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Middle class

The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Common definitions for the middle class range from the middle fifth of individuals on a nation's income ladder, to everyone but the poorest and wealthiest 20%. Theories like "Paradox of Interest" use decile groups and wealth distribution data to determine the size and wealth share of the middle class.

Terminology differs in the United States, where the term middle class describes people who in other countries would be described as working class. In the rest of the world, middle class is reserved for the salaried managerial positions which operate to manage businesses and government.

There has been significant global middle-class growth over time. In February 2009, The Economist asserted that over half of the world's population belonged to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries. It characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amount of discretionary income and defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter.

History and evolution of the term

The term "middle class" is first attested in James Bradshaw's 1745 pamphlet Scheme to prevent running Irish Wools to France. Another phrase used in early modern Europe was "the middling sort".

The term "middle class" has had several and sometimes contradictory meanings. Friedrich Engels saw the category as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry in late-feudalist society. While the nobility owned much of the countryside, and the peasantry worked it, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city. In France, the middle classes helped drive the French Revolution. This "middle class" eventually overthrew the ruling monarchists of feudal society, thus becoming the new ruling class or bourgeoisie in the new capitalist-dominated societies.

The modern usage of the term "middle-class", however, dates to the 1913 UK Registrar-General's report, in which the statistician T. H. C. Stevenson identified the middle class as those falling between the upper-class and the working-class. The middle class includes: professionals, managers, and senior civil servants. The chief defining characteristic of membership in the middle-class is control of significant human capital while still being under the dominion of the elite upper class, who control much of the financial and legal capital in the world.

Within capitalism, "middle-class" initially referred to the bourgeoisie; later, with the further differentiation of classes as capitalist societies developed, the term came to be synonymous with the term petite bourgeoisie. The boom-and-bust cycles of capitalist economies result in the periodic (and more or less temporary) impoverishment and proletarianization of much of the petite bourgeois world, resulting in their moving back and forth between working-class and petite-bourgeois status. The typical modern definitions of "middle class" tend to ignore the fact that the classical petite-bourgeoisie is and has always been the owner of a small-to medium-sized business whose income is derived almost exclusively from the employment of workers; "middle class" came to refer to the combination of the labour aristocracy, professionals, and salaried, white-collar workers.

The size of the middle class depends on how it is defined, whether by education, wealth, environment of upbringing, social network, manners or values, etc. These are all related, but are far from deterministically dependent. The following factors are often ascribed in the literature on this topic to a "middle class:"

 * Achievement of tertiary education.
 * Holding professional qualifications, including academics, lawyers, chartered engineers, politicians, and doctors, regardless of leisure or wealth.
 * Belief in bourgeois values, such as high rates of house ownership, delayed gratification, and jobs that are perceived to be secure.
 * Lifestyle. In the United Kingdom, social status has historically been linked less directly to wealth than in the United States, and has also been judged by such characteristics as accent (Received Pronunciation and U and non-U English), manners, type of school attended (state or private school), occupation, and the class of a person's family, circle of friends and acquaintances.

In the United States, by the end of the twentieth century, more people identified themselves as middle-class (with insignificant numbers identifying themselves as upper-class). The Labour Party in the UK, which grew out of the organised labour movement and originally drew almost all of its support from the working-class, reinvented itself under Tony Blair in the 1990s as "New Labour", a party competing with the Conservative Party for the votes of the middle-class as well as those of the Labour Party's traditional group of voters – the working-class. Around 40% of British people consider themselves to be middle class, and this number has remained relatively stable over the last few decades.

According to the OECD, the middle class refers to households with income between 75% and 200% of the median national income.

Marxism
Marxism defines social classes according to their relationship with the means of production. The main basis of social class division of Marxism: the possession of means of production, the role and position it plays in social labor organization (production process), the distribution of wealth and resources and the amount. Marxist writers have used the term middle class in various ways. In the first sense, it is used for the bourgeoisie (the urban merchant and professional class) that arose between the aristocracy and the proletariat in the waning years of feudalism in the Marxist model. Vladimir Lenin stated that the "peasantry ... in Russia constitute eight- or nine-tenths of the petty bourgeoisie". However, in modern developed countries, Marxist writers define the petite bourgeoisie as primarily comprising (as the name implies) owners of small to medium-sized businesses, who derive their income from the exploitation of wage-laborers (and who are in turn exploited by the "big" bourgeoisie i.e. bankers, owners of large corporate trusts, etc.) as well as the highly educated professional class of doctors, engineers, architects, lawyers, university professors, salaried middle-management of capitalist enterprises of all sizes, etc. – as the "middle class" which stands between the ruling capitalist "owners of the means of production" and the working class (whose income is derived solely from hourly wages).

Pioneer 20th century American Marxist theoretician Louis C. Fraina (Lewis Corey) defined the middle class as "the class of independent small enterprisers, owners of productive property from which a livelihood is derived". From Fraina's perspective, this social category included "propertied farmers" but not propertyless tenant farmers. Middle class also included salaried managerial and supervisory employees but not "the masses of propertyless, dependent salaried employees. Fraina speculated that the entire category of salaried employees might be adequately described as a "new middle class" in economic terms, although this remained a social grouping in which "most of whose members are a new proletariat."

Professional–managerial class
In 1977 Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich defined a new class in the United States as "salaried mental workers who do not own the means of production and whose major function in the social division of labor ... [is] ... the reproduction of capitalist culture and capitalist class relations;" the Ehrenreichs named this group the "professional–managerial class". This group of middle-class professionals is distinguished from other social classes by their training and education (typically business qualifications and university degrees), with example occupations including academics and teachers, social workers, engineers, accountants, managers, nurses, and middle-level administrators. The Ehrenreichs developed their definition from studies by André Gorz, Serge Mallet, and others, of a "new working class," which, despite education and a perception of themselves as middle class, were part of the working class because they did not own the means of production, and were wage earners paid to produce a piece of capital. The professional–managerial class seek higher rank status and salaries and tend to have incomes above the average for their country.

Recent global growth
Modern definitions of the term "middle class" are often politically motivated and vary according to the exigencies of political purpose which they were conceived to serve in the first place as well as due to the multiplicity of more- or less-scientific methods used to measure and compare wealth between modern advanced industrial states, where poverty is relatively low and the distribution of wealth more egalitarian in a relative sense, and in developing countries, where poverty and a profoundly unequal distribution of wealth crush the vast majority of the population. Many of these methods of comparison have been harshly criticised; for example, economist Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, describes one of the most commonly used comparative measures of wealth across the globe, the Gini coefficient, as being an example of "synthetic indices ... which mix very different things, such as inequality with respect to labor and capital, so that it is impossible to distinguish clearly among the multiple dimensions of inequality and the various mechanisms at work."

