Provost Quotes

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This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
Gary Provost
Two dozen--and yet you killed all but one?" The provost arched a brow and set her quill down again as if unwilling to record a falsehood. "Dear lady, I killed them from youngest child to oldest woman, and when I was done I blunted three axes dismembering their corpses. I am Jorg of Ancrath--I burned ten thousand in Gelleth and didn't think it too many.
Mark Lawrence (Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, #3))
Every epic collapse, the provost believed, could be traced back to a single moment—a chance meeting, a bad decision, an indiscreet glance.
Dan Brown (Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4))
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with the energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals - sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
Gary Provost (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power)
Hear how the use of the wrong word wakes you from your reading spell.
Gary Provost (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power)
Democrats were being rounded up, sentenced by drumhead courts-martial (provost’s tribunals, they were called) and executed on the spot—laser, gunfire, some hangings.
Robert A. Heinlein (Friday)
[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love. When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action. She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.
Christine de Pizan (The Treasure of the City of Ladies)
The Red Lamp, the army brothel, was around the corner in the main street. I had seen a queue of a hundred and fifty men waiting outside the door, each to have his short turn with one of the three women in the house. My servant, who had stood in the queue, told me that the charge was ten francs a man – about eight shillings at that time. Each woman served nearly a battalion of men every week for as long as she lasted. According to the assistant provost-marshal, three weeks was the usual limit: ‘after which she retired on her earnings, pale but proud.
Robert Graves (Goodbye to All That)
When you are describing things and places the reader has seen, keep description short by reminding him of the pictures he has on file. When you are describing things and places the reader has not seen, keep description short by using pieces of the pictures he has on file to create new pictures.
Gary Provost (Make Every Word Count: A Guide to Writing That Works—for Fiction and Nonfiction)
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. — Albert Einstein
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
If you write well and honestly, with character rising from background and action springing from character, and if you remain true to your vision of life, then theme will emerge in the reading process. And if you write what you believe, and only what you believe, the theme will inevitably be consistent.
Gary Provost (Make Every Word Count: A Guide to Writing That Works—for Fiction and Nonfiction)
It was very cold and next day snow began to fall, turning pinnacles into wedding-cake decorations. The examination was held in the Hall of Oriel, and we all wrote in greatcoats and mufflers and wearing at least our left-hand gloves. The Provost, old Phelps, gave out the papers. I remember very little about them, but I suppose I was outshone in pure classics by many of my rivals and succeeded on my general knowledge and dialectics. I had the impression that I was doing badly.
C.S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy: The shape of my early life)
People retreated behind their front doors into the hidden zone of their private, family worlds and when outsiders asked how things were they answered, Oh, everything’s going along just fine, not much to report, situation normal. But everyone secretly knew that behind that door things were rarely humdrum. More typically, all hell was breaking loose, as people dealt with their angry fathers, drunken mothers, resentful siblings, mad aunts, lecherous uncles and crumbling grandparents. The family was not the firm foundation upon which society rested, but stood at the dark chaotic heart of everything that ailed us. It was not normal, but surreal; not humdrum, but filled with event; not ordinary, but bizarre. He remembered with what excitement he had listened, at the age of twenty, to the Reith Lectures delivered on BBC Radio by Edmund Leach, the great anthropologist and interpreter of Claude Lévi-Strauss who, a year earlier, had succeeded Noel Annan as provost of King’s. “Far from being the basis of the good society,” Leach had said, “the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.” Yes! he thought. Yes! That is a thing I also know. The families in the novels he later wrote would be explosive, operatic, arm-waving, exclamatory, wild. People who did not like his books would sometimes criticize these fictional families for being unrealistic—not “ordinary” enough. However, readers who did like his books said to him, “Those families are exactly like my family.
Salman Rushdie (Joseph Anton: A Memoir)
Though the daily paper contains much that is swill, it also contains some good writing. From it you can learn to write leanly, you can learn to get to the point, and you can learn to compress several facts into a single clear sentence.
Gary Provost (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power)
He was uneasy. He was afraid of two claws—the police and the justices. To be afraid of the magistracy, it is sufficient to be afraid, there is no need to be guilty. Ursus had no desire for contact with sheriffs, provosts, bailiffs, and coroners.
Victor Hugo (The Man Who Laughs)
University admissions officers looked not for the most exceptional candidates, but for the most extroverted. Harvard’s provost Paul Buck declared in the late 1940s that Harvard should reject the “sensitive, neurotic” type and the “intellectually over-stimulated” in favor of boys of the “healthy extrovert kind.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Nevertheless, in order to play the part of critic also, the poet might have developed this beautiful idea in something less than two hundred lines. It is true that the mystery was to last from noon until four o'clock, in accordance with the orders of monsieur the provost, and that it was necessary to say something.
