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Constitution of Croatia

The Constitution of the Republic of Croatia (Ustav Republike Hrvatske) is promulgated by the Croatian Parliament.

History
While it was part of the socialist Yugoslavia, the Socialist Republic of Croatia had its own Constitution under the Constitution of Yugoslavia.

Following the first multi-party parliamentary elections held in April 1990, the Parliament made various constitutional changes. On December 22, 1990, they rejected the communist one-party system, adopted a liberal-democratic constitution and dropped the 'Socialist' label from the country's name, becoming Republic of Croatia. The document is sometimes known as the Christmas Constitution (Božićni ustav).

The Constitution was amended in early 1998.

The Constitution of 1990 used the semi-presidential model of the French Fifth Republic, with broad Presidential executive powers shared with the Government.

In 2000, and again in 2001, the Croatian Parliament amended the Constitution changing bicameral parliament back into historic unicameral and reducing the Presidential powers.

The Constitution was most recently amended in 2013. This constitutional amendment defines marriage within Croatia as a union between a man and a woman. Effective 1 January 2014.

Historical foundations
This is the preamble of the Constitution. It explains how the Croats managed to preserve their national identity throughout centuries in various forms of states from the formation of Croatian principalities in 7th century until present days.

The millenary identity of the Croatian nation and the continuity of its statehood, confirmed by the course of its entire historical experience within different forms of states and by the preservation and growth of the idea of a national state, founded on the historical right of the Croatian nation to full sovereignty, manifested in:
 * the formation of Croatian principalities in the seventh century;
 * the independent mediaeval state of Croatia founded in the ninth century;
 * the Kingdom of the Croats established in the tenth century;
 * the preservation of the identity of the Croatian state in the Croatian-Hungarian personal union;
 * the independent and sovereign decision of the Croatian Parliament of 1527 to elect a king from the Habsburg dynasty;
 * the independent and sovereign decision of the Croatian Parliament of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1712;
 * the conclusions of the Croatian Parliament of 1848 regarding the restoration of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia under the authority of the ban grounded on the historical, national and natural right of the Croatian nation;
 * the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement of 1868 on the relations between the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia and the Kingdom of Hungary, grounded on the legal traditions of both states and the Pragmatic Sanction of 1712;
 * the decision of the Croatian Parliament of 29 October 1918 to dissolve state relations between Croatia and Austria-Hungary and the simultaneous affiliation of independent Croatia, invoking its historical and natural right as a nation, with the state of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, proclaimed on the former territory of the Habsburg monarchy;
 * the fact that the Croatian Parliament had never sanctioned the decision of the National Council of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to unite with Serbia and Montenegro in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1 December 1918), subsequently (3 October 1929) proclaimed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia;
 * the establishment of the Home Rule (Banovina) of Croatia in 1939, by which Croatian state identity was restored within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia,
 * establishing the foundations of state sovereignty during the course of the Second World War, by the decisions of the Antifascist Council of National Liberation of Croatia (1943), as opposed to the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia (1941), and subsequently in the Constitution of the People's Republic of Croatia (1947) and all later constitutions of the Socialist Republic of Croatia (1963–1990), on the threshold of the historical changes, marked by the collapse of the communist system and changes in the European international order, the Croatian nation by its freely expressed will at the first democratic elections (1990) reaffirmed its millenniary statehood. By the new Constitution of the Republic of Croatia (1990) and the victory in the Homeland War (1991–1995), the Croatian nation demonstrated its will and determination to establish and defend the Republic of Croatia as a free, independent, sovereign and democratic state.

Considering the presented historical facts and universally accepted principles of the modern world, as well as the inalienable and indivisible, non-transferable and nonexhaustible right of the Croatian nation to self-determination and state sovereignty, including its fully maintained right to secession and association, as basic provisions for peace and stability of the international order, the Republic of Croatia is established as the nation state of the Croatian people and the state of the members of autochthonous national minorities: Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Bosniaks, Slovenians, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Roma, Romanians, Turks, Vlachs, Albanians and the others who are citizens, and who are guaranteed equality with citizens of Croatian nationality and the realization of national rights in accordance with the democratic norms of the United Nations Organization and the countries of the free world. Respecting the will of the Croatian nation and all citizens, resolutely expressed in the free elections, the Republic of Croatia is hereby founded and shall develop as a sovereign and democratic state in which equality, freedoms and human rights are guaranteed and ensured, and their economic and cultural progress and social welfare promoted.

Basic provisions
This chapter defines Croatia as unitary and indivisible democratic and social state in which power derives from the people and belongs to the people as a community of free and equal citizens. The people exercises this power through the election of representatives and through direct decision-making.

Article 3 states that freedom, equal rights, national equality and equality of genders, love of peace, social justice, respect for human rights, inviolability of ownership, conservation of nature and the environment, the rule of law, and a democratic multiparty system are the highest values of the constitutional order of the Republic of Croatia and the ground for interpretation of the Constitution.

Article 4 states that the government shall be organized on the principle of separation of powers into the legislative, executive and judicial branches, but limited by the right to local and regional self-government guaranteed by this Constitution.

Article 12 states that the official language is Croatian in the Latin script and that in some areas, together with the Croatian language and Latin script, other languages, such as Cyrillic or any other legal language can be used.

Protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms
This chapter deals with general human rights, Personal and Political Freedoms and Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

All are equal before the law regardless of race, color, gender, language, religion, political or other belief, national or social origin, property, birth, education, social status or other characteristics.

Article 21 states that every human being has the inalienable right to live, thus there is no capital punishment in the Republic of Croatia. Entrepreneurial and market freedom is the basis of the economic system. In this chapter Croatian National Bank is defined as central bank which is independent in its work of monetary policy making and responsible to the Croatian Parliament.

