Monitoring And Evaluation Quotes

In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living, and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like one checks a stock, monitoring the ongoing development of our personal brand, time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on “nothing.

The woman types everything into her computer, raising her eyebrows slightly at Devon's middle name. "Devon Sky Davenport," she repeats. "Sky? S-k-y?" "Yes," Devon says, addressing the back of the computer monitor rather than the woman's face directly. "S-k-y. As in"---she swallows---"as in, 'the sky's the limit.'" But Devon doesn't volunteer any further explanation, doesn't explain to the women the story behind the name. That, in fact, "the sky's the limit" is how Devon's mom has always defined Devon and her supposed potential in life. Her mom would say it when Devon brought home a flawless report card or when Devon received a stellar postseason evaluation from her coach or when a complete stranger commented on Devon's exceptional manners or after the Last Loser packed his stuff and walked out. "You'll be Somebody for both of us," her mom would say. Not anymore, Mom. Everything's changed. Now, for me, "the sky" isn't anything but flat and gray and too far away to ever reach. She takes a deep breath. If you were here with me, you'd see it for yourself.

the job of the brain is to constantly monitor and evaluate what is going on within and around us. These evaluations are transmitted by chemical messages in the bloodstream and electrical messages in our nerves, causing subtle or dramatic changes throughout the body and brain. These shifts usually occur entirely without conscious input or awareness: The subcortical regions of the brain are astoundingly efficient in regulating our breathing, heartbeat, digestion, hormone secretion, and immune system. However, these systems can become overwhelmed if we are challenged by an ongoing threat, or even the perception of threat. This accounts for the wide array of physical problems researchers have documented in traumatized people. Yet our conscious self also plays a vital role in maintaining our inner equilibrium: We need to register and act on our physical sensations to keep our bodies safe.

Much of what bureaucrats do, after all, is evaluate things. They are continually assessing, auditing, measuring, weighing the relative merits of different plans, proposals, applications, courses of action, or candidates for promotion. Market reforms only reinforce this tendency. This happens on every level. It is felt most cruelly by the poor, who are constantly monitored by an intrusive army of moralistic box-tickers assessing their child-rearing skills, inspecting their food cabinets to see if they are really cohabiting with their partners, determining whether they have been trying hard enough to find a job, or whether their medical conditions are really sufficiently sever to disqualify them from physical labor. All rich countries now employ legions of functionaries whose primary function is to make poor people feel bad about themselves. (p. 41)

Attention is crucial to the success of self-regulation, and indeed attentional processes often constitute the first step toward either success or failure at self-regulation. As mentioned, reduced self-monitoring is often a precipitating factor in self-regulation failure because it is quite easy to lose track of one’s status or quit regulating oneself when one cannot evaluate the distance between the current state and the goal state ... When people cease to attend to their own behavior, self-regulation typically deteriorates.

The key difference between foot voting and ballot box voting is that foot voters don’t have the same incentive to be rationally ignorant as ballot box voters do. In fact, they have strong incentives to seek out useful information. They also have much better incentives to objectively evaluate what they do learn. Unlike political fans, foot voters know they will pay a real price if they do a poor job of evaluating the information they get... The informational advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting strengthen the case for limiting and decentralizing government. The more decentralized government is, the more issues can be decided through foot voting. It is usually much easier to vote with your feet against a local government than a state government, and much easier to do it against a state than against the federal government. It is also usually easier to foot vote in the private sector than the public. A given region is likely to have far more private planned communities and other private sector organizations than local governments. Choosing among the former usually requires far less in the way of moving costs than choosing among the latter. Reducing the size of government could also alleviate the problem of ignorance by making it easier for rationally ignorant voters to monitor its activities. A smaller, less complicated government is easier to keep track of.

How did we define “poverty-free”? After interviewing many borrowers about what a poverty-free life meant to them, we developed a set of ten indicators that our staff and outside evaluators could use to measure whether a family in rural Bangladesh lived a poverty-free life. These indicators are: (1) having a house with a tin roof; (2) having beds or cots for all members of the family; (3) having access to safe drinking water; (4) having access to a sanitary latrine; (5) having all school-age children attending school; (6) having sufficient warm clothing for the winter; (7) having mosquito nets; (8) having a home vegetable garden; (9) having no food shortages, even during the most difficult time of a very difficult year; and (10) having sufficient income-earning opportunities for all adult members of the family. We will be monitoring these criteria on our own and are inviting local and international researchers to help us track our successes and setbacks as we head toward our goal of a poverty-free Bangladesh.