Victor Hugo (Complete Works of Victor Hugo)
If you say you can't, you won't! The only thing holding you back from success is yourself.
Jody Provost (Hitty and Her Next Hundred Years)
data mining is an exploratory undertaking closer to research and development than it is to engineering.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
Unfortunately, creating an objective function that matches the true goal of the data mining is usually impossible, so data scientists often choose based on faith[22] and experience.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
Someone once said that if you steal from one writer, it’s called plagiarism, but if you steal from several, it’s called research. So steal from everybody, but steal only a sentence or a phrase at a time. If you use much more than that, you must get permission and then give credit.
Gary Provost (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing)
Schweik inspected the provost-marshal's office. The impression which it produced could scarcely be called a favorable one, especially with regard to the photographs on the walls. They were photographs of the various executions carried out by the army in Galicia and Serbia. Artistic photographs of cottages which had been burned down and of trees, the branches of which were burdened with hanging bodies. There was one particularly fine photograph from Serbia showing a whole family which had been hanged. A small boy with his father and mother. Two soldiers with bayonets were guarding the tree on which the execution had been carried out, and an officer was standing victoriously in the foreground smoking a cigarette.
Jaroslav Hašek (The Good Soldier Švejk)
Across the river he could see the burnt and crushed buildings of Fredericksburg, the debris piled along the streets, the scattered ruins of people's lives, lives that were changed forever. His men had done that. Not all of it, of course. The whole corps had seemed to go insane, had turned the town into some kind of violent party, a furious storm that blew out of control, and he could not stop it. The commanders had ordered the provost guards at the bridges to let no goods leave the town, nothing could be carried across the bridges, and so what the men could not keep, what they could not steal, they had just destroyed. And now, he thought, the people will return, trying to rescue some fragile piece of home, and they will find this...and they will learn something new about war, more than the quiet nightmare of leaving your home behind. They will learn that something happens to men, men who have felt no satisfaction, who have absorbed and digested defeat after bloody stupid defeat, men who up to now have done mostly what they were told to do. And when those men begin to understand that it is not anything in them, no great weakness or inferiority, but that it is the leaders, the generals and politicians who tell them what to do, that the fault is there, after a while they will stop listening. Then the beast, the collective anger, battered and bloodied, will strike out, will respond to the unending sights of horror, the deaths of friends and brothers, and it will not be fair or reasonable or just, since there is no intelligence in the beast. They will strike out at whatever presents itself, and here it was the harmless and innocent lives of the people of Fredericksburg.
Jeff Shaara (Gods and Generals (The Civil War Trilogy, #1))
When these children grew older and applied to college and later for their first jobs, they faced the same standards of gregariousness. University admissions officers looked not for the most exceptional candidates, but for the most extroverted. Harvard’s provost Paul Buck declared in the late 1940s that Harvard should reject the “sensitive, neurotic” type and the “intellectually over-stimulated” in favor of boys of the “healthy extrovert kind.” In 1950, Yale’s president, Alfred Whitney Griswold, declared that the ideal Yalie was not a “beetle-browed, highly specialized intellectual, but a well-rounded man.” Another dean told Whyte that “in screening applications from secondary schools he felt it was only common sense to take into account not only what the college wanted, but what, four years later, corporations’ recruiters would want. ‘They like a pretty gregarious, active type,’ he said. ‘So we find that the best man is the one who’s had an 80 or 85 average in school and plenty of extracurricular activity. We see little use for the “brilliant” introvert.’ 
