Compute in SPSS?

In what ways can you enter data into SPSS?

When we create a new document sheet in SPASS, we will have a blank sheet in Data View format. Each cell indicates a "var" crossing with a number as a row. Each row is called a "case." therefore, a "var" corresponds to a "column" and a "row." It's very similar to the excel sheet as far as the data entry is concerned.

SPSS had different tabs, including the "Variable Row" and "Data Row" tab. You may find full documents of SPSS at Kent.edu (Kent.edu, 2020)

For entering variables into a dataset, it takes the following steps: "(1) In the Data View window, click the name of the column to the right of where you want your new variable to be inserted. (2) insert a variable." (Kent.Edu, 2020) But, the challenge is to insert a variable using syntax into the cell. The guide indicates that "Technically, there's no direct syntax command to do so. Instead, you'll need to use two syntax commands. You'll first use the COMPUTE command to initialize the new variable. You'll then use the MATCH FILES command to actually re-order the variables. Suppose we want to insert a new column of blank values into the sample dataset after the first variable, ids. We can use this syntax to perform these tasks: COMPUTE newvar=$SYSMIS. EXECUTE. MATCH FILES FILE = * /KEEP = ids newvar ALL." (Kent.Edu, 2020)

Deleting a variable goes with some steps indicated in the guide and is not challenging.

The only challenge regarding the row numbers is "the row numbers in SPSS are not attached to specific lines of data and should not be used to identify certain cases. Instead, you should create a variable in your dataset that is used to identify each case—for example, a variable called StudentID." (Kent.Edu, 2020)

What steps are required to define the meanings of the numbers for SPSS? 

Numbers simply will compute to some cases in SPSS. Before anything, we need to understand our data in the first place. Second, all variables should have similar coding schemes. For example, for food rating, "higher numbers (4 or 5) reflect more positive attitudes ("Good" and "Very good") but does this hold for all variables? If we take a quick peek at our 5 tables, we see this holds." (Spss-tutorials.Com, 2020)

Compute is an important concept in SPSS

To compute in SPSS, follow these steps "go to "Transform > Compute Variable."  and then " In the new Compute Variable window, first enter the name of the new variable to be created in the ‘Target Variable‘ box" (Bradburn, 2019)

Reference

Bradburn, S., PhD. (2019, March 16). How To Compute A Mean Variable In SPSS. Top Tip Bio. Retrieved 2022, from https://toptipbio.com/compute-mean-variable-spss/

Kent.Edu. (2020). LibGuides: SPSS Tutorials: Data Creation in SPSS. Kent.Edu. Retrieved 2022, from https://libguides.library.kent.edu/SPSS/CreateData

Spss-tutorials.Com. (2020). SPSS - How to Compute Means the Right Way? Spss-Tutorials.Com. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.spss-tutorials.com/how-to-compute-means-in-spss/

Futuring and Innovation II

Circumstances beyond our control 

Business adaptivity is the most crucial strategic forecasting in any organization. Failure to adapt to the future of technology, market change, and competitor innovations can lead the organization to a total disaster sooner or later. For example, Blockbuster in movies, Enron in energy and infrastructure systems, Blackberry in the wireless systems, Kodak in the imaging industry, Pan-am in aerospace, MySpace in social media networking, Yahoo in internet email and web providers, Polaroid in the camera industry, and Xerox in copy systems are the giant corporations that failed to adapt.

Each of the above corporations failed because of a new idea with new technology and a new business model, in which they could not compete anymore. For example, myspace was really the most prominent place for people to socialize over time, but Facebook came to market simply with a better user experience. See, the adaptation for MySpace seems so little -- user experience --, but it took MySpace down to death forever. Now, we are talking about adaptation and transformation and the consequences.

Around 2011, our company (CWS, a software development company in LA) asked our team to develop a facetime application with a Blackberry cell phone. We started analyzing and developing the application. In 6 months, after spending lots of time, expenses, and excitement, we reached our proof of concept; when exactly did Apple release the first version of their iPhone internal application of Facetime. In our last management meeting, we put our application on forever sleep, and it was a big failure for our company.

Our company did not learn from the loss. Still, a year after that failure, they decided to develop a comment system as an individual module that could be embedded into any website for their social discussion boards. Our social discussion board was successfully developed, and some customers purchased and used that software, but soon Facebook came up with its free comment system. We retired that software also. 

Forces that may affect your innovation idea

 

Supply and technology is the leading force for innovative ideas, from my point of view. As I described above from my own experiences, technology and supply are getting more sophisticated every day, and tracking this speed is out of the ability of many organizations. This ability is combined with the massive amount of money, credit, and budget these top-level corporations own. They can change any game anytime by releasing as much as free to use. So, how can others even spend money to start thinking and researching. They monopolized all lines of technologies to innovations, to anything at all.

