. Alcohol has damaging effects on young peoples developing brains-and the da mage can be permanent. Children who watch TV are more likely to smoke. Even though tobacco ads are banned on TV, young people still see people smoking on programs and movies shown on television. Recent research has shown that exposure to smoking in movie characters increases the likelihood that viewers will associate themselves with smoking (Langholt, 2010). Kids who watch more TV start smoking at an earlier age. The relationship between television viewing and age of starting smoking is stronger than that of peer smoking, parental smoking, and gender. Finally, children get lots of information about sexuality from television. Because most parents dont talk to their kids about sex and most school dont offer complete sex education programs, they get much information about sex from TV. However, watching sex on TV increases the chances that a teen will have sex, and may cause teens to start having sex at younger ages (Bushman, 2010). In summary, television viewing affects childrens physical and mental health, school performance and behavior in negative ways. Therefore, children should replace TV time with creative and physical activities, reading and playing games with positive values and educational content.