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
The need for managers with data-analytic skills The consulting firm McKinsey and Company estimates that “there will be a shortage of talent necessary for organizations to take advantage of big data. By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.” (Manyika, 2011). Why 10 times as many managers and analysts than those with deep analytical skills? Surely data scientists aren’t so difficult to manage that they need 10 managers! The reason is that a business can get leverage from a data science team for making better decisions in multiple areas of the business. However, as McKinsey is pointing out, the managers in those areas need to understand the fundamentals of data science to effectively get that leverage.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
My morning schedule saw me first in Cannan’s office, conferring with my advisor, but our meeting was interrupted within minutes by Narian, who entered without knocking and whose eyes were colder than I had seen them in a long time. “I thought you intended to control them,” he stated, walking toward the captain’s desk and standing directly beside the chair in which I sat.” He slammed a lengthy piece of parchment down on the wood surface, an unusual amount of tension in his movements. I glanced toward the open door and caught sight of Rava. She stood with one hand resting against the frame, her calculating eyes evaluating the scene while she awaited orders. Cannan’s gaze went to the parchment, but he did not reach for it, scanning its contents from a distance. Then he looked at Narian, unruffled. “I can think of a dozen or more men capable of this.” “But you know who is responsible.” Cannan sat back, assessing his opposition. “I don’t know with certainty any more than you do. In the absence of definitive proof of guilt on behalf of my son and his friends, I suggest you and your fellows develop a sense of humor.” Then the captain’s tone changed, becoming more forbidding. “I can prevent an uprising, Narian. This, you’ll have to get used to.” Not wanting to be in the dark, I snatched up the parchment in question. My mouth opened in shock and dismay as I silently read its contents, the men waiting for me to finish. On this Thirtieth Day of May in the First Year of Cokyrian dominance over the Province of Hytanica, the following regulations shall be put into practice in order to assist our gracious Grand Provost in her effort to welcome Cokyri into our lands--and to help ensure the enemy does not bungle the first victory it has managed in over a century. Regulation One. All Hytanican citizens must be willing to provide aid to aimlessly wandering Cokyrian soldiers who cannot on their honor grasp that the road leading back to the city is the very same road that led them away. Regulation Two. It is strongly recommended that farmers hide their livestock, lest the men of our host empire become confused and attempt to mate with them. Regulation Three. As per negotiated arrangements, crops grown on Hytanican soil will be divided with fifty percent belonging to Cokyri, and seventy-five percent remaining with the citizens of the province; Hytanicans will be bound by law to wait patiently while the Cokyrians attempt to sort the baffling deficiency in their calculations. Regulation Four. The Cokyrian envoys assigned to manage the planting and farming effort will also require Hytanican patience while they slowly but surely learn what is a crop and what is a weed, as well as left from right. Regulation Five. Though the Province Wall is a Cokyrian endeavor, it would be polite and understanding of Hytanicans to remind the enemy of the correct side on which to be standing when the final stone is laid, so no unfortunates may find themselves trapped outside with no way in. Regulation Six. When at long last foreign trade is allowed to resume, Hytanicans should strive to empathize with the reluctance of neighboring kingdoms to enter our lands, for Cokyri’s stench is sure to deter even the migrating birds. Regulation Seven. For what little trade and business we do manage in spite of the odor, the imposed ten percent tax may be paid in coins, sweets or shiny objects. Regulation Eight. It is regrettably prohibited for Hytanicans to throw jeers at Cokyrian soldiers, for fear that any man harried may cry, and the women may spit. Regulation Nine. In case of an encounter with Cokyrian dignitaries, the boy-invader and the honorable High Priestess included, let it be known that the proper way in which to greet them is with an ass-backward bow.
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
I stood on my toes, so my eyes were level with his. “I don’t want you to go, but I want you to be safe. If you being safe means you have to be far away from me, then that’s what I want.” “Baby, no one’s safe,” he said. “Not a single person is getting out of this existence alive. Living is a risk, and there’s no one I’d rather risk it with than you.
Jennifer Allis Provost (Thornapple (Poison Garden #3))
Barges from around the world floated up and down the river on their way to and from Montréal and the Great Lakes. I imagined the sailors aboard these ships—far from home, tired, excited, adventurous, lonely—and felt a little better knowing I wasn’t the only stranger in this place.
Emilie-Noelle Provost (The River is Everywhere)
My roommate, Remi, was a kid from Haiti who was at Saint Ignatius on a scholarship. The day I moved into the dorm he was losing his mind because the leaves on some of the maple trees on campus were starting to turn red. He’d never seen anything like it.
Emilie-Noelle Provost (The River is Everywhere)
I’d just placed my napkin on my lap when I noticed it: a hint of silver peeking out from beneath Ann’s dinner napkin . . . I was in the middle of taking a sip of water when I realized I was looking at a gun.
Emilie-Noelle Provost (The River is Everywhere)
Two clean-shaven, pink-skinned cops got out of the car. I got up from my chair and stood with my hands on my hips, waiting for them to get close enough for me to holler a greeting in French—the less American I seemed, the better.
Emilie-Noelle Provost
The home religion celebrates three spring sabbats, one in early February, one in late March, and one on the first of May. Though Imbolc celebrates the first stirrings of the seeds underground, aboveground is still locked in deep winter. By Ostara, the longer days and milder weather cheers us, but the festival isn’t widely observed among pagans, especially since the Christians renamed it Easter and made it perhaps their most important holiday. Beltane, though! By May Day, spring is in full bloom.
Sarah Provost (Guinevere: Bright Shadow)
She probably assumed Janelle would mess up, too, because she’s so young, but she had no idea Janelle was competent. Dean Grace intentionally sabotaged the sororities so she could fill them with higher-paying students and get herself promoted to provost.