In February 2009, The Economist asserted that over half the world's population now belongs to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries. It characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amount of discretionary income, so that they do not live from hand-to-mouth as the poor do, and defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter. This allows people to buy consumer goods, improve their health care, and provide for their children's education. Most of the emerging middle class consists of people who are middle class by the standards of the developing world but not the developed one, since their money incomes do not match developed country levels, but the percentage of it which is discretionary does. By this definition, the number of middle-class people in Asia exceeded that in the West sometime around 2007 or 2008.

The Economist article pointed out that in many emerging countries, the middle class has not grown incrementally but explosively. The point at which the poor start entering the middle class by the millions is alleged to be the time when poor countries get the maximum benefit from cheap labour through international trade, before they price themselves out of world markets for cheap goods. It is also a period of rapid urbanization, when subsistence farmers abandon marginal farms to work in factories, resulting in a several-fold increase in their economic productivity before their wages catch up to international levels. That stage was reached in China sometime between 1990 and 2005, when the Chinese "middle class" grew from 15% to 62% of the population and is just being reached in India now.

The Economist predicted that surge across the poverty line should continue for a couple of decades and the global middle class will grow exponentially between now and 2030. Based on the rapid growth, scholars expect the global middle class to be the driving force for sustainable development. This assumption, however, is contested (see below).

As the American middle class is estimated by some researchers to comprise approximately 45% of the population,  The Economist article would put the size of the American middle class below the world average. This difference is due to the extreme difference in definitions between The Economist and many other models.

In 2010, a working paper by the OECD asserted that 1.8 billion people were now members of the global "middle class". Credit Suisse's Global Wealth Report 2014, released in October 2014, estimated that one billion adults belonged to the "middle class," with wealth anywhere between the range of $10,000–$100,000.

According to a study carried out by the Pew Research Center, a combined 16% of the world's population in 2011 were "upper-middle income" and "upper income".

An April 2019 OECD report said that the millennial generation is being pushed out of the middle class throughout the Western world.

China
Since the beginning of the 21st century, China's middle class has grown by significant margins. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, by 2013, some 420 million people, or 31%, of the Chinese population qualified as middle class. Based on the World Bank definition of middle class as those having with daily spending between $10 and $50 per day, nearly 40% of the Chinese population were considered middle class as of 2017.

China's middle class represents a significant market force with effects extending beyond its borders. The promise of increased prosperity and a consumer society has been a driving force behind this growth, while also suggesting the potential for political changes similar to those seen in Europe and North America. However, it's important to note that the Chinese middle class differs substantially from its Western counterparts. Despite its growth, it remains a relatively small group profoundly joined with the Chinese state. This unique relationship challenges assumptions about its role in political change. Criticisms from this demographic often center on improving efficiency and social justice within the existing political framework, rather than advocating for a regime change.

India
Estimates vary widely on the number of middle-class people in India. A 1983 article put the Indian middle class as somewhere between 70 and 100 million. According to one study the middle class in India stood at between 60 and 80 million by 1990. According to The Economist, 78 million of India's population are considered middle class as of 2017, if defined using the cutoff of those making more than $10 per day, a standard used by the India's National Council of Applied Economic Research. If including those with incomes between $2 and $10 per day, the number increases to 604 million. This was termed by researchers as the "new middle class". Measures considered include geography, lifestyle, income, and education. The World Inequality Report in 2018 further concluded that elites (i.e. the top 10%) are accumulating wealth at a greater rate than the middle class, that rather than growing, India's middle class may be shrinking in size.

Africa
According to a 2014 study by Standard Bank economist Simon Freemantle, a total of 15.3 million households in 11 surveyed nations of Africa are middle class: Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. In South Africa, a report conducted by the Institute for Race Relations in 2015 estimated that between 10% and 20% of South Africans are middle class, based on various criteria. An earlier study estimated that in 2008 21.3% of South Africans were members of the middle class.

A study by EIU Canback indicates 90% of Africans fall below an income of $10 a day. The proportion of Africans in the $10–$20 middle class (excluding South Africa), rose from 4.4% to only 6.2% between 2004 and 2014. Over the same period, the proportion of "upper middle class" income ($20–$50 a day) went from 1.4% to 2.3%.

According to a 2014 study by the German Development Institute, the middle class of Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 14 million to 31 million people between 1990 and 2010.

Latin America
Over the years estimates on the size of the Latin America's middle class have varied. A 1960 study stated that the middle strata in Latin America as a whole, exclusive of Indians, constituted just under 20% of the national society. A 1964 study estimated that 45 million Latin Americans belonged to the urban middle class while 15 million to the urban well-to-do and 8 million to the rural middle class and well-to-do. In Brazil, according to one estimate, in 1970 the lower middle class comprised 12% of the population, while the upper middle class comprised 3%. In the mid-1970s it was estimated by one authority that the Brazilian middle class comprised between 15 and 25% of the population. A 1969 economic survey estimated that 15% of Brazilians belonged to the middle class. By 1970, according to one study, the middle class of Argentina comprised 38% of the economically active population, compared with 19% in Brazil and 24% in Mexico. A 1975 study on Mexico estimated that the middle class in 1968 (defined as families earning between 2,000 and 5,000 pesos annually) comprised 36.4% of the population, while the upper class (defined as families earning over 5,000 pesos annually) comprised 9.4% of the population and the lower class (defined as families earning less than 2,000 pesos annually) comprised 53.9% of the population.

According to a study by the World Bank, the number of Latin Americans who are middle class rose from 103 million to 152 million between 2003 and 2009.

Russia
In 2012, the "middle class" in Russia was estimated as 15% of the whole population. Due to sustainable growth, the pre-crisis level was exceeded. In 2015, research from the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated that around 15% of the Russian population are "firmly middle class", while around another 25% are "on the periphery".

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Friedrich Paschen

Louis Carl Heinrich Friedrich Paschen (22 January 1865 - 25 February 1947), was a German physicist, known for his work on electrical discharges. He is also known for the Paschen series, a series of hydrogen spectral lines in the infrared region that he first observed in 1908. He established the now widely used Paschen curve in his article "Über die zum Funkenübergang in Luft, Wasserstoff und Kohlensäure bei verschiedenen Drücken erforderliche Potentialdifferenz". He is known for the Paschen-Back effect, which is the Zeeman effect's becoming non-linear at high magnetic field. He helped explain the hollow cathode effect in 1916.

Life
Paschen was born in Schwerin, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. From 1884 to 1888 he studied at the universities of Berlin and Strassburg, after which he became an assistant at the Academy of Münster. He became a professor at the Technical Academy of Hannover in 1893 and professor of physics at the University of Tübingen in 1901. He served as president of the Physikalisch-Technischen Reichsanstalt from 1924–33 and an honorary professor of the University of Berlin in 1925.

During the second world war he had the Chinese scientist He Zehui to stay at his house and she became like a daughter to him. With his help she was introduced to Walther Bothe who led the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Heidelberg.