To speak of a communication failure implies a breakdown of some sort. Yet this does not accurately portray what occurs. In truth, communication difficulties arise not from breakdown but from the characteristics of the system itself. Despite promising beginnings in our intimate relationships, we tend over time to evolve a system of communication that suppresses rather than reveals information. Life is complicated, and confirming or disconfirming the well-being of a relationship takes effort. Once we are comfortably coupled, the intense, energy-consuming monitoring of courtship days is replaced by a simpler, more efficient method. Unable to witness our partners’ every activity or verify every nuance of meaning, we evolve a communication system based on trust. We gradually cease our attentive probing, relying instead on familiar cues and signals to stand as testament to the strength of the bond: the words “I love you,” holidays with the family, good sex, special times with shared friends, the routine exchange, “How was your day?” We take these signals as representative of the relationship and turn our monitoring energies elsewhere. ... Not only do the initiator’s negative signals tend to become incorporated into the existing routine, but, paradoxically, the initiator actively contributes to the impression that life goes on as usual. Even as they express their unhappiness, initiators work at emphasizing and maintaining the routine aspects of life with the other person, simultaneously giving signals that all is well. Unwilling to leave the relationship yet, they need to privately explore and evaluate the situation. The initiator thus contrives an appearance of participation,7 creating a protective cover that allows them to “return” if their alternative resources do not work out. Our ability to do this—to perform a role we are no longer enthusiastically committed to—is one of our acquired talents. In all our encounters, we present ourselves to others in much the same way as actors do, tailoring our performance to the role we are assigned in a particular setting.8 Thus, communication is always distorted. We only give up fragments of what really occurs within us during that specific moment of communication.9 Such fragments are always selected and arranged so that there is seldom a faithful presentation of our inner reality. It is transformed, reduced, redirected, recomposed.10 Once we get the role perfected, we are able to play it whether we are in the mood to go on stage or not, simply by reproducing the signals. What is true of all our encounters is, of course, true of intimate relationships. The nature of the intimate bond is especially hard to confirm or disconfirm.11 The signals produced by each partner, while acting out the partner role, tend to be interpreted by the other as the relationship.12 Because the costs of constantly checking out what the other person is feeling and doing are high, each partner is in a position to be duped and misled by the other.13 Thus, the initiator is able to keep up appearances that all is well by falsifying, tailoring, and manipulating signals to that effect. The normal routine can be used to attest to the presence of something that is not there. For example, initiators can continue the habit of saying, “I love you,” though the passion is gone. They can say, “I love you” and cover the fact that they feel disappointment or anger, or that they feel nothing at all. Or, they can say, “I love you” and mean, “I like you,” or, “We have been through a lot together,” or even “Today was a good day.

Focus intently and beat procrastination.    Use the Pomodoro Technique (remove distractions, focus for 25 minutes, take a break).    Avoid multitasking unless you find yourself needing occasional fresh perspectives.    Create a ready-to-resume plan when an unavoidable interruption comes up.    Set up a distraction-free environment.    Take frequent short breaks. Overcome being stuck.    When stuck, switch your focus away from the problem at hand, or take a break to surface the diffuse mode.    After some time completely away from the problem, return to where you got stuck.    Use the Hard Start Technique for homework or tests.    When starting a report or essay, do not constantly stop to edit what is flowing out. Separate time spent writing from time spent editing. Learn deeply.    Study actively: practice active recall (“retrieval practice”) and elaborating.    Interleave and space out your learning to help build your intuition and speed.    Don’t just focus on the easy stuff; challenge yourself.    Get enough sleep and stay physically active. Maximize working memory.    Break learning material into small chunks and swap fancy terms for easier ones.    Use “to-do” lists to clear your working memory.    Take good notes and review them the same day you took them. Memorize more efficiently.    Use memory tricks to speed up memorization: acronyms, images, and the Memory Palace.    Use metaphors to quickly grasp new concepts. Gain intuition and think quickly.    Internalize (don’t just unthinkingly memorize) procedures for solving key scientific or mathematical problems.    Make up appropriate gestures to help you remember and understand new language vocabulary. Exert self-discipline even when you don’t have any.    Find ways to overcome challenges without having to rely on self-discipline.    Remove temptations, distractions, and obstacles from your surroundings.    Improve your habits.    Plan your goals and identify obstacles and the ideal way to respond to them ahead of time. Motivate yourself.    Remind yourself of all the benefits of completing tasks.    Reward yourself for completing difficult tasks.    Make sure that a task’s level of difficulty matches your skill set.    Set goals—long-term goals, milestone goals, and process goals. Read effectively.    Preview the text before reading it in detail.    Read actively: think about the text, practice active recall, and annotate. Win big on tests.    Learn as much as possible about the test itself and make a preparation plan.    Practice with previous test questions—from old tests, if possible.    During tests: read instructions carefully, keep track of time, and review answers.    Use the Hard Start Technique. Be a pro learner.    Be a metacognitive learner: understand the task, set goals and plan, learn, and monitor and adjust.    Learn from the past: evaluate what went well and where you can improve.