Jen Lancaster (Housemoms)
About a half hour later, there was a knock on my door and I stiffened, my heart hammering. Who could want to see me?” “Come in!” Narian slipped through the door, closing it quietly behind him, and I laughed at myself. I was not used to him entering my room in a conventional fashion. “I never knew your home--all of Cokyri--was so beautiful,” I confessed when he was sitting beside me. “We’re not told about these things when we learn about history.” “It is beautiful,” he agreed, almost wistfully, and I wondered what he was thinking. “You really grew up here, in this temple?” He was nodding, absentmindedly rubbing his wrist, and I simply watched him for a moment. “And you love it,” I surmised. “I suppose I do. It feels like home. But I don’t miss it when I’m with you.” He kissed me, then leaned back against the pillows, pulling me along with him. “Narian,” I murmured, lifting my head to look at him. He was so handsome, so perfect with his halo of golden hair and his intense blue eyes that I ached for him to kiss me and touch me. But there were things I wanted to ask him. “What was causing the friction between you and the High Priestess?” An ironic smile lit his features. “Call it a familial disagreement. She doesn’t understand my change of heart--that I don’t care anymore if she sees us together. Ever since the Overlord’s death, she’s been trying to win me back, you might say. She knows I’m not happy with her. But she doesn’t realize that she’s already lost me--this place may feel like home to me forever, but it will never again be home. This part of my life is over. My loyalty has turned.” “You’ve never said that before,” I pointed out, feeling like there was something important he was not telling me. “That your loyalty is to Hytanica.” “I only recently came to realize it myself. But that is where my loyalty lies.” He was resolute, decided--and he was making me uneasy. What had the High Priestess said at dinner? The Grand Provost wouldn’t leave her province in unrest. I hadn’t had I? “Narian--” I started, sitting up, but he interrupted me. “Your loyalty has always been to Hytanica, and I don’t want there to be anything standing between us. So I’ve made up my mind, Alera. It’s a good thing.” I nodded, trying to shrug off my disquiet, for he was, of course, right. I stood up and tugged on his arm, trying to get him to move. He laughed. “I told you I was tired, remember?” “Yes, but as long as we’re here, I’d like you to show me something.” “What might that be?” He came to his feet, and I dragged him toward the door. “I want to see where Miranna was confined.” I clutched nervously at my blouse, unsure how he would react, for I had not been able to think of a tactful way to raise the topic. He stopped, forcing me to face him. “Alera, do you really want to see that?” “You told me she was well cared for here,” I bristled, my tone slightly accusatory. “If that’s true, then you have nothing to hide from me.” Narian released me. “I didn’t lie to you. The High Priestess made certain Miranna was well accommodated. But she was still a prisoner. I just want to be sure that you are ready to see this.” “I’m ready.
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane,’ Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. ‘And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer.’”[
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
In the past, firms could employ teams of statisticians, modelers, and analysts to explore datasets manually, but the volume and variety of data have far outstripped the capacity of manual analysis.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
Data mining is used for general customer relationship management to analyze customer behavior in order to manage attrition and maximize expected customer value.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
It was only after World War II that Stanford began to emerge as a center of technical excellence, owing largely to the campaigns of Frederick Terman, dean of the School of Engineering and architect-of-record of the military-industrial-academic complex that is Silicon Valley. During World War II Terman had been tapped by his own mentor, presidential science advisor Vannevar Bush, to run the secret Radio Research Lab at Harvard and was determined to capture a share of the defense funding the federal government was preparing to redirect toward postwar academic research. Within a decade he had succeeded in turning the governor’s stud farm into the Stanford Industrial Park, instituted a lucrative honors cooperative program that provided a camino real for local companies to put selected employees through a master’s degree program, and overseen major investments in the most promising areas of research. Enrollments rose by 20 percent, and over one-third of entering class of 1957 started in the School of Engineering—more than double the national average.4 As he rose from chairman to dean to provost, Terman was unwavering in his belief that engineering formed the heart of a liberal education and labored to erect his famous “steeples of excellence” with strategic appointments in areas such as semiconductors, microwave electronics, and aeronautics. Design, to the extent that it was a recognized field at all, remained on the margins, the province of an older generation of draftsmen and machine builders who were more at home in the shop than the research laboratory—a situation Terman hoped to remedy with a promising new hire from MIT: “The world has heard very little, if anything, of engineering design at Stanford,” he reported to President Wallace Sterling, “but they will be hearing about it in the future.