Paschen taught in Berlin until his death in Potsdam in 1947. He is buried at the Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Private sector

The private sector is the part of the economy which is owned by private groups, usually as a means of establishment for profit or non profit, rather than being owned by the government.

Employment
The private sector employs most of the workforce in some countries. In private sector, activities are guided by the motive to earn money, i.e. operate by capitalist standards.

A 2013 study by the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank Group) identified that 90 percent of jobs in developing countries are in the private sector.

Diversification
In free enterprise countries, such as the United States, the private sector is wider, and the state places fewer constraints on firms. In countries with more government authority, such as China, the public sector makes up most of the economy.

Regulation
States legally regulate the private sector. Businesses operating within a country must comply with the laws in that country. In some cases, usually involving multinational corporations that can pick and choose their suppliers and locations based on their perception of the regulatory environment, local state regulations have resulted in uneven practices within one company. For example, workers in one country may benefit from strong labour unions, while workers in another country have very weak laws supporting labour unions, even though they work for the same employer. In some cases, industries and individual businesses choose self-regulation by applying higher standards for dealing with their workers, customers, or the environment than the minimum that is legally required of them.

There can be negative effects from the private sector. In the early 1980s, the Corrections Corporation of America pioneered the idea of running prisons for a profit. Today, corporate-run prisons hold eight percent of America's inmates. Since it is from the private sector, their main priority is not rehabilitation, but profit. This has resulted in many human rights violations across the United States.

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Puffin crossing

A puffin crossing (its name derived from the phrase "pedestrian user-friendly intelligent" ) is a type of pedestrian crossing in use in the United Kingdom.

The design is distinct from the older pelican crossing in that the lights signalling to the pedestrians are on the same side of the road as the pedestrian, rather than across the road. From 2016, pelican crossings began to be phased out in the United Kingdom, to be replaced with puffin crossings.

They have two sensors on top of the traffic lights (pedestrian crossing detector; PCD, and pedestrian kerb detector; PKD). These sensors detect if pedestrians are crossing slowly and can hold the red traffic light longer if needed. If a pedestrian presses the button but then walks off, the PKD will cancel the request making the lights more efficient.

Function
Unlike the older pelican crossing designs, where the pedestrian signal lights are mounted on the opposite side of the road, the puffin crossing has them mounted at the near road side, set diagonally to the road edge. This allows the pedestrian to monitor passing traffic while waiting for the signal to cross. A second reason for the design is that having the lights closer to the user assists visually impaired people who could have difficulty viewing the signal from across the carriageway.

Some push-button units (the lower box in the image) are also fitted with a tactile knob under the unit which rotates when the user may cross. This feature is to assist visually impaired people who struggle to see the light change.

After a request to cross (by button press), a kerb side detector monitors the pedestrian's presence at the crossing. Should the pedestrian cross prematurely, walk away from the crossing, or wait outside the detection area, the pedestrian's request to cross could be automatically cancelled. This is so traffic is not halted unnecessarily. An on-crossing detector ensures that the signal for vehicles remains red until pedestrians have finished crossing (within practical limits). Unlike the pelican crossing, there is no transitional "flashing" phase.

The pedestrian phase will start at the moment all three of these conditions are fulfilled:
 * the pedestrian push button has been pressed since the end of the last pedestrian phase
 * the "Maximum Traffic Green Timer" has expired
 * the detectors indicate that a pedestrian is still waiting to cross

The "Maximum Traffic Green Timer" is started either when the pedestrian push button is pressed or when the traffic signals first turn green after the previous pedestrian phase. The latter arrangement is termed the "pre-timed Maximum Facility".

Concerns
Concerns have been expressed that Puffin crossings may be less safe than Pelican crossings due to the nearside indicator not being visible while crossing, and being at a different focal length, reducing traffic awareness. The indicator box itself also blocks the view of the road completely for shorter pedestrians due to being installed at head height. However, a 2005 study commissioned by the DfT found that Puffins were safer than Pelican crossings with fewer pedestrian accidents and fewer involving cars, despite confusing pedestrians.

In 2014, Transport for London announced that they would stop installing Puffins, saying that "Pedestrians have previously indicated to us that they dislike the uncertainty of not knowing whether the 'green man' is still lit once they have started crossing, which happens with nearside signals." Birmingham City Council also said that year that they would not be installing low level indicators at busy city centre crossings, expressing concern that the pedestrian indicator could be obscured by crowds.

Other sources

 * The History of British Roadsigns, United Kingdom Department for Transport, 2nd Edition, 1999

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Bow Street Runners

The Bow Street Runners were the law enforcement officers of the Bow Street Magistrates' Court in the City of Westminster. They have been called London's first professional police force. The force originally numbered six men and was founded in 1749 by magistrate Henry Fielding, who was also well known as an author. His assistant, brother, and successor as magistrate, John Fielding, moulded the constables into a professional and effective force. Bow Street Runners was the public's nickname for the officers although the officers did not use the term themselves and considered it derogatory. The group was disbanded in 1839 and its personnel merged with the Metropolitan Police, which had been formed ten years earlier.

Policing before 1749
The Bow Street Runners are considered the first British police force. Before the force was founded, the law enforcing system was in the hands of private citizens and single individuals with very little intervention from the state. A police force like the Maréchaussée already present in France would have been ill-suited to Britain, which saw examples such as the French one as a threat to their liberty and balanced constitution in favour of an arbitrary and tyrannical government. The enforcement of the law then was mostly up to the private citizens, who had the right and duty to prosecute crimes in which they were involved or in which they were not. At the cry of 'murder!' or 'stop thief!' everyone was entitled and obliged to join the pursuit. Once the criminal had been apprehended, the parish constables and night watchmen, who were the only public figures provided by the state and who were typically part-time and local, would make the arrest.

As a result, the state set a reward to encourage citizens to arrest and prosecute offenders. The first of such rewards was established in 1692 of the amount of £40 for the conviction of a highwayman and in the following years it was extended to burglars, coiners and other forms of offence. The reward was to be increased in 1720 when, after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the consequent rise of criminal offences, the government offered £100 for the conviction of a highwayman. Although the offer of such a reward was conceived as an incentive for the victims of an offence to proceed to the prosecution and to bring criminals to justice, the efforts of the government also increased the number of private and unofficial thief-takers, who would solve petty crime for a fee.

Thief-takers became infamously known not so much for what they were supposed to do, catching real criminals and prosecuting them, as for "setting themselves up as intermediaries between victims and their attackers, extracting payments for the return of stolen goods and using the threat of prosecution to keep offenders in thrall". Some of them, such as Jonathan Wild, became infamous at the time for staging robberies in order to receive the reward.