Strategic Planning Today: A Six-Step Process  The strategic planning process offers incredible benefits if we pursue it correctly. The following six steps constitute one version of the process: mission, objective, situation analysis, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and control.  The first step in the process is to define your mission; as we saw at the beginning of this lecture, this is the core that guides you. Your mission is what you look to in setting your objectives.  The objectives established in the second step are chosen based on some notion of wanting to fulfill your mission. They should be clear, concise, achievable, and in some sense, measurable.  The third step, the environmental scan, is pivotal for most firms, and it is the most involved. Look at both the external and internal environments in which your firm functions. On a personal level, evaluate the external factors that impinge on you with respect to your objectives.  The fourth step is the actual formulation of strategy. Decide what you will actually do to get from where you are to where you want to be. Allocate resources and connect your management decisions with the people who will implement the plan.  The fifth step is implementation of strategy, and here is where many companies fail because they do not follow the military dictum to “supervise and refine.” This means not to simply issue orders and assume that they’ll be carried out.  The sixth step, control, involves developing a control mechanism to evaluate whether or not the plan is working. When the control or monitoring system tells you that something is amiss in your strategy, you can then circle back to your environmental scan to discover whether the relevant environmental factors have changed.

distractions, or changes in the demands of the task at hand. Key Words: Begin and Maintain Behavior.             Flexibility: They can exercise the ability to be adaptable, think strategically, and solve problems by creating solutions as things change around them, shifting attention and plans as needed. Key Words: Adapt, Think, and Solve.             Execution and Goal Attainment: They exhibit the ability to execute the plan within the limits of time and other constraints. Key Words: Execute within Time.             Self-regulation: They use self-observation to monitor performance, self-judgment to evaluate performance, and self-regulation to change in order to reach the goal. Key Words: Monitor, Evaluate, Regulate.*

What does this charity do? How many different types of programs does it run? For each of these programs, what exactly is it that this charity does? If it runs more than one program, why is that? How cost-effective is each program area? Is the charity focused on one of the most important causes? How cost-effective does the evidence suggest the program to be? How robust is the evidence behind each program? What is the evidence behind the programs that the charity runs? Are there trials showing that the program is effective? Does the charity rigorously monitor and evaluate the success of its programs? How well is each program implemented? Do the leaders of the charity have demonstrated success in other areas? Is the charity highly transparent? Does it acknowledge mistakes that it’s made in the past? What are the alternative charities you could give to? Are there good reasons for supposing that this charity is better than others? Does the charity need additional funds? What would additional funding be used to do? Why haven’t other donors already funded the charity to the point it can’t use extra money?

use this method of airframe shock testing in economic engineering, the prices of commodities are shocked, and the public consumer reaction is monitored. The resulting echoes of the economic shock are interpreted theoretically by computers and the psycho-economic structure of the economy is thus discovered. It is by this process that partial differential and difference matrices are discovered that define the family household and make possible its evaluation as an economic industry (dissipative consumer structure). Then the response of the household to future shocks can be predicted and manipulated, and society becomes a well-regulated animal with its reins under the control of a sophisticated computer-regulated social energy bookkeeping system. “Eventually every individual element of the structure comes under computer control through a knowledge of personal preferences, such know ledge guaranteed by computer association of consumer preferences (universal product code — UPC — zebra-stripe pricing codes on packages) with identified consumers (identified via association with the use of a credit card and later a permanent “tatooed” body number [WC emphasis] invisible under normal ambient illumination.… THE ECONOMIC MODEL “...The Harvard Economic Research Project (1948-) was an extension of World War II Operations Research. Its purpose was to discover the science of controlling an economy: at first the American economy, and then the world economy. It was felt that with sufficient mathematical foundation and data, it would be nearly as easy to predict and control the trend of an economy as to predict and control the trajectory of a projectile. Such has proven to be the case. Moreover, the economy has been transformed into a guided missile on target.