Barry M. Katz (Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design (The MIT Press))
Grand Provost.” Rava’s voice, clear and crisp, startled me. She stood to my left, in the doorway of her office, and I had the impression she had been watching for me. “Come in for a moment.” The Cokyrian second-in-command retreated into her alcove, and I followed, closing the door as she went to stand behind her desk. “How much power do you think he has?” she asked contemptuously, straightening her black tunic with a hard tug on the bottom. “I don’t understand.” I tenaciously met her eyes, despite the dread creeping along my spine. It was obvious she had overheard my conversation with Narian. “I understand the influence you have all too well. The commander will do exactly what you want, bend to your will. That alone should prove to you that strength is a woman’s endowment, not a man’s.” She was testing me, taunting me, and I resented her for it. “Are you going to continue with cryptic comments or are you going to say what you mean?” I demanded, rallying to take the offensive. “You may love Nantilam’s little prince, but you’re blind to the fact that he is an instrument. He has been from the beginning and he always will be, until she has no further use for him. Nantilam cares for him and would rather see him alive than dead, but she will not listen to him, or to words he bears from you. I have her ear. She will listen only to the most powerful woman n this godforsaken province, and that woman is me.” She was baiting me, successfully; I was on the verge of losing my temper. Knowing that would be a mistake, I let the silence between us lengthen, taking several slow and steady breaths. Then I gave her a small smile. “The High Priestess made me Grand Provost because she wanted a woman in control who would understand the people. You do not understand my people, Rava. You keep them miserable because you fear them. And everything else aside, that makes you weak.” Though Rava glowered at me, I was done with her, and coolly left her office. I could almost feel the slow tick of time, counting down to Narian’s return. He would prove one of us right and one of us wrong.
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
We didn’t know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane,’ Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. ‘And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer.’”[
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
In analytics, it’s more important for individuals to be able to formulate problems well, to prototype solutions quickly, to make reasonable assumptions in the face of ill-structured problems, to design experiments that represent good investments, and to analyze results.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
information is a quantity that reduces uncertainty about something. So, if an old pirate gives me information about where his treasure is hidden that does not mean that I know for certain where it is, it only means that my uncertainty about where the treasure is hidden is reduced.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
On this Thirtieth Day of May in the First Year of Cokyrian dominance over the Province of Hytanica, the following regulations shall be put into practice in order to assist our gracious Grand Provost in her effort to welcome Cokyri into our lands--and to help ensure the enemy does not bungle the first victory it has managed in over a century. Regulation One. All Hytanican citizens must be willing to provide aid to aimlessly wandering Cokyrian soldiers who cannot on their honor grasp that the road leading back to the city is the very same road that led them away. Regulation Two. It is strongly recommended that farmers hide their livestock, lest the men of our host empire become confused and attempt to mate with them. Regulation Three. As per negotiated arrangements, crops grown on Hytanican soil will be divided with fifty percent belonging to Cokyri, and seventy-five percent remaining with the citizens of the province; Hytanicans will be bound by law to wait patiently while the Cokyrians attempt to sort the baffling deficiency in their calculations. Regulation Four. The Cokyrian envoys assigned to manage the planting and farming effort will also require Hytanican patience while they slowly but surely learn what is a crop and what is a weed, as well as left from right. Regulation Five. Though the Province Wall is a Cokyrian endeavor, it would be polite and understanding of Hytanicans to remind the enemy of the correct side on which to be standing when the final stone is laid, so no unfortunates may find themselves trapped outside with no way in. Regulation Six. When at long last foreign trade is allowed to resume, Hytanicans should strive to empathize with the reluctance of neighboring kingdoms to enter our lands, for Cokyri’s stench is sure to deter even the migrating birds. Regulation Seven. For what little trade and business we do manage in spite of the odor, the imposed ten percent tax may be paid in coins, sweets or shiny objects. Regulation Eight. It is regrettably prohibited for Hytanicans to throw jeers at Cokyrian soldiers, for fear that any man harried may cry, and the women may spit. Regulation Nine. In case of an encounter with Cokyrian dignitaries, the boy-invader and the honorable High Priestess included, let it be known that the proper way in which to greet them is with an ass-backward bow.
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
February 6: Marilyn chooses Roger L. Provost, an eighteen-year-old seaman aboard the USS Taconic, as “The Boy with Whom She Would Most Like To Be Cast Adrift.
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
overfit: it acquires details of the training set that are not characteristic of the population in general, as represented by the holdout set. In
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
Provost John Mark Reynolds, for a position as professor and scholar in residence that gave me time to write Finding Truth.
Nancy R. Pearcey (Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes)
If a seminary or Christian college has a wise provost or dean or department chair, he or she will realize that they need some faculty who are master teachers but publish little, and some scholars who can both teach and publish, and some who would be better just being research professors. It takes a variety of faculty to make up a good school. But alas, even in schools that have such administrators, promotion and sabbaticals are often based on publications or planned publications, not just on reviews of one’s classroom performances. Thus, some scholars who find research and writing a huge cross to bear are forced to carry that cross all the way to Golgotha Publishing House in order to get promoted. It really ought not to be that way at a Christian school, where the main goal should be “training students or budding clergy in the way that they should go.
Ben Witherington III (Is there a Doctor in the House?: An Insider’s Story and Advice on becoming a Bible Scholar)
High-level knowledge of the fundamentals helps creative business analysts see novel formulations.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
framing a business problem in terms of expected value can allow us to systematically decompose it into data mining tasks.