Origins
Magistrate Henry Fielding decided to regulate, regularise, formalise and legalise the thief-takers' activity due to high rates of corruption and mistaken or malicious arrests, therefore creating the Bow Street Runners. His Runners were not dissimilar to the thief-takers, but differed from them in their formal attachment to the Bow Street magistrates' office and in being paid by the magistrate with funds from central government. They worked out of Fielding's office and court at No. 4 Bow Street, and did not patrol but served writs and arrested offenders on the authority of the magistrates, travelling nationwide to apprehend criminals.

Henry Fielding's work was carried on by his brother Justice John Fielding, who succeeded him as magistrate in the Bow Street office. Under John Fielding, the institution of the Bow Street Runners gained more and more recognition from the government, although the force was only funded intermittently in the years that followed. It served as the guiding principle for the way that policing developed over the next 80 years. Bow Street was a manifestation of the move towards increasing professionalisation and state control of street life, beginning in London.

Henry Fielding (1750–1754)
Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle turned to Henry Fielding for help. Fielding had become a Westminster magistrate in 1748 and in his house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, he had started a kind of magisterial work that was different from anything that had been done before. Taking up the legacy of his predecessor, Sir Thomas de Veil, Fielding turned Bow Street into a court-like setting in which to conduct examinations. However, his reformed method was not limited to his magisterial activity in Bow Street; it was also extended outside of the magistrate's office. In fact, since 1749–50 Henry Fielding had begun organising a group of men with the task of apprehending offenders and taking them to Bow Street for examination and commitment to trial. Such an organised intervention was needed, according to Fielding, because of the difficulties and reluctance of private citizens to apprehend criminals, especially if those were part of a gang — reluctance largely caused by the fear of retaliation and by the extremely high costs of the prosecution that would have to be paid by the victim of the crime. This activity, however, was very similar to the thief-takers' enterprise and, as such, it could have been considered as corrupt as the latter. Therefore, Fielding wrote a number of pamphlets to justify the activity of thief-taking; he argued that the legitimacy of this activity had been undermined by the actions of a few (see for example Jonathan Wild) and that, in fact, thief-takers performed a public service where the civil authorities were weaker. Another step towards the legitimation of the activity of the Bow Street Runners concerned the lawfulness of an arrest made by an ordinary citizen. Fielding made clear that constables were not the only ones to have the right to make an arrest, but under special circumstances – such as with a warrant issued by a magistrate – also private citizens could act against a suspected criminal and arrest them.

Another problem that Fielding had to face was that of the economic support of the Runners; without any direct funding from the government, the men at Fielding's service were left relying on the rewards issued by the state after an offender's conviction and by private citizens in order to retrieve their stolen goods. It is also true that many of the original Runners were also serving constables, so they were financially supported by the state. Nevertheless, the problem persisted and, in 1753, Fielding's initiative came close to failing when his men had stopped their thief-taking activity for some time. A way out of this situation came in the same year, when the government lamented spending too much money on rewards with no apparent decrease in the crime rates. At this point, the Duke of Newcastle, the secretary of state at the time, asked Fielding for advice, which he presently gave. The document that Fielding presented to the government revolved around the activity of the Bow Street officers; Fielding's suggestion included that he be given more money in addition to his own magistrate's stipend for two main purposes. The first was, of course, to offer economic support to the officers working in Bow Street, which would have allowed these men to extend their policing activities well beyond the simple thief-taking. The other purpose was to advertise the activity of the Bow Street office and to encourage private citizens to report crimes and provide information about offenders; the advertisements would be published in the Public Advertiser, a paper in which, as some critics have pointed out, the Fielding brothers had a financial interest.

In late 1753, the government approved Fielding's proposal and established an annual subvention of £200, that allowed Fielding not only to support the advertisement and the Bow Street officers but also to maintain a stable group of clerks who kept detailed records of their activities. A new kind of magistrate's office and policing activity was therefore established; after the death of Henry Fielding in 1754, it was carried on by his brother John, who had overseen the whole project and was to further expand and develop it over the following years.

Sir John's Runners (1754–1780)
When Henry Fielding died in 1754, he was succeeded as Magistrate by his brother Sir John Fielding, who had previously been his assistant for four years. Known as the "Blind Beak of Bow Street", John Fielding refined the patrol into the first truly effective police force for the capital, later adding officers mounted on horseback, and remained chief magistrate of Westminster until his death in 1780.

As soon as he was appointed, John Fielding examined the activity of the Bow Street office and the issues that needed to be addressed; the financial contribution from the state was still in place, so his pamphlet focused mainly on the need to tackle violence and highway robbery in particular. At the beginning, Fielding shared his office with Saunders Welch, an energetic former grocer elected High Constable of Holborn. Eventually, the government agreed to establish a separate magistrate office from which Welch could operate, leaving Fielding as the dominant presence in Bow Street. Over the years, the government subvention raised from the initial £200 to £400 in 1757 and to £600 by 1765, as Fielding managed to persuade the Duke of Newcastle, now First Lord of the Treasury, of the increasing costs of an active policing and advertising, as well as of the need of recruiting a permanent clerical staff for the office. The administration of the funds was left largely in Fielding's hands. He provided payments to six officers, for investigating and attempting to apprehend offenders, and occasionally to a few assistants.

During John Fielding's time as a magistrate, the Bow Street office seems to have been open for most of the day and for most days of the week, even when Fielding was not himself in the office, and there was always a so-called 'ordinary' to whom one could report offences also during the night-time. One of the main activities carried out by clerks and assistants in the office was to collect and record information about offences and offenders, therefore creating a sort of criminal database that could turn useful to officers in their investigating activities. Fielding believed that a national system of criminal information circulating throughout not only the metropolis of London but also the entire country would ensure that offenders would be arrested and brought to justice; moreover, anyone contemplating an offence would be deterred from doing so.

In addition, he introduced innovations at the Bow Street office that would have a great effect on the first procedures of criminal prosecution. Fielding created a court-like setting that could attract and accommodate a large audience for his examinations of suspected offenders, opened and available for the public for long and regular hours. In doing so, he turned the office from being the mere house of a magistrate to being the Bow Street Magistrates' Court in which several justices were employed in rotation in order to keep the office open for long hours every day. This process of transformation was further amplified by Fielding's success in encouraging the London press to attend and provide their readers with a weekly report on his activity.

John Fielding's legacy (1780–1815)
Just after John Fielding's death in 1780, the crisis of the administration of criminal law renewed itself, primarily for three different factors. The first was the rise in crime rates because the end of a period of war (in this case the American Revolution) and the consequent return in the country of many soldiers and sailors, who were now out of a job. The second factor was directly linked to the first and concerned the issue of transportation to the American colonies, which had been established in 1718 and begun the principal sanction imposed on convicted felons. The loss of the American territories resulted in convicts piling up in inadequate jails, as they continued to be sentenced to transportation, without an actual destination. The government was forced to find either an alternative destination for convicts sentenced to transportation or an alternative sanction. The third factor concerned the events that took place in London in June 1780, known as the Gordon Riots during which the authorities lost control of the streets of the city. Those events highlighted the weakness of London policing and magisterial system.