The second significant force against innovations could be legality and many bureaucracies. Innovators must be careful about all restrictions, regulations, and privacy protections necessary but complicated and expensive to follow.

Reference

OECD (2019), "Measuring external factors influencing innovation in firms", in Oslo Manual 2018: Guidelines for Collecting, Reporting and Using Data on Innovation, 4th Edition, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264304604-10-en. 

USNews. (2010, August 19). Access Denied. Usnews.Com. Retrieved 2022, from https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2010/08/19/10-great-companies-that-lost-their-edge

Futuring and Innovation II

Serendipity means a happy accident, defined as "This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word." by Horace Mann on January 28, 1754. The name comes from a Persian fairy tale from the 14th century titled "The Three Princes of Serendip," where Serendip is Sri Lanka in the Farsi language. The sentence "The Three Princes of Serendip," in Farsi, means "whose heroes were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." (Scofield, 2011) Serendipity is a major factor of all time discoveries worldwide, and in general, there are three types of Serendipity include: (Meige, 2015)

1. Innovations and discoveries that were not planned and sought.
2. Discoveries and inventions were planned and sought but found in unexpected ways.
3. Discoveries and innovations are found in a way(s) that is not found originally.

For example, a funny but essential drug discovery happened in the early 1990s by Pfizer called Viagra. They were working to develop a medication to treat cardiovascular problems by dilating blood vessels in the human heart. During the trial, a nurse found some strange happenings in men participants when they try the medication. So, they found Viagra by Serendipity with type one, which was not planned and sough to be discovered :)

Error plays a significant role in discovering essential things all the time. Otis Kriegel, an education week teacher, says, "A mistake is a door to discovery. What happened? Why did it happen? What can I learn from this?" This sentence is a golden nugget for those who wonder about how to be an innovator. Many discoveries happened by the error in human history, including Penisilin, which we talked about in our previous boards.

On the other hand, Exaptation is a term used in evolutionary "biology to describe a trait that has been co-opted for a use other than the one for which natural selection has built it." (Parry, 2013) The name "Exaptation" comes from Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba in 1982 to counterpart the concept of "adaptation." The article entitled "Exaptation: How Evolution Uses What's Available" (Perry, 2013) suggests that the very first feathers were not used for flying, and it was used for male attention. 

There are two ways that evolution can create adaptive features include: "(1) adaptation, which is the process of selection that shapes a feature for particular use, and (2) Exaptation, which are the features previously shaped by natural selections for a particular function." (Gould, 1982) 

Reference

Meige, A. (2015, September 18). Serendipity and Innovation. Open Organization. Retrieved 2022, from https://open-organization.com/en/2010/04/25/serendipity-and-innovation/

Parry, W. (2013, September 17). Exaptation: How Evolution Uses What's Available. Livescience.Com. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.livescience.com/39688-exaptation.html

Scofield, D. M. (2011, September 13). Serendipitous Innovation. Forbes. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2011/08/23/serendipitous-innovation/?sh=7741b8d9428d

Futuring and Innovation I

 

If I had enough money, time, and talent, I would do some unique research on some impossible things which technically are impossible currently. For example, I am very, very concerned about global warming right now. In that imaginary case, I would do everything in my power to find the best method of saving humanity and nature for future generations. I was watching a video news today morning about a bunch of scientists working on a unique project to study the impact of having a huge corridor of trees around the world to reduce our planet's temperature and climate change. They literally called this corridor "the green bandage" on the head of the earth toward the north side, starting in the United States and going all the way to Alaska, Russia, Europe, and back home in the US all around the world. The project is called "Marcell Experimental Forest." (CBS News, 2022) So, back to my wealthy imaginary life, the first thing I would do in that case is make these kinds of research and lab centers more and more everywhere to find the best answer to prevent the horrible climate disasters that human is creating now. Also, I would invest in educating people more to learn self prevention and self-protection mentality to protect our environment, animals, nature, and future.

So, here is what I would do to help these groups of scientists worldwide:

1. Make tones of these research labs worldwide.
2. Make tones of Universities with equipped labs worldwide.
3. Make labs in schools worldwide.
4. Make tv channels to promote the scientists' outcomes and ideas.
5. Make a powerful team of technicals fights with the corrupted politicians, social media giant propagandas, and so on. who make nature miserable for more profits.
6. Work on draught prevention.
7. Work on saving oceans and water and recreation areas.
8. Improve equality and racism prevention.
9. Prevent deforesting and making homes and mansions in the nature.
10. Use satellites and outer space technology for more future forecasts.