Foster Provost (Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking)
All myths have a basis in fact
Samaire Wynne (Epidemic (Mad World #1))
 ‘Guys’?” Doucet asked. “I saw three members of l’Académie.” “Um, Provost?” “Prévost?” “That’s it.” “I’ll contact him. She also spent some time with Josephine Baker,” Doucet offered.
Laurie R. King (The Bones of Paris (Harris Stuyvesant, #2))
After the United States entered World War I, Southern landowners had a new means of ensuring their laborers remained on plantations—the threat of the draft. In the summer of 1918 the army’s provost marshal, General Enoch Crowder, issued a “Work or Fight” order to all local exemption boards, allowing them to draft men who were not engaged in employment. Crowder’s order essentially federalized the local vagrancy laws that were already pervasive throughout the South. It was now up to the small-town sheriff, mayor, constable, and justice of the peace to identify “vagrants” and turn them in to the local exemption board to be shipped off to war. In the Delta, local defense councils adopted an identification system that required all blacks to carry a card listing their place of employment. The defense council requested national support in forcing “our negro labor to stay on the job six days in the week or they will be inducted into service.
Adrienne Berard (Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South)
provost said
Bill O'Reilly (Old School: Life in the Sane Lane)
Today, as provost of Harvard University, Steve Hyman is mostly engaged in the many political and administrative tasks that come with leading a large institution. But he is a neuroscientist by training, and in 1996 to 2001, when he was the director of the NIMH, he wrote a paper, one both memorable and provocative in kind, that summed up all that had been learned about psychiatric drugs. Titled “Initiation and Adaptation: A Paradigm for Understanding Psychotropic Drug Action,” it was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, and it told of how all psychotropic drugs could be understood to act on the brain in a common way.46 Antipsychotics, antidepressants, and other psychotropic drugs, he wrote, “create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions.” In response, the brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. If a drug blocks a neurotransmitter (as an antipsychotic does), the presynaptic neurons spring into hyper gear and release more of it, and the postsynaptic neurons increase the density of their receptors for that chemical messenger. Conversely, if a drug increases the synaptic levels of a neurotransmitter (as an antidepressant does), it provokes the opposite response: The presynaptic neurons decrease their firing rates and the postsynaptic neurons decrease the density of their receptors for the neurotransmitter. In each instance, the brain is trying to nullify the drug’s effects. “These adaptations,” Hyman explained, “are rooted in homeostatic mechanisms that exist, presumably, to permit cells to maintain their equilibrium in the face of alterations in the environment or changes in the internal milieu.” However, after a period of time, these compensatory mechanisms break down. The “chronic administration” of the drug then causes “substantial and long-lasting alterations in neural function,” Hyman wrote. As part of this long-term adaptation process, there are changes in intracellular signaling pathways and gene expression. After a few weeks, he concluded, the person’s brain is functioning in a manner that is “qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.” His was an elegant paper, and it summed up what had been learned from decades of impressive scientific work. Forty years earlier, when Thorazine and the other first-generation psychiatric drugs were discovered, scientists had little understanding of how neurons communicated with one another. Now they had a remarkably detailed understanding of neurotransmitter systems in the brain and of how drugs acted on them. And what science had revealed was this: Prior to treatment, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and other psychiatric disorders do not suffer from any known “chemical imbalance.” However, once a person is put on a psychiatric medication, which, in one manner or another, throws a wrench into the usual mechanics of a neuronal pathway, his or her brain begins to function, as Hyman observed, abnormally.
Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America)
Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark Writing to Persuade by Trish Hall On Writing Well by William Zinsser 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Gary Provost On Writing by Stephen King
Carmine Gallo (The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World's Greatest Salesman)
UCSD provost David Jordan is more blunt: “Why should I teach a point of view I don’t agree with?
Ben Shapiro (Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth)
The love of titles is common to all men, and a vicar or a fellow is as pleased at becoming Mr. Archdeacon or Mr. Provost, as a lieutenant at getting his captaincy, or a city tallow-chandler in becoming Sir John on the occasion of a Queen’s visit to a new bridge.
Anthony Trollope (The Warden (Chronicles of Barsetshire, #1))
To write is not necessary to communicate. Communication occur in the mind of the reader.
Gary Provost (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power)
Adjectives do for nouns what adverbs do for verbs;
Gary Provost (100 Ways to Improve Your Writing: Proven Professional Techniques for Writing With Style and Power)
For no better reason, so far as the public was informed, than a vote in favor of certain resolutions, General Banks sent his provost-marshal to Frederick, where the Legislature was in session; a cordon of pickets was placed around the town to prevent any one from leaving it without a written permission from a member of General Banks's staff; police detectives from Baltimore then went into the town and arrested some twelve or thirteen members and several officers of the Legislature, which, thereby left without a quorum, was prevented from organizing, and it performed the only act which it was competent to do, i.e., adjourned.