In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living, and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like one checks a stock, monitoring the ongoing development of our personal brand, time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on “nothing.” It provides no return on investment; it is simply too expensive. This is a cruel confluence of time and space: just as we lose noncommercial spaces, we also see all of our own time and our actions as potentially commercial. Just as public space gives way to faux public retail spaces or weird corporate privatized parks, so we are sold the idea of compromised leisure, a freemium leisure that is a very far cry from “what we will.

Driver Behavior & Safety Proper driving behavior is vital for the safety of drivers, passengers, pedestrians and is a means to achieve fewer road accidents, injuries and damage to vehicles. It plays a role in the cost of managing a fleet as it impacts fuel consumption, insurance rates, car maintenance and fines. It is also important for protecting a firm’s brand and reputation as most company- owned vehicles carry the company’s logo. Ituran’s solution for driver behavior and safety improves organizational driving culture and standards by encouraging safer and more responsible driving. The system which tracks and monitors driver behavior using an innovative multidimensional accelerometer sensor, produces (for each driver) an individual score based on their performance – sudden braking and acceleration, sharp turns, high-speed driving over speed bumps, erratic overtaking, speeding and more. The score allows fleet managers to compare driver performance, set safety benchmarks and hold each driver accountable for their action. Real-time monitoring identifies abnormal behavior mode—aggressive or dangerous—and alerts the driver using buzzer or human voice indication, and detects accidents in real time. When incidents or accidents occurs, a notification sent to a predefined recipient alerts management, and data collected both before and after accidents is automatically saved for future analysis. • Monitoring is provided through a dedicated application which is available to both fleet manager and driver (with different permission levels), allowing both to learn and improve • Improves organizational driving culture and standards and increases safety of drivers and passengers • Web-based reporting gives a birds-eye view of real-time driver data, especially in case of an accident • Detailed reports per individual driver include map references to where incidents have occurred • Comparative evaluation ranks driving according to several factors; the system automatically generates scores and a periodic assessment certificate for each driver and/or department Highlights 1. Measures and scores driver performance and allows to give personal motivational incentives 2. Improves driving culture by encouraging safer and more responsible driving throughout the organization 3. Minimizes the occurrence of accidents and protects the fleet from unnecessary wear & tear 4. Reduces expenses related to unsafe and unlawful driving: insurance, traffic tickets and fines See how it works:

Unistructural Memorize, identify, recognize, count, define, draw, find, label, match, name, quote, recall, recite, order, tell, write, imitate Multistructural Classify, describe, list, report, discuss, illustrate, select, narrate, compute, sequence, outline, separate Relational Apply, integrate, analyse, explain, predict, conclude, summarize (précis), review, argue, transfer, make a plan, characterize, compare, contrast, differentiate, organize, debate, make a case, construct, review and rewrite, examine, translate, paraphrase, solve a problem Extended abstract Theorize, hypothesize, generalize, reflect, generate, create, compose, invent, originate, prove from first principles, make an original case, solve from first principles Table 7.2  Some more ILO verbs from Bloom’s revised taxonomy Remembering Define, describe, draw, find, identify, label, list, match, name, quote, recall, recite, tell, write Understanding Classify, compare, conclude, demonstrate, discuss, exemplify, explain, identify, illustrate, interpret, paraphrase, predict, report Applying Apply, change, choose, compute, dramatize, implement, interview, prepare, produce, role play, select, show, transfer, use Analysing Analyse, characterize, classify, compare, contrast, debate, deconstruct, deduce, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, organize, outline, relate, research, separate, structure Evaluating Appraise, argue, assess, choose, conclude, critique, decide, evaluate, judge, justify, monitor, predict, prioritize, prove, rank, rate, select Creating Compose, construct, create, design, develop, generate, hypothesize, invent, make, perform, plan, produce