The government responded by establishing the Home Department in 1782, therefore allowing the administration of criminal law to receive more focused attention than before. In time, this office would provide a centre to deal with all the aspects of criminal administration. In 1782 it also supported the new Bow Street Foot Patrols. Eventually, in 1785, the Home Department attempted to introduce and pass A Bill for the further Prevention of Crimes, and for the more speedy Detection and Punishment of Offenders against the Peace, in the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, and certain Parts adjacent to them, which was meant to provide a measure of central control over the many police forces across the metropolis but failed to do so. Some elements were derived from the existing institutions, particularly Bow Street, but the concept of the metropolis as a unified district and a central command overseeing many policing divisions was completely new.

In addition to the reform of the structure of the London policing forces, the bill included clauses aimed at the prevention of crime, such as giving police preventive powers to search and arrested on suspicion. An example is when they arrest Colonel Edward Despard, for provoking the Despard Plot. In 1792, Parliament did pass legislation that introduced some reform to the system, the Middlesex Justices Act 1792 (32 Geo. 3. c. 53) which contained two elements of the 1785 bill: one was the establishment of public offices where magistrates monopolized the administration of criminal law throughout the metropolis, and the other was the increase in the powers of the police. The Act was mainly based on the model presented by the Bow Street office and on Fielding's conception of the magistrate and of how to deal with crime, therefore leading to the replication of the Bow Street structure throughout London.

Under the new legislation, the Bow Street office maintained a privileged position among the other offices of the metropolis, due to the closer relationship of its magistrates with the Home Office and to the financial resources at their disposal, regulated by an informal agreement with the Treasury rather than by legislation, therefore increasing the policing resources available. This made it possible for the government to use the Runners and the patrolmen as they thought necessary, increasing their range of investigation, that now included more engagement with threats to national security and social disorder, as can be seen by the fewer and fewer accounts of Runners giving evidence in trials at the Old Bailey.

The Runners' last years (1815–1839)
In the new century, crime rates diminished in the metropolis, therefore the contribution of the Runners to the policing of property offences decreased considerably; they continued to investigate offences in London, but not as actively as they had before. Their incomes from London crime diminished as the position that Bow Street had once held in the commitment of felons to trial continued to erode with the expansion of the patrol and the creation of new police offices from 1792. By the early 1820s, Bow Street was responsible for just over 10% of the accused felons being committed to trial at the Old Bailey. After 1815, the Runners' most regular employment was to respond to help requests from prosecutors outside London. These were likely cases in which their skill and experience was thought to be useful in investigating offences in the provinces.

After the Metropolitan Police Act 1829, which established the Metropolitan Police, the policing responsibilities of the Bow Street magistrates were very considerably diminished. The Bow Street patrol was gradually absorbed into the new police force and Bow Street was left with only the Runners. Even then, the Home Office held much of the authority over the activity of the Runners and was mainly concerned to bring Bow Street's finances under control. The Bow Street magistrates' effective loss of authority over the activity of the Runners and the government's concern to control costs meant that the funds for the office were much diminished in the 1830s.

In 1834, a parliamentary committee recommended that the Bow Street men and constables should be incorporated with the Metropolitan Police as soon as possible and, although this report was not enforced, their conclusions were taken up and expanded by another committee in 1837. The reports of these committees were enacted into law as a renewal of the Police Act in 1839 and, in doing so, made the Runners at Bow Street redundant.

Policing activity
Bow Street's involvement in a case began quite simply with the arrival of a victim or a messenger who wanted to report a crime. This was encouraged by the promise of a reward to the messenger (usually a shilling) and of a paid advertisement in one or more papers of the stolen goods. Fielding believed strongly in the importance of a rapid spread of information and therefore advertising was very important to his policing strategy. Of course, this included also the advertising of the activity carried out in Bow Street, as well as exhortations to victims to report offences and any kind of information on criminals and stolen goods. In case of robbery or other serious offences, Bow Street officers were immediately involved and dispatched. The success of their detection work and of the apprehension of offenders relied on the rapid collection and communication of information about the crime committed and on the descriptions of the offenders. Officers could go out on their own initiative to investigate an offence, as essentially they were hired by the victims to give them help. Most victims were expected to pay the expenses of the investigation and to offer a small reward for information as well. They would also have to face the expenses of an eventual trial, even though if the offender was convicted they would have had the right to receive financial compensation from the court.

Later, as a response to the numerous reports of attacks by footpads and highwaymen, Fielding decided to send some men to patrol the squares of Westminster and the highways leading into the city, also on horseback from 1756, though by 1766–67 horseback patrolling had been sharply curtailed, due to the excessive costs. Nevertheless, two 'pursuit horses' were maintained to send officers to patrol roads from time to time. The patrol activity of the Bow Street officers is an indicator of a fundamental characteristic of the Bow Street policing system, which is its undefined geographical range. In fact, the officers were not restricted to a particular area of the city but were able to operate across the entire metropolis, and also beyond London itself. To facilitate the reach of the office, Fielding was named in the commissions of the peace of Kent, Essex and Surrey, in addition to those of Middlesex and Westminster. That meant that the Bow Street officers did not have to seek the assistance of local magistrates in the counties surrounding London in order to make an arrest or carry out a search. Otherwise, they would have had to seek such assistance, although in practice there was not any impediment to their working wherever their enquiries took them, as some accounts from 1756 show that they pursued suspects into Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and even to Bristol.

Fielding's policing system relied very much on the information provided by informants, to whom were directed the many pamphlets and advertisements published by the Bow Street office. Turnpike gatekeepers and publicans were therefore encouraged to report crimes and offences as soon as possible to Bow Street, in order to allow Fielding's men to presently seek out and apprehend the offenders.

title: Bow Street Runners


text:
VEB

VEB may stand for:

 * Venturing and Emerging Brands, a division of Coca-Cola
 * Virtual business
 * Venezuelan bolívar, currency of Venezuela between 1879 and 2007, ISO 4217 code
 * Volkseigener Betrieb (German for "People-owned enterprise"), a state-owned workplace or establishment in the Cold-War-era East Germany
 * VEB.RF, a state-owned Russian financial institution formerly known as Vnesheconombank
 * Volvo Engine Brake (VEB), A modern brake technology has been used in FH-series
 * Van Emde Boas tree (vEB), A dictionary data-structure.
 * VEB Gustav Fischer Verlag, a subsidiary (based in Jena, Germany) of international publishing conglomerate Elsevier

title: VEB


text:
Scotland Act 1998

The Scotland Act 1998 (c. 46) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which legislated for the establishment of the devolved Scottish Parliament with tax varying powers and the Scottish Government (then Scottish Executive). It was one of the most significant constitutional pieces of legislation to be passed by the UK Parliament between the passing of the European Communities Act in 1972 and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act in 2018 and is the most significant piece of legislation to affect Scotland since the Acts of Union in 1707 which ratified the Treaty of Union and led to the disbandment of the Parliament of Scotland.