Organization of Government
The Croatian parliament is defined as a representative body of the people and is vested with the legislative power. The most important function of the parliament is to make laws and to amend the Constitution.

The People's Ombudsman, as a commissioner of the Croatian Parliament, shall protect the constitutional and legal rights of citizens in proceedings before the state administration and bodies vested with public authority. He is elected by the parliament for a term of 8 years.

The President of the Republic of Croatia shall represent and stand for the Republic of Croatia at home and abroad. He shall take care of regular and harmonized functioning and stability of the state government and is responsible for the defense of independence and territorial integrity. He is elected directly by the people for a term of 5 years and is limited on 2 mandates maximum. The most important task of the President is to be Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and to be leader during the state of war when he can issue decrees with the force of law. He is impeachable for any violation of the Constitution. Croatian parliament decides whether to proceed impeaching the President and that is decided by the Constitutional Court.

The Government of the Republic of Croatia exercise executive power. The Government consists of Prime Minister, one or more Deputy Prime Minister and ministers. President of the republic confides the mandate to form the Government to the person who, upon the distribution of the seats in the Croatian Parliament and consultations held, enjoys confidence of the majority of its members. The Government shall assume its duty if the vote of confidence is passed by a majority vote of all members of the Croatian Parliament. The main function of the Government is to propose legislation, to execute laws, guide the foreign and internal policies, direct the state administration and take care of economic development. The Government is responsible to the Croatian parliament and parliament can vote of no confidence when Government resigns.

Judicial power is exercised by independent and autonomous courts. Supreme Court is the highest court and secures uniform application of laws and equal justice to all. The president of the Supreme Court is proposed by the President of the Republic and elected by the Croatian Parliament for a term of 4 years. Judicial office is permanent. Judges are elected by the National Judicial Council. The National Judicial Council consists of 11 members elected by the Croatian Parliament from among notable judges, attorneys-at-law and university professors of law. The majority of members of the National Judicial Council shall be from the ranks of judges.

The Office of the Public Prosecutions is an autonomous and independent judicial body empowered and due to proceed against those who commit criminal and other punishable offences, to undertake legal measures for protection of the property of the Republic of Croatia and to provide legal remedies for protection of the Constitution and law. The Head Public Prosecutor of the Republic of Croatia shall be appointed by the Croatian Parliament at the proposal of the Government for a term of 4 years.

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia
The Constitutional Court is not part of judicial system but the court sui generis. It consists of 13 judges elected by the Croatian parliament for a term of 8 years from among notable jurists, especially judges, public prosecutors, lawyers and university professors of law.

The main function of the Court is to decide on the conformity of laws and other regulation with the Constitution, to decide on jurisdictional disputes between the legislative, executive and judicial branches, to decide on the impeachment of the president of the republic, to supervise and ban political parties and to supervise the constitutionality and legality of elections and national referendums.

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia shall repeal a law if it finds it to be unconstitutional. When reviewing the legislation, the court often relies on the so-called Croatian constitutional identity and on the Croatian national identity.

Local and regional self-government
Municipalities and towns are units of local self-government which carries out the affairs of local jurisdiction by which the needs of citizens are directly fulfilled, and in particular the affairs related to the organization of localities and housing, area and urban planning, public utilities, child care, social welfare, primary health services, education and elementary schools, culture, physical education and sports, customer protection, protection and improvement of the environment, fire protection and civil defense.

Counties are units of regional self-government which carries out the affairs of regional significance, and in particular the affairs related to education, health service, area and urban planning, economic development, traffic and traffic infrastructure and the development of network of educational, health, social and cultural institutions.

The capital city of Zagreb may be attributed the status of a county by law.

International relations
International agreements are concluded depending on the nature and contents of the international agreement, within the authority of the Croatian Parliament, the President of the Republic and the Government of the Republic of Croatia. International agreements which entail the passage of amendment of laws, international agreements of military and political nature, and international agreements which financially commit the Republic of Croatia shall be subject to ratification by the Croatian Parliament. International agreements concluded and ratified in accordance with the Constitution and made public, and which are in force, shall be part of the internal legal order of the Republic of Croatia and shall be above law in terms of legal effects.

Procedure for the association of the Republic of Croatia into alliances with other states may be instituted by at least one-third of the representatives of the Croatian Parliament, the President of the Republic and the Government of the Republic of the Croatia. It is prohibited to initiate any procedure for the association of the Republic of Croatia into alliances with other states if such association leads, or might lead, to a renewal of a South Slav state community or to any Balkan state form of any kind. Any association of the Republic of Croatia shall first be decided upon by the Croatian Parliament by a two-thirds majority vote of all representatives. Any decision concerning the association of the Republic of Croatia shall be made on a referendum by a majority vote of the total number of electors in the State.

The provisions of this Article concerning association shall also relate to the conditions and procedure for the disassociation of the Republic of Croatia.

Amending the Constitution
Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia may be proposed by at least one-fifth of the members of the Croatian Parliament, the President of the Republic, the Government of the Republic of Croatia and by popular initiative, if valid signatures of 10% of the total number of voters are collected.

The decision to amend the Constitution shall be made by a two-thirds majority vote of all the members of the Croatian Parliament. In the case of popular initiative, a referendum is called and the Constitution can be amended even without majority vote in the Parliament.

title: Constitution of Croatia


text:
Talk:Gene Kelly

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 April 2021 and 21 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Luchk7.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:09, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks
I think that this page had a lot of info that I needed for my sixth peroid drama class. Thank you so much. There is only one problem, I needed a little more detail, things about your whole life and facts but other than that it was great.

Sincerely, Breeana R.

