1,721,124 research outputs found
Thomas Simpson (1808-1840)
Full text linkThomas Simpson was born in the north of Scotland and graduated from the University of Aberdeen with more than competence. He was enrolled in the service of the Hudson\u27s Bay Company, and in the New World he exemplified the popular conception of the clever academic launched into society. He expressed the utmost contempt for his colleagues and in a letter assured his brother Alexander that his talents would secure him speedy advancement. This arrogance made him most unpopular in the service and caused George Simpson, in doubt of his kinsman\u27s fitness to command, to appoint Chief Factor Peter Warren Dease to lead the expedition that he was planning to extend the northern coastal survey earlier initiated by John Franklin and John Richardson. Although the leadership escaped him, Thomas Simpson was made responsible for the actual survey work, an arrangement that worked admirably. ... Simpson proved his zeal and adaptability on this 1837 assignment. When the boats were blocked by ice, he took to the shore to do the work on foot; on seeing that the ice had receded, he borrowed an umiak to finish the work. No one applauded his success more than himself: "Mine alone is the victory," he wrote. "Dease is an unworthy, indolent, illiterate soul." In the next season - 1838 - when an eastward thrust from Point Turnagain was halted by ice, Simpson landed and added 160 km to the map on foot. The summer of 1839 proved more friendly. They sailed through Simpson Strait, which divided King William Island from the continent, passed the estuary of Back\u27s Fish River - to become grimly memorable 15 years later - and reached Boothia Isthmus at the mouth of the Castor and Polux River. The ruthless Simpson still did not spare the boat crews; overruling the kindly Dease, he slowed the return voyage to map parts of th south shores of King William and Victoria islands, forcing the crews to ascend the Mackenzie River in sub-zero weather with ice masses already floating downstream. ... On the American prairie, Simpson met a violent death that has never been fully explained. ... Asked one evening whether they should encamp, he answered moodily that "that was just as the others chose." They were pitching the tent when Simpson shot two of them with his double-barrelled gun. He came forward declaring that he had done no wrong, that they had plotted to murder him. The two who remained mounted their horses and galloped off to join a wagon train that was not far behind. The next day one of them returned with four men who testified that they found two bodies lying in the open, while Simpson was stretched in his tent with the top of his head blown off. ...
Thomas Simpson: weaving fluxions in 18-century London
No full textEn 1750, Thomas Simpson (1710–1761) a publié The Doctrine and Application of Fluxions, que l'auteur considérait comme un nouveau livre, plutôt que comme une deuxième édition de son A New Treatise of Fluxions (1737). En se concentrant sur la méthode directe des fluxions, on se propose ici de réaliser une analyse comparative de ces deux livres de Simpson. Cette comparaison place les travaux de Simpson dans le contexte de la transmission et du développement du calcul newtonien au dix-huitième siècle. Pour comprendre les différences entre les deux livres, on examine les influences possibles sur les travaux mathématiques de Simpson, en particulier celles d'Edmund Stone et de Francis Blake. L'analyse comparative des ouvrages de Simpson donne aussi l'occasion de discuter de questions relatives à l'édition des livres mathématiques au dix-huitième siècle.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Thomas Simpson: weaving fluxions in 18-century London
No full textEn 1750, Thomas Simpson (1710–1761) a publié The Doctrine and Application of Fluxions, que l'auteur considérait comme un nouveau livre, plutôt que comme une deuxième édition de son A New Treatise of Fluxions (1737). En se concentrant sur la méthode directe des fluxions, on se propose ici de réaliser une analyse comparative de ces deux livres de Simpson. Cette comparaison place les travaux de Simpson dans le contexte de la transmission et du développement du calcul newtonien au dix-huitième siècle. Pour comprendre les différences entre les deux livres, on examine les influences possibles sur les travaux mathématiques de Simpson, en particulier celles d'Edmund Stone et de Francis Blake. L'analyse comparative des ouvrages de Simpson donne aussi l'occasion de discuter de questions relatives à l'édition des livres mathématiques au dix-huitième siècle.Peer Reviewe
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