Content and history
The Act was introduced by the Labour government in 1998 to give effect to the Scottish devolution referendum in 1997 which showed that Scotland was in favour of both of the set questions, firstly for the creation of a parliament for Scotland and secondly, that this parliament should have tax varying powers. The Act creates the Scottish Parliament, sets out how Members of the Scottish Parliament are to be elected, makes some provision about the internal operation of the Parliament (although many issues are left for the Parliament itself to regulate) and sets out the process for the Parliament to consider and pass Bills which become Acts of the Scottish Parliament once they receive royal assent. The Act specifically declares the continued power of the UK Parliament to legislate in respect of Scotland; thereby upholding the concept of Westminster's absolute parliamentary sovereignty.

The Act also provides for the creation of a 'Scottish Executive' though one of the early actions of the SNP administration that won power in the 2007 elections was to rebrand the Scottish Executive, as the group of Ministers and their civil servants had been known, as the Scottish Government. Despite the re-branding, the 'Scottish Executive' still uses the original description for a number of purposes (s.44 of the Scotland Act defines the nature of the body but does not use the words "shall be known as" with regard to a name as is the case with various other bodies whose names are thus fixed by statute). It consists of a First Minister and other Ministers appointed by the Monarch with the approval of the Parliament, including the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General for Scotland.

The Act sets out the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament. Rather than listing the matters over which the Scottish Parliament does control (devolved powers), it specifies the matters over which it does not (reserved matters). It further designates a list of statutes which are not amenable to amendment or repeal by the Parliament which includes the Human Rights Act 1998 and many provisions of the Scotland Act itself. Even when acting within its legislative competence, the Act further constrains the powers of the Parliament by inhibiting it from acting in a manner incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights or European Community law. The same constraints apply to acts of the Scottish Executive.

The Act grants the Secretary of State for Scotland power to direct the Scottish Government not to take any action which he has reasonable grounds to believe "would be incompatible with any international obligations" or to act where he believes such action "is required for the purpose of giving effect to any such obligations".

The Act also sets up mechanisms to resolve disputes over questions about legislative competence of the Parliament and powers of the Executive. The ultimate appeal in such matters lies to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (prior to 1 October 2009, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council). The Westminster government can unilaterally prohibit an Act of the Scottish Parliament — even if legislatively competent — from receiving royal assent if it believes the law would affect matters of reserved law; this provision has been only used once, to veto the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill in 2023.

The Act also allows the powers of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive to be adjusted over time by agreement between both parliaments by means of an Order in Council.

The Act was passed on 17 November 1998, and received royal assent two days later on 19 November. The first elections were held in May 1999 and the Scottish Parliament and Executive assumed their full powers on 1 July 1999.

Amendments to the Act
The Act was amended by the Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004 to end the link between the number of MPs at Westminster and the number of constituency MSPs. It was amended again in 2016 as a reaction to the 2014 Scottish Independence vote.

The Wales Act 2014 made amendments to Part 4A of the Scotland Act around the definition of a Scottish taxpayer, to ensure that an individual could not be a taxpayer in both Scotland and Wales in the same year.

The Act has been amended by:
 * Scottish Parliament (Constituencies) Act 2004
 * Constitutional Reform Act 2005
 * Scotland Act 2012
 * Wales Act 2014
 * Scotland Act 2016
 * European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018

title: Scotland Act 1998


text:
Wenceslaus II of Bohemia

Wenceslaus II Přemyslid (Václav II.; Wacław II Czeski; 27 September 1271 – 21 June 1305) was King of Bohemia (1278–1305), Duke of Cracow (1291–1305), and King of Poland (1296–1305).

He was the only son of King Ottokar II of Bohemia and Ottokar's second wife Kunigunda. He was born in 1271, ten years after the marriage of his parents. Kunigunda was the daughter of Rostislav Mikhailovich, lord of Slavonia, son of a Grand Prince of Kiev, and Anna of Hungary, daughter of Béla IV of Hungary. His great-grandfather was the German king Philip of Swabia. Wenceslaus II was the grandfather of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. He was a member of the Přemyslid dynasty.

Early years
In 1276 Rudolf I, King of the Romans, placed Ottokar under the ban of the empire and besieged Vienna. This compelled Ottokar in November 1276 to sign a new treaty by which he gave up all claims to Austria and the neighbouring duchies, retaining for himself only Bohemia and Moravia. Wenceslaus was then betrothed to Rudolf's daughter Judith, creating an uneasy peace. Wenceslaus's father died on 26 August 1278 in the Battle on the Marchfeld shortly before Wenceslaus' seventh birthday.

Before Wenceslaus became of age, the government was handled by Otto V, Margrave of Brandenburg, who is said to have held Wenceslaus captive in several locations. He returned to Bohemia in 1283, at the age of twelve. His mother's second husband, Záviš of Falkenstein, ruled instead of him for a few years.

On 24 January 1285, Wenceslaus married Judith of Habsburg, daughter of Rudolf I, to whom he had been betrothed since 1276. In 1290, Wenceslaus had Záviš beheaded for alleged treason and began ruling independently.

Polish kingship
In 1291, High Duke Przemysł II of Poland ceded the sovereign Duchy of Kraków to Wenceslaus. Kraków was associated with the overlordship of Poland, but Przemysł held the other duchies and in 1295 was crowned king. After Przemysł's death in 1296, Wenceslaus became overlord of Poland and in 1300, and had himself crowned its king.

Silver in Kutná Hora
In 1298, silver was discovered at Kuttenberg (now Kutná Hora) in Central Bohemia. Wenceslaus took control of the mine by making silver production a royal monopoly and issued the Prague groschen, which became the most popular of the early Groschen-type coins. Kutná Hora was one of the richest European silver strikes ever: between 1300 and 1340 the mine may have produced as much as 20 tons of silver a year.

In 1300, Wenceslaus issued the new royal mining code Ius regale montanorum. This was a legal document that specified all administrative as well as technical terms and conditions necessary for the operation of mines.

The Crown of Hungary and death
Queen Judith died in 1297. Wenceslaus' second wife was Elisabeth Richeza, daughter of King Przemysl II of Poland (1295–1296).

In 1301, Wenceslaus' kinsman Andrew III of Hungary died and the Árpád dynasty became extinct in the male line. Wenceslaus was one of the relatives who claimed the throne, and he accepted it from a party of Hungarians on behalf of his young son, betrothed to Andrew's only child, Elizabeth. On 27 August 1301, his son was crowned in Székesfehérvár as king of Hungary.