Birth place
I am sure that Gene Kelly was born in Ireland, and that his birth name was Eugene Curran, not Kelly at all. He got the name Kelly from his granparents, or his mothers MAIDEN NAME I think. This information is quite inaccurate, I should know as my Grandad, John Curran, is Gene's cousin. He tells me stories of him being there when he was younger, in Galway, West Ireland. I would edit the page but I don't know enough to do so. emma--195.92.194.11 16:01, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I am pretty sure his father was James Kelly and mother was Harriet Curran. Arniep 21:34, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

 * "When Harriet Kelly gave birth to her third child, a son she called Eugene Curran - better known as Gene - on 3 August 1912, at the Sacred Heart Parish in Pittsburgh's Highland Park district, her husband, James Patrick Joseph Kelly, could not have been more delighted" quoted from Clive Hirschhorn, Gene Kelly, A Biography W.H Allen, London, 1984. p.5 ISBN 0491031823. Gene cooperated with Hirschhorn on this biography. Dermot 18:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC) Incidentaly, Hirschhorn got the actual date of birth wrong. It was August 23rd, and was corrected in the later Yudkoff biography.Dermot 18:44, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

"Gene Kelly in popular culture"
What was his actual career if not in popular culture ? (Such sections are discouraged anyway aren't they ? Avoid_trivia_sections_in_articles) -- Beardo 04:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. It may be pointless removing them entirely as some of the items are probably genuinely noteworthy and will almost certainly be reinserted at sometime in the future. I've tried to integrate the most noteworthy as notes supporting comments such as "much-imitated" when used in relation to some of Kelly more famous routines. I don't claim this is a perfect solution, but at least it relegates such items to a less visible and arguably more appropriate place in the article, while enabling deletion of the section. Dermot 12:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers priority assessment
Per debate and discussion re: assessment of the approximate 100 top priority articles of the project, this article has been included as a top priority article. Wildhartlivie (talk) 07:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Plaque
I added a photo of the Gene Kelly plaque on the Pitt Campus. Hope everyone likes it.--Hepcat748 (talk) 21:59, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Family Guy Awards
as appearing in an episode of Family Guy isn't an actual award i think this bit of information should be incorporated elsewhere —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.154.110.103 (talk) 21:36, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree; that is most definititly not an award. Am I missing it or has it been removed? I assume someone has taken care of this already, but just to be sure...?99.144.160.149 (talk) 04:12, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

African-American influences
I am wondering why there is no mention that Gene Kelly, just as Fred Astaire, Shirley Templ,Elvis Presley and other white entertainers, obtained their dancing styles directly from African American dancers such as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and others who created and mastered tap dancing, and other African based art forms. Gene was not the originator, nor when compared to these black artists, was Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire Elvis Presley and others who mimicked them, considered "revolutionary" in the black community who knew all to well where their dancing styles originated. Not only is their dancing style not unique, if one were to view footage of both styles it is clear that they are exact carbon imitations of these black dance masters. During the time [Segregation & Jim Crow], because these were white men who mastered a black cultural style of dancing, and made it seem their own, white America went wild, and didn't feel a need to credit Blacks - - -the unspoken presumption being that everyone knew it was black--. It is time to give credit and rightly document where it is due. To continue to omit their African American influences is to deny yet again the undeniable historical and cultural perspective of the African-American contributions which greatly influenced and was a major contributing factor in shaping American performing arts. --74.229.102.208 (talk) 17:45, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

 * You have a good point, but I think it's more generally true about tap dancing in general (and therefore your comment really should be on the Tap dancing article talk page) then it is about Kelly in particular. I don't really see much in Kellly's athletic and bouyant style which mirrors (generally speaking) black tap dancing or its antecedents.  If you look at the trio that Kelly and the Nicholas Brothers do in The Pirate, it's not really recognizable as Kelly's style of dancing, it's more that he adopted the Nicholas Brothers' style for that number -- and, again, I don't see the correspondance between Kelly and, say, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. I could be wrong, and if you think I am, and have citations to support your contention specific to Kelly, then you should write something and add it to the article.  Otherwise, I would think that it's really a more generic point about the debt that white tap dancing owes to its black antecedents (as well as to Irish clog dancing, and so on). Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz)  (talk / cont)  20:16, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I must beg to differ with you. African-Americans invented and self-styled nearly all forms of what came to be known as “American modern and popular dance.” From the Lindy-hop, shim-sham,” and a host of others that made it into mainstream white America. As the black vaudevilles entered mainstream American living rooms via televisions, many white dancers copied the exact same style of singing and dance that originated in the black vaudevilles. Many such as Gene and Astaire were made very rich and famous from imitating these African-American rhythmic dance and singing styles. It must also be noted that during this time period the only "respectable" professions that African-Americans were allowed was dancing, and singing, which fostered a very creative competitive environment, generating some of the most magnificent dance styles and rhythmic moves, that would rival any form created in contemporary times. There were so many great African-Americans dancers, too many to name or even remember. Nonetheless, it is undeniable where these artistic dance forms originated. Gene Kelly, who originally began as a tap-dancer, is one of many white males who capitalized on this profoundly popular creative and energetic African-American dance style. Similar to what Eminem is to rap and hip-hop, every one of Gene's rhythmic moves were styled directly after these black dance giants. Gene not only copied African-American dance, he also sang African-American music i.e. blues, and Jazz, and incorporated them into many of his dance routines just as they were routinely done in the black vaudevilles. Luckily, we do not have to look very far for verifiable sources. Youtube has nearly an anthology of vintage footage chronicling some of this early history. I will list a few here in some chronological order. Any one viewing these clips will clearly see the dominate and early influence of black music, tap and popular dance styles copied by Gene, Astaire, Temple and a host of others. African-American dance and music is responsible for making “great stars” in "White" Hollywood and Broadway, and any biographical sketch written of Gene, Astaire, Temple, Dean Martin, etc., would not be accurate or complete without stating this cultural and artistic historical fact detailing their early dance influences. Without this early history, there would have never been a Gene, Astaire, Martin et.al.--74.229.102.208 (talk) 02:14, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