More broadly speaking, the milieus in which children spend their early years exert a very strong impact on the standards by which they subsequently judge the world around them. Whether in relation to fashion, food, geographical environment, or manner of speaking, models initially encountered by children continue to affect their tastes and preferences indefinitely, and these preferences prove very difficult to change. Closely related to standards of taste are an emerging set of beliefs about which behaviors are good and which values are the be cherished. In most cases, these standards initially reflect quite faithfully the value system encountered at home, at church, and at preschool or elementary school. Values with respect to behavior (you should not steal, you should salute the flag) and sets of beliefs (my country, right or wrong, all mommies are perfect, God is monitoring all of your actions) often exert a very powerful effect on children's actions and reactions. In some cultures, a line is drawn early between the moral sphere, where violations merit severe sanctions, and the conventional sphere, where practices are evaluated along a single dimension of morality. Even—and perhaps especially—when children are not conscious of the source and of the controversy surrounding these beliefs and values, unfortunate clashes may occur when they meet others raised with a contrasting set of values. It is assuredly no accident that Lenin and the Jesuits agreed on one precept: Let me have a child until the age of seven, and I will have that child for life.

Be yourself, say what you think, don't monitor what's coming from your heart & mind, don't evaluate the other person because you, may say something that helps them learn, understand, or reject. Just think before you speak. What you say may make the difference. If we cease saying what's on our mind, well, the unity of humanity has nowhere to survive or change. Our energy is as limitless as humanity.... be yourself say what you think, we are limiting ourselves in thinking in this way because we all could possibly learn a thing or two from one or another. FREEDOM OF SPEECH is still a choice...

In a data-driven world, that means making sure that everyone understands the objective, the data collected, the metrics, and how the primary decision maker is interpreting the evidence. Give others a chance to put forward their interpretations and views, if those differ, and get everyone on board; but also get inputs on other perspectives that that the decision maker may have missed. To help, you can remember this neat mnemonic, DECIDE: Define the problem. Establish the criteria. Consider all the alternatives. Identify the best alternative. Develop and implement a plan of action. Evaluate and monitor the solution and feedback when necessary. In other words, make sure that stakeholders are on board with each of these steps.

​Have you ever asked yourself, “What can I do to improve myself and my life?” Many people have asked themselves this question at some point in their lives as part of their personal development and to help them achieve their goals. Life is a journey and sometimes we can get stuck in the same position for a long Time or we may even get lost. There are times when we may get frustrated by our lack of progress or insufficient progress in our personal or professional lives. We need to look at where we are in life, where we want to go, and how we Intend to get there. One of the best ways to do this is by writing and using a strategic plan for your life. To write a strategic plan for your life you need to focus on the current situation, values, vision, purpose, mission, dreams, goals, strategy, action plans, and how you will monitor and evaluate your plan and take corrective situation or where you are in life right now.

Building a brand is like flying a plane. You need to monitor your instruments (real-time evaluation). But you also need a map to tell you where you’re going and where you’ve been (long-term evaluation). You need ‘Big Data’ and ‘Long Data’.

When people are not accountable and cannot evaluate their own efforts, responsibility is diffused across all group members (Harkins & Jackson, 1985; Kerr & Bruun, 1981). By contrast, the social facilitation experiments increased exposure to evaluation. When made the center of attention, people self-consciously monitor their behavior (Mullen & Baumeister, 1987). So, when being observed increases evaluation concerns, social facilitation occurs; when being lost in a crowd decreases evaluation concerns, social loafing occurs.

As we have seen, the job of the brain is to constantly monitor and evaluate what is going on within and around us. These evaluations are transmitted by chemical messages in the bloodstream and electrical messages in our nerves, causing subtle or dramatic changes throughout the body and brain. These shifts usually occur entirely without conscious input or awareness: The subcortical regions of the brain are astoundingly efficient in regulating our breathing, heartbeat, digestion, hormone secretion, and immune system. However, these systems can become overwhelmed if we are challenged by an ongoing threat, or even the perception of threat. This accounts for the wide array of physical problems researchers have documented in traumatized people.

He laid out the defining characteristics, workflow, and management as follows. A two-pizza team will: Be small. No more than ten people. Be autonomous. They should have no need to coordinate with other teams to get their work done. With the new service-based software architecture in place, any team could simply refer to the published application programming interfaces (APIs) for other teams. (More on this new software architecture to follow.) Be evaluated by a well-defined “fitness function.” This is the sum of a weighted series of metrics. Example: a team that is in charge of adding selection in a product category might be evaluated on: a)  how many new distinct items were added for the period (50 percent weighting) b)  how many units of those new distinct items were sold (30 percent weighting) c)  how many page views those distinct items received (20 percent weighting) Be monitored in real time. A team’s real-time score on its fitness function would be displayed on a dashboard next to all the other two-pizza teams’ scores. Be the business owner. The team will own and be responsible for all aspects of its area of focus, including design, technology, and business results. This paradigm shift eliminates the all-too-often heard excuses such as, “We built what the business folks asked us to, they just asked for the wrong product,” or “If the tech team had actually delivered what we asked for and did it on time, we would have hit our numbers.” Be led by a multidisciplined top-flight leader. The leader must have deep technical expertise, know how to hire world-class software engineers and product managers, and possess excellent business judgment. Be self-funding. The team’s work will pay for itself. Be approved in advance by the S-Team. The S-Team must approve the formation of every two-pizza team.