At that time the Kingdom of Hungary was split into several de facto principalities, and young Wenceslaus was only accepted as the King of Hungary by the rulers in Upper Hungary (Matthew III Csák), West-Transdanubia(in modern-day Burgenland and West-Transdanubia(the Güssings [ Kőszegi (Croatian: Gisingovci)family who were their strongest supporters] and on territory around the capital, Buda. But the Abas and Matthew Csák switched sides in 1303 and started to support Wenceslaus' rival Charles Robert of Anjou. Consequently, the young Wenceslaus, in Ofen (Buda), became afraid and wrote to his father in Prague for help. His father took a large army and invaded Buda, but having considered the situation, he took his son and the Hungarian crown and returned to Bohemia (1304). Ivan Kőszegi was named to represent Wenceslaus III in Hungary.

Wenceslaus II died on 21 June 1305, at the age of 33, probably of tuberculosis. He was succeeded by his son, Wenceslaus III, the last of the Přemyslid kings.

Review of government of Wenceslaus II
Wenceslaus II is considered one of the most important Czech kings. He built a great empire stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Danube river and established numerous cities, such as Plzeň in 1295. He won for his family three royal crowns (Bohemia, Hungary and Poland). The Kingdom of Bohemia was the largest producer of silver in Europe in his time. He created Prague Groschen, which was an important European currency for centuries.

During his reign, there was great urban development. He planned to build the first university in Central Europe. The power and wealth of the Kingdom of Bohemia gave rise to great respect, but also to the hostility of European royal families. His son King Wenceslaus III was unable to maintain a mighty empire, and soon after the untimely death of Wenceslaus II, his empire began to crumble.

Family
In 1285 in Eger (Cheb), he married the German Princess Judith of Habsburg (1271–1297), daughter of King Rudolf I of Germany and his wife Gertrude of Hohenberg. She died shortly after their 10th child was born:
 * Přemysl Otakar (6 May 1288 – 19 November 1288).
 * Wenceslaus III (6 October 1289 – 4 August 1306); King of Bohemia, King of Hungary and King of Poland.
 * Agnes (6 October 1289 – soon after 6 August 1296), twin of Wenceslaus; married in 1296 to Rupert, eldest surviving son of German King Adolf of Nassau.
 * Anne (10 October 1290 – 3 September 1313), married in 1306 to Henry of Carinthia.
 * Elisabeth (20 January 1292 – 28 September 1330), married in 1310 to John of Luxembourg.
 * Judith (3 March 1293 – 3 August 1294).
 * John (26 February 1294 – 1 March 1295).
 * John (21 February 1295 – 6 December 1296).
 * Margaret (21 February 1296 – 8 April 1322), married in 1308 to Bolesław III the Generous, Duke of Wrocław.
 * Judith (born and died 21 May 1297).

In 1300, he married the Princess Elisabeth Richeza of Poland (1286–1335), daughter of Przemysł II, King of Poland. They had one child:
 * Agnes (25 June 1305 – before 4 January 1337), married to Henry I, Duke of Jawor.

Wenceslaus has also numerous illegitimate children, including Jan Volek (?? – 27 September 1351), bishop of Olomouc

Gallery
 File:WacławII.JPG|Seal of Wenceslaus II File:Coat of arms of the Kingdom of Bohemia (Wenceslaus II of Bohemia).svg|Coat of arms of Wenceslaus II (Kingdom of Bohemia) File:Coat of arms of the Margraviate of Moravia (Wenceslaus II).svg|Coat of arms of Wenceslaus II (Margraviate of Moravia) File:WenceslausIIBohemia.jpg|WenceslausIIBohemia File:VáclavII.jpg|VáclavII

title: Wenceslaus II of Bohemia


text:
Deming regression

In statistics, Deming regression, named after W. Edwards Deming, is an errors-in-variables model that tries to find the line of best fit for a two-dimensional data set. It differs from the simple linear regression in that it accounts for errors in observations on both the x- and the y- axis. It is a special case of total least squares, which allows for any number of predictors and a more complicated error structure.

Deming regression is equivalent to the maximum likelihood estimation of an errors-in-variables model in which the errors for the two variables are assumed to be independent and normally distributed, and the ratio of their variances, denoted δ, is known. In practice, this ratio might be estimated from related data-sources; however the regression procedure takes no account for possible errors in estimating this ratio.

The Deming regression is only slightly more difficult to compute than the simple linear regression. Most statistical software packages used in clinical chemistry offer Deming regression.

The model was originally introduced by who considered the case δ = 1, and then more generally by  with arbitrary δ. However their ideas remained largely unnoticed for more than 50 years, until they were revived by and later propagated even more by. The latter book became so popular in clinical chemistry and related fields that the method was even dubbed Deming regression in those fields.

Specification
Assume that the available data (yi, xi) are measured observations of the "true" values (yi*, xi*), which lie on the regression line:
 * $$\begin{align}

y_i &= y^*_i + \varepsilon_i, \\ x_i &= x^*_i + \eta_i, \end{align}$$ where errors ε and η are independent and the ratio of their variances is assumed to be known:
 * $$ \delta = \frac{\sigma_\varepsilon^2}{\sigma_\eta^2}. $$

In practice, the variances of the $$x$$ and $$y$$ parameters are often unknown, which complicates the estimate of $$ \delta $$. Note that when the measurement method for $$x$$ and $$y$$ is the same, these variances are likely to be equal, so $$ \delta = 1 $$ for this case.

We seek to find the line of "best fit"
 * $$y^* = \beta_0 + \beta_1 x^*,$$

such that the weighted sum of squared residuals of the model is minimized:
 * $$SSR = \sum_{i=1}^n\bigg(\frac{\varepsilon_i^2}{\sigma_\varepsilon^2} + \frac{\eta_i^2}{\sigma_\eta^2}\bigg) = \frac{1}{\sigma_\epsilon^2} \sum_{i=1}^n\Big((y_i-\beta_0-\beta_1x^*_i)^2 + \delta(x_i-x^*_i)^2\Big) \ \to\ \min_{\beta_0,\beta_1,x_1^*,\ldots,x_n^*} SSR$$

See for a full derivation.