Jefferson Davis (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government)
central characters in the tale, lending it a sense of veracity. Even better if one could give a first-hand account of a ghostly apparition. But one must not discount the multitude of stories penned by writers eager to provide readers with suitably eerie fare for the holiday. Along with Dickens, M. R. James, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, became famous for his stories, which he shared with students and eventually published (Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was his first collection). Mrs. J. H. Riddell, Wilkie Collins
Tasha Alexander (That Silent Night (Lady Emily, #10.5))
Dr. Clemo held various administrative roles including Faculty Fellow to the President, Assistant to the President for Special Programs and Campus Communications, Chief of Staff, and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.
Lorrie Clemo
continue to be amazed at how reasonably intelligent individuals can actually believe their claims of innocence and not recognize the blatant self-rationalizations, selective perceptions, distortions of reality, denial, and self-deception in their
Gary Provost (Without Mercy: Obsession and Murder Under the Influence)
If any of you have lost your nerve, then step away now and let no one judge you.
Stephen Provost (Tár: Screenplay)
If you want to dance the mask, you must service the composer. Sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity! You must in fact stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.
Stephen Provost (Tár: Screenplay)
The following ad is also a Director of IT position dressed up as a CIO.  The position reports to the CFO creating a natural conflict between the requirements of the role to be strategic but being overruled all the time by the tactical view of the CFO. The CIO salary will also be depressed due to the lower rank and the person will not have proper access to the Provost and other VP level people who will be the CIO’s primary clients. Chances are very high the focus will be on the network infrastructure and maintenance – note the highlighting of the wired and wireless networks.
Mansur Hasib (Cybersecurity Leadership: Powering the Modern Organization)
I sent him to get an education, not to be brainwashed. Each time it makes the college paper, then the news; a congressman or sometimes a senator delivers an impassioned speech about universities as incubators of indoctrination; the provost issues another public statement in reply, defending the library’s collection.
Celeste Ng (Our Missing Hearts)
Maybe his damaged soul recognized the damage in mine.
Jennifer Allis Provost (Oleander (Poison Garden #1))
VPs of Administration and Finance represent the interests of that business vertical. They are also strongly partial to the systems used by that business vertical. For example, within a medical university, they cannot be expected to also represent marketing; advancement; communications; business development; client relations; disease control; provost; faculty; student life; or other departments. Think about your enterprise: How can the person overseeing finance be impartial or well-informed across all your departments? Under many organizations' reporting structures, the CIO is expected to develop relationships with these other business verticals, but since they report to the CFO they are excluded from the very cabinet meetings where leaders congregate. Even when CIOs are invited, they are not considered of equal rank -- because they are not. Everyone views the CFO as the final authority for IT decisions, leading to some serious problems. In these organizations, finance drives strategy instead of strategy driving finance. IT is seen as a cost center and there is a perennial pressure to cut costs and reduce expenditures -- often at the detriment of strategy. Cybersecurity may be non-existent in these organizations. Setting appropriate salaries for CIOs and people reporting to the CIOs becomes impossible.
Mansur Hasib (Cybersecurity Leadership: Powering the Modern Organization)
The royal borough of Chucky Stanes, like every other town of the kind, enjoys an undue proportion of ladies in a state of single blessedness. The house I rented there belonged to Miss Beenie Needles, a venerable damsel of that description. Her father, far back in the last century, had held the dignity of Provost. In the plenitude of his magisterial pomp, he erected the edifice,where Miss Beeny, with her niece, Mrs, Greenknowe, the widow of a much respected surgeon, held court, or, more properly, sat in expectation of being courted.
John Galt (Lawrie Todd: or, The Settlers in the Woods)
Who was I kidding? Curses don’t just evaporate, and I would need to deal with this sooner rather than later. I only hoped sooner meant not immediately.
Jennifer Allis Provost (Thornapple (Poison Garden #3))
The Old Provost’s Lodging had been razed to its foundation. All that remained was a pile of rubble.
John Guy (Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart)
Convening a task force on student mental health in 2006, Stanford’s provost wrote that “increasingly, we are seeing students struggling with mental health concerns ranging from self-esteem issues and developmental disorders to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-mutilation behaviors, schizophrenia and suicidal behavior.
William Deresiewicz (Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life)
that we can improve,” Schoenfeld penitently announced. Of course, as Schoenfeld meekly hinted, Duke has been engaged in color-coded programming and funding for decades, pouring money into, to name just a few endeavors, a black student center, a black student recruiting weekend, and such bureaucratic sinecures as a vice provost for faculty diversity and faculty development and an associate vice provost for academic diversity, who, along with the faculty diversity task force and faculty diversity standing committee, ride herd over departmental hiring and monitor the progress of the ongoing Faculty Diversity Initiative, which followed upon the previous Black Faculty Strategic Initiative. But no college administration in recent history has ever said to whining students of any race or gender: “Are you joking? We’ve kowtowed to your demands long enough, now go study!” And why should the burgeoning student services bureaucracy indulge in such honesty? It depends on just such melodramatic displays of grievance for its very existence.