 * No one's denying that one of tap dancing's roots is in African-American dancing (one would have to be pretty foolish to do that), the question is whether Gene Kelly, in particular, owes his specific style to that influence or not. If you think he does, write it up and add it to the article, if you have citations which are specific to Kelly and not generically about tap dancing.  Talking about it here is pretty much useless -- if you've got the goods, go for it! Just be aware, though, that if what you write isn't specifically about Gene Kelly's relationship to black antecedents it will almost certainly be deleted.  Anything that's just generally about tap dancing should go into that article, and is not appropriate for this one. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz)  (talk / cont)  03:16, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

One of taps early roots? By the fact that these African-American originators are not included in the article as some of Gene's major influences is a form of cultural denial. The question is do you have any other historical evidence that Gene's style originated anywhere else but from these early African-American dancers? And if so, for the sake of accuracy, where is your historical proof? I have presented mines.--74.229.102.208 (talk) 03:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I understand your point -- now write it up. No one's going to do it for you. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz)  (talk / cont)  03:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Ditto. I never demanded for anyone to include this history for me. I am simply offering you, the original author of the article, the respect due to you by discussing these points here first.--74.229.102.208 (talk) 03:49, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Oh, I am not the original author of this article, not by a long shot. I've done some work on it, but not a lot, and the article has been around since 2001 and has passed through many hands.  Good luck with your contribution, and don't forget to include verifiable references and keep it specific to Kelly. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz)  (talk / cont)  03:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem. Before I include any information, I will post it here for disscussion and for your concensus. Once we all agree on how it should be presented, I will include it. I think this is fair and shows respect for your being the "overseerer" of this artilce. The goal is to present historical and contexual accuracy so that the researcher and others can obtain a more wholistic continuity of historical events. Is this agreeable to you?--74.229.102.208 (talk) 04:28, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I am not the "overseeer" of this or any other article, simply an editor with an interest in the subject matter. On Wikipedia, any editor can revise or revert posted changes, which is why I've been suggesting that anything you add to the article be well-supported by citations to references, and that it be tightly focused on Kelly.  More general additions, or those which are not supported by refs, will almost certainly be rejected by those who, like me, have an interest in Kelly and want to keep this article on track. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz)  (talk / cont)  17:43, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I have revised a small section under the Working methods and influence on filmed dance section to read as follows:

 * There was a clear progression in his development, from an early concentration on tap and musical comedy styles, brought into prominence through the black minstrel show dancers, the most famous being Master Juba, known for his expressive, percussive, varied tempo and lightning-fast speed. This style was later incorporated to include ballet and other modern and contemporary dance forms.

 * I might also include at least one of Gene's earlier African-American influences here as well. There is no doubt that he was influenced by the Nicholas Brothers whom by some accounts, were considered  the greatest dance routine in film history.--74.229.102.208 (talk) 15:43, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I reverted this edit as it was not supported by a proper citation, and worse, it distorted the original content of the Delamater citation. I see you are a new user to Wikipedia so you might not be familiar with the requirement of using reliable sources WP:RS, verifiablity WP:V and absence of original research wP:NOR which are cornerstones of Wikipedia policy. Links to copyright violating clips on Youtube certainly are not part of this and are, in fact, prohibited under Wikipedia policy. Also you should pay particular attention to WP:NPOV, which, given some of your statements here, is possibly an issue. As a new user you can expect some latitude and you should be open to accepting advice from experienced editors. You need to be aware that neither your opinions, nor mine for that matter, count for much, if anything, around here. All that matters is whether you are able to bring new content which satisfies all four of those Wikipedia polcies. Period. So, if you have anything to add to the following statement in the article: "Kelly himself, refused to categorize his style: 'I don't have a name for my style of dancing...It's certainly hybrid...I've borrowed from the modern dance, from the classical, and certainly from the American folk dance - tap-dancing, jitterbugging [my italics]...But I have tried to develop a style which is indigenous to the environment in which I was reared."[9] He especially acknowledged the influence of George M. Cohan: 'I have a lot of Cohan in me. It's an Irish quality, a jaw-jutting, up-on-the-toes cockiness - which is a good quality for a male dancer to have.'[1] please go ahead. But just as each statement I quoted is supported by citations either to Kelly's own words or the distinguished Kelly scholars, so must yours be. In my view the current article presents a balanced description of the many influences that affected Kelly, including but certainly not limited to tap. I am also worried about baseless claims such as "they are exact carbon imitations of these black dance masters", "to continue to omit their African American influences" which to me reveal a very serious deficit in your appreciation of the both the artistic achievements of Astaire and Kelly and of the content of their respective Wikipedia articles. So by all means go ahead, but don't be surprised if your contributions are subjected to very rigorous examination. D7240 (talk) 15:53, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As a suggestion, you might want to post your proposed changes here, before editing the article, so they can be debated. I also suggest you consult the references given in the article. D7240 (talk) 15:59, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion: I will repost what I have written above for general discussion, and how best to place it into the article. All of the links included to support what I have written are in the referenced wikilinks. We welcome yours and others suggestion on how to include this info into the article.--74.229.102.208 (talk) 18:10, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