Now, though, as we assembled the crew to work on our second film, A Bug’s Life, drawing on people who’d been key to Toy Story’s evolution, I discovered we’d completely missed a serious, ongoing rift between our creative and production departments. In short, production managers told me that working on Toy Story had been a nightmare. They felt disrespected and marginalized—like second-class citizens. And while they were gratified by Toy Story’s success, they were very reluctant to sign on to work on another film at Pixar. I was floored. How had we missed this? The answer, at least in part, was rooted in the role production managers play in making our films. Production managers are the people who keep track of the endless details that ensure that a movie is delivered on time and on budget. They monitor the overall progress of the crew; they keep track of the thousands of shots; they evaluate how resources are being used; they persuade and cajole and nudge and say no when necessary. In other words, they do something essential for a company whose success relies on hitting deadlines and staying on-budget: They manage people and safeguard the process. If there was one thing we prided ourselves on at Pixar, it was making sure that Pixar’s artists and technical people treated each other as equals, and I had assumed that that same mutual respect would be afforded to those who managed the productions. I had assumed wrong. Sure enough, when I checked with the artists and technical staff, they did believe that production managers were second-class and that they impeded—not facilitated—good filmmaking by overcontrolling the process, by micromanaging. Production managers, the folks I consulted told me, were just sand in the gears.

When Bouchard’s twin-processing operation was in full swing, he amassed a staff of eighteen—psychologists, psychiatrists, ophthalmologists, cardiologists, pathologists, geneticists, even dentists. Several of his collaborators were highly distinguished: David Lykken was a widely recognized expert on personality, and Auke Tellegen, a Dutch psychologist on the Minnesota faculty, was an expert on personality measuring. In scheduling his twin-evaluations, Bouchard tried limiting the testing to one pair of twins at a time so that he and his colleagues could devote the entire week—with a grueling fifty hours of tests—to two genetically identical individuals. Because it is not a simple matter to determine zygosity—that is, whether twins are identical or fraternal—this was always the first item of business. It was done primarily by comparing blood samples, fingerprint ridge counts, electrocardiograms, and brain waves. As much background information as possible was collected from oral histories and, when possible, from interviews with relatives and spouses. I.Q. was tested with three different instruments: the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a Raven, Mill-Hill composite test, and the first principal components of two multiple abilities batteries. The Minnesota team also administered four personality inventories (lengthy questionnaires aimed at characterizing and measuring personality traits) and three tests of occupational interests. In all the many personality facets so laboriously measured, the Minnesota team was looking for degrees of concordance and degrees of difference between the separated twins. If there was no connection between the mean scores of all twins sets on a series of related tests—I.Q. tests, for instance—the concordance figure would be zero percent. If the scores of every twin matched his or her twin exactly, the concordance figure would be 100 percent. Statistically, any concordance above 30 percent was considered significant, or rather indicated the presence of some degree of genetic influence. As the week of testing progressed, the twins were wired with electrodes, X-rayed, run on treadmills, hooked up for twenty-four hours with monitoring devices. They were videotaped and a series of questionnaires and interviews elicited their family backgrounds, educations, sexual histories, major life events, and they were assessed for psychiatric problems such as phobias and anxieties. An effort was made to avoid adding questions to the tests once the program was under way because that meant tampering with someone else’s test; it also would necessitate returning to the twins already tested with more questions. But the researchers were tempted. In interviews, a few traits not on the tests appeared similar in enough twin pairs to raise suspicions of a genetic component. One of these was religiosity. The twins might follow different faiths, but if one was religious, his or her twin more often than not was religious as well. Conversely, when one was a nonbeliever, the other generally was too. Because this discovery was considered too intriguing to pass by, an entire additional test was added, an existing instrument that included questions relating to spiritual beliefs. Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely—from the low thirties to the high seventies— every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.

