John Fox

"Welfare State International are brilliant at making an audience of strangers into a community" Guardian Welfare State International, the inspirational theatre company founded in 1968 and based in Cumbria, creates and facilitates celebratory art and theatre, ranging from carnivals, lantern processions and rites of passage, to flags, banners and pyrotechnics. In a mixture of personal stories, clear instructions, poems and artists' sketches, Eyes on Stalks is a detailed and practical guide to their production techniques. It includes sections on caravans and street shows, community regeneration, comedy extravaganzas and alternative naming, betrothal and funeral ceremonies.

This book is a practical guide to building computational models of high-level cognitive processes and systems. High-level processes are those central cognitive processes involved in thinking, reasoning, planning, and so on. These processes appear to share representational and processing requirements, and it is for this reason that they are considered together in this text. The book is divided into three parts. Part I considers foundational and background issues. Part II provides a series of case studies spanning a range of cognitive domains. Part III reflects upon issues raised by the case studies. Teachers of cognitive modeling may use material from Part I to structure lectures and practical sessions, with chapters in Part II forming the basis of in-depth student projects. All models discussed in this book are developed within the COGENT environments. COGENT provides a graphical interface in which models may be sketched as "box and arrow" diagrams and is both a useful teaching tool and a productive research tool. As such, this book is designed to be of use to both students of cognitive modeling and active researchers. For students, the book provides essential background material plus an extensive set of example models, exercises and project material. Researchers of both symbolic and connectionist persuasions will find the book of interest for its approach to cognitive modeling, which emphasizes methodological issues. They will also find that the COGENT environment itself has much to offer.

This book builds on John Fox's previous volume in the QASS Series, Non Parametric Simple Regression. In this monograph readers learn to estimate and plot smooth functions when there are multiple independent variables. While regression analysis traces the dependence of the distribution of a response variable to see if it bears a particular (linear) relationship to one or more of the predictors, nonparametric regression analysis makes minimal assumptions about the form of relationship between the average response and the predictors. This makes nonparametric regression a more useful technique for analyzing data in which there are several predictors that may combine additively to influence the response. (An example could be something like birth order/gender/and temperament on achievement motivation).Unfortunately, researchers have not had accessible information on nonparametric regression analysis, until now. Beginning with presentation of nonparametric regression based on dividing the data into bins and averaging the response values in each bin, Fox introduces readers to the techniques of kernel estimation, additive nonparametric regression, and the ways nonparametric regression can be employed to select transformations of the data preceding a linear least-squares fit. The book concludes with ways nonparametric regression can be generalized to logit, probit, and Poisson regression.

While regression analysis traces the dependence of the distribution of a response variable to see if it bears a particular (linear) relationship to one or more of the predictors, nonparametric regression analysis makes minimal assumptions about the form of relationship between the average response and the predictors. This makes nonparametric regression a more useful technique for analyzing data in which there are several predictors that may combine additively to influence the response. (An example could be something like birth order/gender/and temperament on achievement motivation). Unfortunately, researchers have not had accessible information on nonparametric regression analysis, until now. Beginning with presentation of nonparametric regression based on dividing the data into bins and averaging the response values in each bin, Fox introduces readers to the techniques of kernel estimation, additive nonparametric regression, and the ways nonparametric regression can be employed to select transformations of the data preceding a linear least-squares fit. The book concludes with ways nonparametric regression can be generalized to logit, probit, and Poisson regression.

Poetry discovers and speaks a truth ordinary language cannot express. And the passionate message in Finding What You Didn't Lose is that we're all poets--capable of giving voice to such truth. Poet-teacher John Fox reveals how imagery, sound, metaphor, rhythm, and other poetic elements can he us tell our inner story, heal psychological wounds, discover spiritual connection, and develop the rich creative imagination that lies within us all. Transcending the traditional academic approach to poetry writing, Finding What You Didn't Lose deals with craft but, more importantly, guides readers to explore their deepest feelings and express their own unique insights through the incomparable language of poetry. Through an intermingling of inventive exercises and illustrative poems--ranging from Nobel Prize winners to first-time poets--readers are inspired to add their own distinct voice to a world fellowship of poets. For those who already write poetry, and the many more who want to, this book is the key to finding what you never lose: your natural inclination to express who you are through the making of poems.

Written with uncanny precision and wild humor, this is the story of Billy Connors, high school student in the Bronx, member of the swim team, and all-around regular guy, who in his sixteenth year has to face the fact that he's a little different from everyone else, a little "weird." Though he's sort of going steady with a girl and popular at school, he's always worried that the secret fantasies he has about men would set him apart and make him "different" if anyone knew about them. How Billy faces up to himself-and his friends-as he discovers the complexities of life, the exuberance of sex, and what it means to be an adult in our imperfect world, makes for a touching, wise, and very moving novel.