Regarding religion, in the case of my imaginary wealthy life, I would do everything in my power to educate people about the harm of religious thoughts. I would put more researchers and philosophers to work and prove and inform people that religion is just a bias and exchange it with science instead. So, all the ten items can be detailed for this purpose.

Travel, of course, is the major in case of being able to do so. However, travel from my point of view is not going and staying with luxury and private things! But it is travel to meet more people, more nature and all varieties of everything on our planet. So, my chosen ten items for travel would be travel to the ten most unique, amazing, and horrible places in the world.

Of course, home does not mean anything to me in that case of a wealthy life. Home is everywhere because, in that case, I can go and stay wherever I love to be; therefore, I can not name ten items for the home that I do not have :)

Reference

CBS News. (2022, April 20). How an experimental Minnesota forest is helping predict what could happen in different climate change scenarios. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marcell-experimental-forest-climate-change/

Planning and Forecasting II

 

Summery

Scenario-type planning is a designed plan to show what the future will look like and how the business environment will develop and improve in light of that future. (Mariton, 2016b) Fig 1 shows a quick view of how scenario-type planning works. Scenario-type planning is the essential tool to find uncertainties and different realities of the future of business. In other words, scenario-type planning is to "way to assert control over an uncertain world by identifying assumptions about the future." (Rami, et., 2020b) So, what happens when there is no scenario-type planning on the table is the purpose of this article. This article will answer some critical questions and concerns, including how scenario-type planning supports the planning and innovation for change (CTU, 2022). This article also has some thoughts about how we will use scenario-type planning for future innovation efforts and how it for the social impacts of changes. (CTU, 2022)

Scenario-type planning

Scenario-type (Scenario-based) planning is not some assumptions about the future. It is "refining forecasts and explaining differences against initial budget. The company just refers to the relevant scenario and focuses on achieving its objectives." Scenario-type analysis has several types, including Quantitative scenario-type planning (QNS), Quantitative simulation modeling (SM), and Strategic management scenarios-types. (Rami, 2020b)

Qualitative scenario-type planning (QLS)

QLS is the most common type of scenario planning, and it focuses on organizations with actual data and analysis and relies on the existing historical/experimental data. For example, NPS conducted a QLS analysis from the Global Business Network (GBN) data to predict the future of climate changes in park planning in 2009. (Symstad, 2017, p. 7)

Seventeen climate experts were the initial team to use a qualitative scenarios (QLSs) method with a "nested" approach. (Symstad, 2017) Their primary vital inputs were a table of projections, including nine climate variables, existing data on climate influences on WCNP's natural resources and ecosystems, and a list of climate-sensitive items. (Symstad, 2017) The team found "Drought Severity" and "Precipitation Patterns" with significant uncertainty in the "direction or magnitude of change and potential impact on natural resources" (Symstad, 2017) in the future.

Quantitative simulation modeling (SM)

Quantitative scenario-type analyses are "financial models that allow for the presentation of best- and worst-case versions of the model outputs" (Rami, 2020b). It is the best approach for annual business forecasts. For example, on the same above research with QLS, the team of researchers in NPS conducted a quantitative scenario planning to understand the impact of ecosystems dynamics on climate change interacting with management interventions. (Symstad, 2017, p. 8) The first step of this approach was a "meeting between the science team and WCNP managers to exchange information, align expectations with model capabilities, and jointly determine the focal questions to address with the simulations." (Symstad, 2017, p. 8) It revealed that "park managers' data specific to the WCNP area valuable for calibrating MC1 to address other questions about ecosystem dynamics.." (Symstad, 2017)

Strategic management scenarios-types

This scenario-type approach focuses on resource management for future forecasting. To reach the goal of this scenario-based planning, we need to identify the objectives, find competition, evaluate the internal structure and model, and ensure the C-Level of the organization well understands the importance of change and future implementations. (Synario, 2021, p. 2) For strategic management scenario-type, we need to be open to debates, not assuming for the future but measuring things, and avoid biases and overconfidence about the future.

What if the organization did not do proper scenario-type planning and only relied on standard forecasting

Bankruptcies, the massive firing of employees, lost customers, lost reputations, and many other consequences cause not having proper scenario-type planning and just relying on the standard forecasting. Fig 2 shows the differences between using scenario-type planning against standard forecasting of the future. It shows that we can have a plausible prediction of the future instead of a possible estimation. We can analyze future forecasting with both Qualitative and Quantitative methods in scenario-type planning against just Quantitative analysis in regular forecasting of the future. However, there can be a test for accuracy in the standard forecasting model, while it is complicated to test the accuracy of predictions in scenario-type planning. Standard forecasting is subjective-fact-based with a short-term horizon on an expert analysts' level. At the same time, scenario-type planning is based on the relationships and causality of events and data and C-Level perspectives and concerns with a long-term horizon. Lastly, normal forecasting results can be replicated, while scenario-based planning is a unique representation. (Leadershipnow, 2021)

References

Al Saeed, Adeghe, I. J. (2016). Scenario-type Planning. Futuring and Innovation. Retrieved 2022, from http://insight-to-the-future.blogspot.com/2016/02/scenario-type-planning.html

CTU, (2022). Colorado Technical University. Student’s restricted panel. Retrieved 2022, from Colorado Technical University restricted area of assignments.