He is schizophrenic, this is how he was diagnosed with the CIA, and his schizophrenia is his strength, he comes out of a personality, directly impersonating a new one, a completely different one, which he experiences as if he had in it for his whole life. This is every professional agent’s strong point, but it comes at such a high price that it in many cases often ends up in a whiff of insanity. Therefore, they must be monitored and psychologically evaluated on a periodic basis. The last thing the agency wants is a suicidal agent with a message exposing many secrets, or a biased towards their opponents, or a madman circling the streets babbling from here and there. It takes its responsibilities towards them, these people suffer a lot, and the more they train, the more they work, the more professional they become, and the crazier they are. But there was something different about him, which Alex did not miss. Not that schizophrenia that she knew; When sitting with him, talking to him, all the paper reports seem as if they were written about a different person, as if deep down another person about whom no one knows anything yet, and as if all these characters he played are one character as if everything grows from inside him. What she was most concerned about is whether he is honest in being an intelligence agent, or is it a role he plays, as are the dozens of roles he played and plays for the agency. Many doubts revolve around him, officers were unable to manage him, and deal with him. The agency changed the liaison officer with him every few months, he is somewhat out of control, but at the same time, it is unable to terminate his services. The closer the agency got to making that decision, the more he did something that made them stick to it more, creative, distinct, and innovative, that we cannot easily let go of. Until Alex arrived, the only liaison officer he had worked with for years. His condition stabilized, he was no longer that mysterious brawler, she understood him completely, she threw all the reports, papers, and opinions behind her back, and dealt with him directly, without barriers. He was not simply pretending, he was not acting, he was really him. Every character he played, every lie he lied, every mess he made, it was him, without acting. And he said to her, they are all composite characters. If you look at each character, you will find something that connects them to the other, that they are like cubes, I build them on top of each other, I do not play them. What you need is to look at the details, and you will find a fine thread connecting them. He trusted her, and so did she. She became his friend, perhaps the only one in this world until Katrina entered his life. She knows nothing of what happened to him lately, but she knows that man deep inside him at the bottom of the pyramid of the cubes, “he will not hurt me, I trusted him before, I trust him today, his chivalry will not accept treachery, not of this kind, he will not do it”.

In several studies, we probed the way people with a fixed mindset dealt with information they were receiving. We found that they put a very strong evaluation on each and every piece of information. Something good led to a very strong positive label and something bad led to a very strong negative label. People with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what’s going on, but their internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way. Certainly they’re sensitive to positive and negative information, but they’re attuned to its implications for learning and constructive action: What can I learn from this?

Monitoring and evaluation are a sine qua non of any organized structure. Laconic monitoring and prudent evaluation are the key to success of any project or assignment.

Devising strategies to solve anticipated complexity of problems via strategic management and systemic approach is the heart of a good project design.

The primary concern of projects in the monitoring process is the progress, the milestones achieved, the factor of complying with the time schedule, the scope, compliance with laws, and that the project is within the allocated/mobilized budget(costs).

Monitoring and evaluation are a sine qua non of any organized structure. Laconic monitoring and prudent evaluation are the keys to the success of any project or assignment

We also monitor other variables that are relevant to diet, beginning with weight (obviously) but continuing with body composition, the ratios of lean mass and fat mass, and how they change. We can also look at biomarkers such as lipids, uric acid, insulin, and liver enzymes. All of these taken together start to give us a better way to evaluate our progress than any one in isolation.

Mechanism design takes up Hume's challenge by designing games in which the knaves to whom power is delegated are treated as players. The checks in the constitution are the rules of the game. These are used to prevent a player going off the rails in situations that the designer can effectively monitor and evaluate. However, it is the controls that are more important, since these apply to decisions that the designer can't monitor, or doesn't knowhowto evaluate. To get the players to act in accordance with the designer's aims rather than their own in such situations, it is necessary that the payoffs of the game be carefully chosen to provide the right incentives.

Mechanism design takes up Hume's challenge by designing games in which the knaves to whom power is delegated are treated as players. The checks in the constitution are the rules of the game. These are used to prevent a player going off the rails in situations that the designer can effectively monitor and evaluate. However, it is the controls that are more important, since these apply to decisions that the designer can't monitor, or doesn't know how to evaluate. To get the players to act in accordance with the designer's aims rather than their own in such situations, it is necessary that the payoffs of the game be carefully chosen to provide the right incentives.