 * There was a clear progression in his development, from an early concentration on tap and musical comedy styles, brought into prominence through the black minstrel show dancers, the most famous being Master Juba, known for his expressive, percussive, varied tempo and lightning-fast speed. This style was later incorporated to include ballet and other modern and contemporary dance forms.
 * I think these additions are irrelevant to the Kelly article, they might have some place in an article on tap. Kelly could never have seen Master Juba, nor is it likely he saw many minstrel shows, as the Wikipedia article on minstrel shows explains, these died out as professional acts by 1910. This article is no place for background material. Secondly, you are inserting extraneous material into a paragraph which relies on the Delamater citation. I have added cited material on specifically which African-Americans he learned most from, namely Clarence "Dancing" Dotson and Frank Harrington. To preserve the balance in the article, I have also added cited material on his ballet and Spanish dancing teachers; after all, ballet was more important to Kelly than tap, which he did in his early days because it was commercial. Please review the edits I've made and offer some suggestions as to how they might be improved.D7240 (talk) 18:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

D7240, what you have added is absolutely fine. As long as there is some historical reference to his early African-American influences. I however, will argue that although minstrel shows might have "died out" by 1910, they were not by any means absence from filmography and their art forms studied by famous choreographers and incorporated in the major dance studios. Even until today, there are retro-channels that still profile these shows. Any serious student of dance would be remiss to not have studied this history, as I am certain, (in observing Gene's dance style) he most certainly did. The "commerical" (urban) lable notwithinstanding, made these highly complex dance moves no less ingenious and innovative. On another note, I did not know that his children did not have the opportunity to mourn his death. He was a vibrant spirit that brought much cheer into the lives of many.--74.229.102.208 (talk) 00:45, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

pointless comment in Television section
I removed this phrase "How can this be true when he died in 1996?" which was written after the Family guy entry in the Television section. It should've been here in the discussion. I've replaced it with (posthumous)Pongley (talk) 16:38, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Early days
The section about the early days of Gene Kelly do no justic to his name. Please change this part. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GeneKellyusa483 (talk • contribs) 20:10, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:So fix it. Wildhartulivie (talk) 20:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

No mention of how he was a complete asshole to work with?
Well, I saw a documentary of him on TV, and people that worked with him will tell you that he was a total hard-ass. The article on Singin' in the Rain mentions how he actually made Debbie Reynolds cry. Also, Cyd Charisse once said her husband could tell when she'd been working with Gene if she was bruised all over, and if she came home devoid of physical injuries, then she'd been working with Fred Astaire. 24.189.90.68 (talk) 07:53, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

In response to this, I think asshole is the wrong term to use here. I believe the documentary you are speaking of is the one shown on PBS, and although both women said he was difficult they not once insulted him. As a dancer,I know that dance instructors are notorious perfectionists. It should be noted that Gene's work ethic was difficult but even Debbie Reynolds always defends him in interviews and would never say he was an asshole. The reasons why Cyd had bruises was because Gene's style was lower to the ground which called for more physically demanding dance moves, Fred's center was always higher then Gene's which allows for dancers to be lighter on their feet.To say he is just an "asshole" is not correct, nor right. One should take more thought in the kind of words one uses. Kpasby (talk) 02:27, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

"Well, I saw a documentary of him on TV, and people that worked with him will tell you that he was a total hard-ass" ... well, provide the quotes and name the people who quoted it. Simple. Otherwise, don't exagerrate. 203.9.151.254 (talk) 01:44, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Gene Kelly
Kelly's biography omits his role in "Marjorie Morningstar" with Natalie Wood

pop culture section is a waste
The guy was a very, very famous actor. Of course he has pop references. The only time a pop culture section makes sense is for something obscure. But not John Wayne or Alber Einstein. Similar with Kelly. I wonder if the people making a pop culture section lack perspective? TCO (talk) 14:25, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

/* 1953–57: The decline of the Hollywood musical */
I'm not sure of the reference, so that's why I didn't change it, but it should be mentioned that another reason why Gene went to Europe to shoot more musicals was because his wife Betsy Blair was being blacklisted in Hollywood. This was during the horrible communist blacklisting in Hollywood. I know this information is on the documentary titled The Anatomy of a Dancer but I wasn't sure how to reference documentaries. I suggest a admin could add this info.Kpasby (talk) 02:31, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Link rot
Would someone take a look at the bare URL's? Otr500 (talk) 17:03, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Gene Kelly's Early Days
" ... [9] While at Pitt, Kelly became involved in the university's Cap and Gown Club, which staged original, comedic musical productions.[10] Earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics with his graduation from Pitt in 1933, he remained active with the Cap and Gown Club, serving as its director from 1934 to 1938, while at the same time enrolling in the University of Pittsburgh Law School.[11] Also during this period, Kelly's family started a dance studio on Munhall Road in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. In 1932, the dance studio was renamed The Gene Kelly Studio of the Dance. A second location was opened in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1933. Kelly served as a teacher at the studio during both his undergraduate and law student years at Pitt. In 1931, he was approached by the Rodef Shalom synagogue in Pittsburgh to teach dance, and to stage the annual Kermess. This venture was successful enough that his services were retained for seven years until his departure for New York.[12] Eventually, though, he decided to pursue his career as a dance teacher and full-time entertainer, so Kelly dropped out of law school after two months. He began to increasingly focus on performing and later claimed: "With time I became disenchanted with teaching because the ratio of girls to boys was more than ten to one, and once the girls reached sixteen the dropout rate was very high."[6] In 1937, having successfully managed and developed the family's dance school business, he finally did move to New York City in search of work as a choreographer.[6]"

The above paragraph from your biography contains some significant errors. I know, since I was a part of this phase, and I can document some of it over and above a simple reliance on "memory."