Leadershipnow. (2021, May 12). Scenario Planning vs. Forecasting: 6 Questions to Ask to Prepare for a Post-Pandemic Future. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2021/05/scenario_planning_vs_forecasti.html

Mariton, J. (2016b). What is Scenario Planning and How to Use It. Smestrategy.Net. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.smestrategy.net/blog/what-is-scenario-planning-and-how-to-use-it

Rami, Luther, A. D. (2020b). Scenario Planning: Strategy, Steps and Practical Examples. NetSuite. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.netsuite.com/portal/business-benchmark-brainyard/industries/articles/cfo-central/scenario-planning.shtml

Symstad, A. J., Fisichelli, N. A., Miller, B. W., Rowland, E., & Schuurman, G. W. (2017). Multiple methods for multiple futures: Integrating qualitative scenario planning and quantitative simulation modeling for natural resource decision making. In Climate Risk Management (Vol. 17, pp. 78–91). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2017.07.002

Synario. (2021, September 23). Scenario Planning in Strategic Management. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.synario.com/scenario-planning-in-strategic-management/

 

Tables & Figures

                            Fig 1, scenario-type planning work approach (Al Saeed, 2016)

                        Fig 2, forecasting vs. scenario-type planning (Leadershipnow, 2021)

Socio-technical perspectives

Formal and informal learning

Formal refers to well structured, certified, or official in some dictionaries also. Formal learning is formal and institutional education, either off-campus or in-compos. Usually, formal learning implies the traditional, focusing on "providing and creating training programs with specific objectives or goals." (Daniel, 2022) Therefore, we can say that formal learning is an "organized, systematic, and goal-driven learning method within the premises of an area." (Daniel, 2022, para. 2) 

On the other hand, informal learning is a casual and natural way of learning or education that could be online or on-campus also. For example, mother-tongue learning is informal learning, but the writing needs a formal learning method.

Pros and cons of formal learning

Using formal learning gives enormous advantages to the institute's well-organized and scheduled framework and structure with clear objectives, step-by-step certified assessments and exams, promises to develop social and teamwork skills, and continuous disciplined self-growth for educators. (Daniel, 2022)

On the other hand, academic stress and pressure lead educators to a bounded study that requires students for daily motivation. Students are self-forced to fall behind in many other critical daily lives and happiness, leading them to self-bully, make unpleasant remarks, and lack confidence in their grades and results. (Daniel, 2022) The high cost of formal education is also another disadvantage of this learning method worldwide.

Pros and cons of informal learning

Informal learning is free from rules and regulations to choose the learning sources and materials. It is highly stress-free to use unlimited research platforms and practices in the domain of a self-defined time-frame.

However, informal learning is undisciplined, which "makes students less immersed in other fruitful learning methods" (Daniel, 2022, p. 3), making students vulnerable to facing well-disciplined people. So, this method causes lower motivation for students.

Regarding comparing formal and informal learning methods, the article says, "Reviewing the meanings of formal and informal learning might help unravel the new possibilities presented by digital technology, towards more seamless learning scenarios. Making sense of technology, in the context of children's education, demands a socio-technical perspective that might contribute to the dialogical approach" (Hayashi, 2013, p. 58)

The article brings up a beautiful comparison and conversation about the impact of today's technology on both formal and informal educators. For example, formal educators still feel informal with all those high-tech social connectivities and videos and electronic libraries, which take students out of formal and put them inside an informal framework.

Informal students in this article are a sub-culture of formal students where they both use the same cloud-based technical information, libraries, and technological artifacts. (Hayashi, 2013)

Note:

You may find this article in my blog. (Nikbin, S., 2022)

Reference

Daniel, C. (2022, January 28). Pros and Cons of Formal & Informal Learning. MTS Blog. Retrieved 2022, from https://mytutorsource.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-formal-informal-learning/

Hayashi, E. C. S., & Baranauskas, M. C. C. (2013). Affectibility in educational technologies: A socio-technical perspective for design. Educational Technology & Society, 16(1), 57-68.

Nikbin, S., & Profile, V. M. C. (2022d, April 14). Socio-technical perspectives. Blogspot. Retrieved 2022, from https://snikbin.blogspot.com/2022/04/socio-technical-perspectives.html