Heather Mac Donald (The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture)
There is no way to know precisely how many men deserted. The official count from the U.S. provost marshal’s report was 103,400. This was out of a total of 750,000 to 850,000 men listed as in the army by the end of the war.
Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
Today, evangelical Christians, Catholics, and other conservative students are routinely subjected to programs on campuses that amount to little less than overt intolerance and intellectual persecution. For example, recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Dartmouth College, campus activists stole and burned conservative student newspapers without facing any significant penalty from administrators. The idea expressed in these newspapers and by these students were obviously unwelcome by the thieves in question, but they also were, apparently, not deemed worthy of toleration by the schools' presidents, provosts, and deans. At Purdue, Vanderbilt, and Syracuse, as well as smaller universities like Castleton in Vermont, many Christian campus organizations cannot operate without violating expansive "non-discrimination" policies. Administrators at many colleges now require all student organizations to draft constitutions on the basis of sexual morality. All lifestyles and worldviews are acceptable except those of orthodox Catholics, Evangelicals, and other conservatives who want to live their lives in a manner consistent with the biblical standards of sexual fidelity and the traditional morality prescribed in Scripture. Such missional clarity is simply not tolerable in these bastions of tolerance.
Everett Piper (Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth)
Cass was her husband, and the fragile bond between them had been built not on love or romance, or even sex. It floated on, it swam in, it drowned under, alcohol. They were drinking buddies long before Cass moved in with Dee,
Gary Provost (Without Mercy: Obsession and Murder Under the Influence)
took to the business like a porpoise to the sea. Augustine Paspalakis, unfortunately, did not share Lisa’s affinity for the finer points of bookkeeping. He once told his daughter, “What I know about money is I take some in and I put in the safe. In the morning I take the money out of the safe and I put it in the bank.” Steno was a man who could add up any column of figures in his head, but start talking debits and ledgers with him and his eyes would glaze over. To him accounting meant you had to turn
Gary Provost (Perfect Husband: The True Story of the Trusting Bride Who Discovered Her Husband Was a Coldblooded Killer)
According to some, the club’s “theft” of the 1925 title from Pottsville activated a curse against the Cardinals franchise, which managed to win just one more title, in 1947. As of this writing, it has since gone 67 years without a championship, the longest streak in the NFL
Stephen H. Provost (A Whole Different League)
Only on May 23, 1918, had Provost Marshal Enoch Crowder, who oversaw the draft, issued his “work or fight” order, stating that anyone not employed in an essential industry would be drafted—an order that caused major league baseball to shorten its season and sent many ballplayers scurrying for jobs that were “essential”—and promising that “all men within the enlarged age would be called within a year.
John M. Barry (The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History)
I knew of this: Provost Lockhart sent word. You’d think we dwelt in the Marches.
Pat McIntosh (The Lanimer Bride (Gil Cunningham #11))
The poor, unable to comprehend economic theory, blamed their increasing poverty on the machinations of the great and proposed to better their lot by killing their masters. In France, ravaged by the Hundred Years War, the rebel mood showed itself in town and country. In Paris, the Estates General of 1355, led by the provost of merchants, Etienne Marcel, made revolutionary demands to control the national finances and hence the kingdom. Marcel turned demagogue, courted the mob, invented the famous phrase, “the will of the people,” and also the liberty cap of red and blue. But as happens so often, the rebel defeated his own purposes by his exorbitance. In July 1358, Marcel was assassinated.
Morris Bishop (The Middle Ages)
The Superintendent took a breath. ‘What do you know about the Oxford colleges?’ ‘Well, they’re pretty weird—’ ‘They’ve educated half of our prime ministers, an extremely high proportion of our politicians, judges, journalists, captains of industry, educationalists, analysts and activists. They are the heart of the establishment. A closed world. A world with its own rules, its own way of doing things. We don’t blunder in without taking care. We don’t risk offending them, because, for all we know, they’re advising the government on law-enforcement policy or police funding, or they have the ear of the producer of the News at Ten. We don’t tell the Provost of one of the colleges to calm the fuck down. Do you understand me?’ Her face pointed at him, wren-like and fierce.
Simon Mason (A Killing in November: a razor-sharp Oxford mystery (DI Ryan Wilkins Mysteries Book 1))
Why this weak indulgent puppet of France and the Roman Catholic Church should have become such a romantic figure in Scottish myth is inexplicable. (So peculiar was this last Jacobite rebellion that some historical pespective is necessary: it took place while Benjamin Franklin was corresponding with his English associates on electricity, the brothers Adam were still at the University of Edinburgh, and the idea of building a new town was forming in the imagination of Provost [George] Drummond.)
Alan Balfour (Creating a Scottish Parliament)