Kelly's dance studio was in the old "El Tower" apartment building on the hilly street above and behind where I lived for almost thirty years. The principal dancing teacher there for most of its existence was Louise, Gene's sister.

Actually, Gene was hired by my mother, Anne U. Greenberg, in late 1933 or early 1934, to replace a dancing teacher at the Beth Shalom Synagogue (NOT the Rodef Shalom Temple, as reported above). The Synagogue had to replace its original teacher, who repeatedly failed to show up for Sunday dancing classes that were sponsored by the Sisterhood. So Anne, a Sisterhood member, "scouted" the University of Pittsburgh's "Cap and Gown" production, and asked its young director (Gene) if he would be interested in teaching. He was, and he was hired at Beth Shalom, where he remained our Sunday afternoon dancing instructor in the social hall until he left for Broadway in 1939.

Gene's dancing classes were an instant success, and they remained so even after Gene went to New York, since he left the school in the hands of his brother, Fred, and shortly afterward, in the hands of his sister, Louise. All three of them used a pianist, named Connie ( ... can't remember her last name), and the business was masterfully managed by the Kellys' mother ... a very strong (but diminutive) person, who lovingly adopted the "tough old broad" role. All three of Anne's kids were enrolled from the beginning, and I, the youngest, may have been Gene's worst student (but also one of his greatest admirers). We all participated in the Kellys' "kermis," (dance recital), held annually at the Taylor Allderdice High School auditorium in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill. Two features within those kermises that stand out in my memory are the roller skating routine performed as a special feature by Fred and Gene, and a sailor routine, performed by two senior students. These were easy to remember, as we saw an almost identical skating routine in Gene's movie, "Xanadu," and recognizable elements of the sailor routine were performed in more than one of Gene's other films.

Going beyond Gene's early years:

In October, 1954, my mother, father, and I were hosted on the MGM set and we watched Gene, Stanley Donen, and Dan Dailey preparing for a bar-sequence shot in the studio. Cyd Charise was in costume on a "leaning board," awaiting her turn in the following scene to be cut. When Gene learned that I was taking graduate classes at his Alma Mater, he elaborated at length on his belief that he got more out of his Economics classes at Pitt than in any other classes in his entire career.

I never met James, the oldest Kelly sibling, and I didn't meet Gene's sister Joan Radvansky (known as "Jaye") until 1975, at my parents' 50th Anniversary party, when Gene made a congratulatory phone call. Mother and Gene continued regular correspondence throughout his Hollywood career, for the rest of both of their lives, and they both died within four months of each other in 1996.

Late in his life, probably in the mid-eighties, Gene visited Pittsburgh, and drew a crowd at the downtown Mellon Park. Gene's visit was being televised when he spotted my mother in the crowd, and dragged her up to the stage to dance with him (she was well into her eighties). He announced that "This is the lady who gave me my first job." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.17.108.248 (talk) 05:06, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Donen and Hello Dolly
In glancing through this article I noticed that it did not mention his difficult relationship with Stanley Donen, which has been discussed in many books and is covered at length in the Donen article. Similarly I think that the mentions of Hello Dolly and It's Always Fair Weather gloss over the difficulties those two films encountered at the box office, especially Dolly, and the tensions on the sets in both films. I'm going to try to build those up a bit. Coretheapple (talk) 14:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

American Film Institute ranking
The introduction to the article says "...in 1999, the American Film Institute also numbered [Kelly] 15th in their Greatest Male Stars of All Time list." Per the Wikipedia article for that list, "The American Film Institute defined an 'American screen legend' as an actor or a team of actors with a significant screen presence in American feature-length (40 min) films whose screen debut occurred in or before 1950, or whose screen debut occurred after 1950 but whose death has marked a completed body of work." Thus, even veteran stars such as Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman, Robert DeNiro, and Jack Nicholson were not eligible for this honor. I think it would be good to edit the language so that it is clear that the AFI didn't actually do an All Time ranking, even as of 1999 when the poll was done. Arnold Rothstein1921 (talk) 01:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

NFCC violations
We have scores of free images of Kelly available at Commons alone. There are out-of-copyright trailers of Kelly's films which can easily supply additional images. Some of the images at issue add nothing of substance to the existing text; illustration is often valuable, but the WMF has made the policy judgment about reuseability and our opinions about aesthetics cannot override it. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006.  (talk) 16:49, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * But "scores of free images" are not representations of two of the most significant movies Kelly made: An American in Paris and Invitation to the Dance./ We do not need just any old pictures of GK, we need to show those films, and there are, to my knowledge, no free shots of those.  I have replaced the "Singin' in the Rain" shot (which wasn't great anyway" from one from the trailer. We are not a random gallery of images, the pictures in the articles are supposed to have significance to the subject matter. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:39, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Alleged IRA contributions
I've removed the sentence alleging Kelly's supposed contributions, credited to a Scottish newspaper and a "free library." WP:V covers this by requiring that "Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources." Clearly that requirement is not met. Coretheapple (talk) 14:49, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this was a good removal. Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:13, 25 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Kelly's nephew admitted Gene he did give money to the IRA in the 1970s. (2A00:23C4:6392:3C00:C8FF:D503:BC1:2737 (talk) 02:28, 21 March 2017 (UTC))
 * If you can produce multiple high-quality reliable sources for that extraordinary claim, that he gave money to a terrorist group, please cite. Otherwise do not add it to the article. Coretheapple (talk) 02:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
 * What is extraordinary about it? Many Americans funded the Provisional IRA during the 1970s and 1980s, especially in New York and Boston. There are multiple sources online for Kelly's support for the IRA's bombing campaign. (2A00:23C4:6392:3C00:C8FF:D503:BC1:2737 (talk) 03:00, 21 March 2017 (UTC))
 * No, there is one source. You posted two links to the same source, Daily Record (Scotland), a Scottish tabloid. WP:V requires multiple sourcing for a claim such as this. One tabloid won't suffice. WP:EXCEPTIONAL takes you to the section of that policy covering situations such as this. Coretheapple (talk) 12:31, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

NFCC image remvoal
The two images that an editor wants to remove from the article on the basis on NFCC #8 are seminal moments in Kelly's career, and no free images are available of those moments. Therefore his continuing to removing them is out of process. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:SUBJECTIVE Violation?
The phrase "probably the most popular and admired of all film musicals" seems like a violation of WP:SUBJECTIVE to me.