Solution
The solution can be expressed in terms of the second-degree sample moments. That is, we first calculate the following quantities (all sums go from i = 1 to n):
 * $$\begin{align}

\overline{x} &= \tfrac{1}{n}\sum x_i & \overline{y} &= \tfrac{1}{n}\sum y_i,\\ s_{xx} &= \tfrac{1}{n}\sum (x_i-\overline{x})^2   &&= \overline{x^2} - \overline{x}^2, \\ s_{xy} &= \tfrac{1}{n}\sum (x_i-\overline{x})(y_i-\overline{y})   &&= \overline{x y} - \overline{x} \, \overline{y}, \\ s_{yy} &= \tfrac{1}{n}\sum (y_i-\overline{y})^2   &&= \overline{y^2} - \overline{y}^2. \end{align}\,$$

Finally, the least-squares estimates of model's parameters will be
 * $$\begin{align}

& \hat\beta_1 = \frac{s_{yy}-\delta s_{xx} + \sqrt{(s_{yy}-\delta s_{xx})^2 + 4\delta s_{xy}^2}}{2s_{xy}}, \\ & \hat\beta_0 = \overline{y} - \hat\beta_1\overline{x}, \\ & \hat{x}_i^* = x_i + \frac{\hat\beta_1}{\hat\beta_1^2+\delta}(y_i-\hat\beta_0-\hat\beta_1x_i). \end{align}$$

Orthogonal regression
For the case of equal error variances, i.e., when $$\delta=1$$, Deming regression becomes orthogonal regression: it minimizes the sum of squared perpendicular distances from the data points to the regression line. In this case, denote each observation as a point $$z_j = x_j +i y_j$$ in the complex plane (i.e., the point $$(x_j, y_j)$$ where $$i$$ is the imaginary unit). Denote as $$S=\sum{(z_j - \overline z)^2}$$ the sum of the squared differences of the data points from the centroid $$\overline z = \tfrac{1}{n} \sum z_j$$ (also denoted in complex coordinates), which is the point whose horizontal and vertical locations are the averages of those of the data points. Then:

 * If $$S=0$$, then every line through the centroid is a line of best orthogonal fit.
 * If $$S \neq 0$$, the orthogonal regression line goes through the centroid and is parallel to the vector from the origin to $$\sqrt{S}$$.

A trigonometric representation of the orthogonal regression line was given by Coolidge in 1913.

Application
In the case of three non-collinear points in the plane, the triangle with these points as its vertices has a unique Steiner inellipse that is tangent to the triangle's sides at their midpoints. The major axis of this ellipse falls on the orthogonal regression line for the three vertices. The quantification of a biological cell's intrinsic cellular noise can be quantified upon applying Deming regression to the observed behavior of a two reporter synthetic biological circuit.

When humans are asked to draw a linear regression on a scatterplot by guessing, their answers are closer to orthogonal regression than to ordinary least squares regression.

York regression
The York regression extends Deming regression by allowing correlated errors in x and y.

title: Deming regression


text:
They think it's all over

"They think it's all over" is a quote from Kenneth Wolstenholme's BBC TV commentary in the closing moments of the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final, when England beat West Germany 4–2 after extra time to win the FIFA World Cup. In the final few seconds of the match, Wolstenholme said:

 * And here comes Hurst! He's got...
 * (Wolstenholme is distracted by some of the crowd spilling onto the pitch)
 * Some people are on the pitch! They think it's all over!
 * (Geoff Hurst scores to put England two goals ahead)
 * It is now, it's four!

Soon after the 1966 victory, Wolstenholme's quote became a widely used expression.

In popular culture
The phrase, along with other calls from English football matches, appears in New Order's song "World In Motion", although in that case Wolstenholme re-recorded it with the slightly different words "Well, some of the crowd are on the pitch. They think it's all over. Well it is now". The British band The Dentists called their first album Some People Are on the Pitch They Think It's All Over It Is Now in Wolstenholme's honour; the LP begins with a sample of Wolstenholme's original commentary. Track #3 on British folk metal act Skyclad's EP Jig-a-Jig is called "They Think It's All Over". The song contains the phrase "They think it's all over. Well is it now?" in its chorus and includes several references to the 1966 FIFA World Cup.

In Neil Marshall's Dog Soldiers the last words that the character Cooper says are, "You think it's all over? It is now."

The quotation was also used as the title of the BBC's satirical sports quiz show They Think It's All Over, which appeared on BBC One from 1995 to 2006. The show has heightened the popularity of the phrase in recent years, though Kenneth Wolstenholme was reportedly unhappy with the use of the phrase for the title of the show.

An alternative mix for The Beatles song "Glass Onion", which appeared on Anthology 3, contained a portion of Kenneth Wolstenholme's commentary. At the end of the track he can be heard shouting "It's a goal!" repeating for several seconds until the track fades.

In the Discworld book Unseen Academicals the book has two false endings, each followed by "You think it's all over?" and at the actual end "It is Now!"

BBC parodist Dave Henson used the line to refer to the 1966 winning team during his parody of "I'll Be Missing You" by Puff Daddy and the Family/The Police.
 * Boys of '66 hey take a bow..
 * They think it's all over, it is now!

The video game Kinect Sports, which has football as one of the six sports represented, has two achievements that refer to the quote: "They Think It's All Over..." is awarded when the players wins their first football match, and "...It Is Now!" is obtained when the player wins with a goal scored in the final 10 seconds.

title: They think it's all over


text:
Talk:Praseodymium

Untitled
Article changed over to new WikiProject Elements format by schnee. Elementbox converted 11:00, 10 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 13:13, 9 July 2005). 9 July 2005

Information Sources
Data for the table was obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and WikiProject Elements but was reformatted and converted into SI units.

--

About NFPA 704
In the NFPA 704 diamond of praseodymium, Health, Flammability and Reactivity are 0, 4, and 4 respectively. But for neodymium it is 2, 0, and 0.

A flammability of 4 means that it is easily dispersed in the air and is easy to burn (such as methane), and a reactivity of 4 means that it can explode quickly under normal temperature and pressure (such as TNT).

I checked the history and found no trace of vandalism. Is this true? I can't find relevant information.--DoroWolf (talk) 02:49, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

5d electrons in praseodymium?
The article says "Like most other metals in the lanthanide series, praseodymium usually only uses three electrons as valence electrons, as afterward the remaining 4f electrons are too strongly bound: this is because the 4f orbitals penetrate the most through the inert xenon core of electrons to the nucleus, followed by 5d and 6s, and this increases with higher ionic charge."

I don't see any 5d electrons in praseodymium. Should that be 4d, or what? Vaughan Pratt (talk) 19:08, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

 * Also, Pr only has 3 f electrons to start with, so it doesn't have any remaining. Some of the other lanthanides have 5d and 6s electrons, that's where this comes from. This statement has been copied and pasted from a general description of lanthanides and doesn't describe the situation in Pr very well. Owensumm (talk) 20:04, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Praseodymium


text:
Talk:Protactinium

Discovery
Pubchem states that " IUPAC who officially named it protactinium and confirmed Hahn and Meitner as co-discoverers". The infobox and text says different. What to do? (and: what means 'co-discoverers': the two together or 'co' with Fajan and Gohring?). -DePiep (talk) 19:41, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * With these radioelements there tends to be a conflation between discovering the isotope and the element. In the past the most stable isotope gave the element its name, thus causing the confusion. Hahn and Meitner were the first to discover 231Pa; in the past, "protactinium" also meant this isotope as well as the element. But Fajans and Göhring had discovered 234Pa years before.
 * A similar confusion goes on with radon. The most stable isotope, 222Rn, was discovered in 1900 by Dorn. The fact that Rutherford and Owens had already discovered 220Rn the previous year is generally overlooked. Double sharp (talk) 08:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Protactinium