Lifelong Democrat
Gene Kelly was part of the leadership of the PCA political party. Currently there's a sentence in this entry that states "Kelly was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party." Is there a way to mark that statement as needing a citation? Dragonarras (talk) 02:52, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

RfC about description in opening of article and infobox
Gene Kelly was a multitalented performer, but there is some dispute as to how he should be referred to in the opening of the article. I believe the choices are these: The dispute is basically over whether to put "actor" or "dancer" first. I don't believe the order of the other two is at issue. Coretheapple (talk) 14:29, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * A "actor, dancer, singer, filmmaker, and choreographer." This is the current formulation,
 * B "dancer, actor, singer, filmmaker and choreographer."

Survey

 * I think B is mandated by MOS:FIRST, as the first sentence summarizes the article, and dance (not acting) was his primary legacy. While he did perform in non-dancing roles, they were secondary to his roles in which he danced. (Indeed, as noted in the article, later in his career is television appearance focused on dance, and he even choreographed a ballet) That is also the consensus of reliable sources, which is apparent if one reviews the obituaries at the time of his death:
 * New York Times: Headline "Gene Kelly, Dancer of Vigor and Grace, Dies." : "Gene Kelly, the dancer, actor, director and choreographer who brought a vigorous athleticism, casual grace and an earthy masculinity..."
 * Los Angeles Times : "Gene Kelly Dies; Legendary Dancer Was 83": "Gene Kelly, the exuberant, charismatic hoofer who danced, sang, smiled and splashed his way into the hearts of generations, died Friday..."
 * "Washington Post: "SONG-AND-DANCE MAN GENE KELLY DIES": "Gene Kelly, 83, the dancer whose joyful, brawny and exuberant choreography spoke of ballet and the athletic field yet made him seem like Everyman, died yesterday." Note that this article doesn't even describe him as an actor until far down.
 * Here's an appreciation of his life as a "dance icon" by a Knight Ridder columnist, with a side piece describing him as a "dancer's dancer," in the Orange County Register.
 * Here's a column at his death by the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Paul Greenberg, celebrating Kelly as "The Other Half of American Dance."
 * Likewise, the Associated Press emphasized Kelly as a dancer in its lavish coverage of his death. "He was charming, self-made and witty. But more than anything, the man could dance."

--Coretheapple (talk) 14:29, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Status quo Kelly was indeed a talented dancer and singer, but he's most famous for being an actor. He was nominated for a best actor Academy Award and he's acted in many famous films. Nemov (talk) 23:05, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The same can be said of Fred Astaire, who is the movie star most closely associated with Kelly, and he is listed in his Wikipedia article as a "an American dancer, choreographer, actor, and singer" He received more acting honors than Kelly. Coretheapple (talk) 16:31, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Not really convinced per WP:OTHERSTUFF, but actor was listed first there as recently as last July before an IP edit.. Nemov (talk) 19:42, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Not sure why anyone would say that Kelly is "most famous for being an actor". Take a look at the links provided by Coretheapple, or any obituary or profile or encyclopedia article or reference article on him. He is by far best known for his dancing and the innovations he brought to dance. The same goes for Frank Sinatra, who, although he starred in a number of films including strictly non-musical roles, and won an Oscar for a non-singing role, is by far best known as a singer. Softlavender (talk) 06:29, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * This isn't complicated. If you asked most people what they remember about Sinatra they would mention a song he sang. If you asked most people what they remember about Gene Kelly, they would mention a movie for which he was the star. Nemov (talk) 13:09, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Well I disagree with you but the process that we employ is not, as you say, complicated. When we differ on phraseology we defer to the reliable sources. We don't substitute our thoughts, feelings and impressions with those of reliable sources. In this case it's a fairly easy process, considering the emphasis in the obits and posthumous books such as Gene Kelly: A Life of Dance and Dreams. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 13:18, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

 * (1) That's not true, it's just your ill-informed personal opinion. (2) That's not how Wikipedia works, which is based on coverage in reliable sources. Softlavender (talk) 22:48, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

 * A I would say he is most famous for dancing in movies. That being said, who cares? Random person no 362478479 (talk) 10:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
 * BI think the actors should be lined up before the dancers. Even though dance may be his favorite for him, the deepest impression of him is still the actor. He has achieved achievements at the Oscars, creating the image of a strong actor. Winning an Oscar was enough to put his identity as an actor above that of a dancer. Of course, another reason is that in the eyes of the public, there is no award in the dance world that can be compared with the Oscars, and the Oscar is his greatest achievement in the art world in the eyes of the public.악준동 (talk) 07:02, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I would also say A – Misty Copeland would be an example of someone who would qualify as "B", IMO. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:00, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

 * B. First and foremost a dancer, and that is what he is known for. Softlavender (talk) 19:30, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * He's probably most famously known for "singing in the rain" in a film called Singing in the Rain. Nemov (talk) 14:59, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes of course. But what set him apart from the hundreds of thousands of other film actors were his innovations in dance, his "every man" style, etc., which was a subject of enormous attention during his life and afterwards. He appeared in nondancing roles, just as Sinatra appeared in nonsinging roles, notably Maggio in From Here to Eternity. But again, if we differ over how to phrase the Sinatra article, we just glance at the sources. Wikipedia editors don't substitute their judgment for the judgment of sources. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 13:31, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

 * B per Softlavender and nominator. Not even a close question. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 21:49, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

 * C: actor, choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, and singer. When there's a dispute where there's no clear and obvious primary category, just list the alphabetically, as it's objective. oknazevad (talk) 13:59, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

 * B. When most people think of Gene Kelly, they think, "a famous dancer who did lots of films". -- Ssilvers (talk) 15:21, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 * B. Per the sources and the arguments above. - SchroCat (talk) 22:19, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
 * B I think the issue here is the dissonance between what he is primarily notable for (dance) and what he was most famous for (the movies). He is intrinsically defined as dancer—his movie career was an extension of that—even though he is probably best known to a modern audience through his film work. Betty Logan (talk) 21:50, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree, and that is why the sources referred to him as they did. Contrast with Michael Callan, who was a dancer (the original Riff in West Side Story) but ultimately found work almost exclusively as an actor in comedy and dramatic roles. In making these assessments of course we must use the judgment of reliable secondary sources and not our own perceptions of whether his appearing in films means he was an actor first and foremost. Coretheapple (talk) 14:33, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * B Even on film he was very much the dancer. This is what he is known for. ---Lilach5 (לילך5) discuss 20:07, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
 * A Changing the order of the series, while maintaining the same components of the series, won't improve the quality of the lede.Writethisway (talk) 17:55, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
 * A I think he was an actor first and foremost because being an actor made him famous. And won the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Both awards are given to actors. So I think the identity of an actor seems to be more important to him.And his own final choice is to focus more on acting. So I think the identity of an actor should be put in the first place.Hhhh2 (talk) 06:37, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

 * B Perfectly obvious, as Gene Kelly was the most famous dancer of his times. Takes precedence over all his other achievements. 24.46.198.79 (talk) 19:27, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
 * B - Kelly (at least to me) has always been a dancer, it's because of his dancing he got into the movies (IMO).   -  FlightTime  ( open channel ) 19:41, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Gene Kelly


text:
Levenshtein distance

In information theory, linguistics, and computer science, the Levenshtein distance is a string metric for measuring the difference between two sequences. The Levenshtein distance between two words is the minimum number of single-character edits (insertions, deletions or substitutions) required to change one word into the other. It is named after Soviet mathematician Vladimir Levenshtein, who defined the metric in 1965.

Levenshtein distance may also be referred to as edit distance, although that term may also denote a larger family of distance metrics known collectively as edit distance. It is closely related to pairwise string alignments.

Definition
The Levenshtein distance between two strings $$a, b$$ (of length $$|a|$$ and $$|b|$$ respectively) is given by $$\operatorname{lev}(a, b)$$ where

 * $$\operatorname{lev}(a, b) = \begin{cases}

|a| & \text{ if } |b| = 0, \\ |b| & \text{ if } |a| = 0, \\ \operatorname{lev}\big(\operatorname{tail}(a),\operatorname{tail}(b)\big) & \text{ if } \operatorname{head}(a)= \operatorname{head}(b), \\ 1 + \min \begin{cases} \operatorname{lev}\big(\operatorname{tail}(a), b\big) \\ \operatorname{lev}\big(a, \operatorname{tail}(b)\big) \\ \operatorname{lev}\big(\operatorname{tail}(a), \operatorname{tail}(b)\big) \\ \end{cases} & \text{ otherwise} \end{cases}$$ where the $$\operatorname{tail}$$ of some string $$x$$ is a string of all but the first character of $$x$$ (i.e. $$\operatorname{tail}(x_0x_1 \dots x_n)=x_1x_2 \dots x_n$$), and $$\operatorname{head}(x)$$ is the first character of $$x$$ (i.e. $$\operatorname{head}(x_0x_1 \dots x_n)=x_0$$). Either the notation $$x[n]$$ or $$x_n$$ is used to refer the $$n$$th character of the string $$x$$, counting from 0, thus $$\operatorname{head}(x)=x_0=x[0]$$.

The first element in the minimum corresponds to deletion (from $$a$$ to $$b$$), the second to insertion and the third to replacement.

This definition corresponds directly to the naive recursive implementation.

Example

For example, the Levenshtein distance between "kitten" and "sitting" is 3, since the following 3 edits change one into the other, and there is no way to do it with fewer than 3 edits:
 * 1) kitten → sitten (substitution of "s" for "k"),
 * 2) sitten → sittin (substitution of "i" for "e"),
 * 3) sittin → sitting (insertion of "g" at the end).

A simple example of a deletion can be seen with "uninformed" and "uniformed" which have a distance of 1:
 * 1) uninformed → uniformed (deletion of "n").

Upper and lower bounds
The Levenshtein distance has several simple upper and lower bounds. These include:
 * It is at least the absolute value of the difference of the sizes of the two strings.
 * It is at most the length of the longer string.
 * It is zero if and only if the strings are equal.
 * If the strings have the same size, the Hamming distance is an upper bound on the Levenshtein distance. The Hamming distance is the number of positions at which the corresponding symbols in the two strings are different.
 * The Levenshtein distance between two strings is no greater than the sum of their Levenshtein distances from a third string (triangle inequality).

An example where the Levenshtein distance between two strings of the same length is strictly less than the Hamming distance is given by the pair "flaw" and "lawn". Here the Levenshtein distance equals 2 (delete "f" from the front; insert "n" at the end). The Hamming distance is 4.

Applications
In approximate string matching, the objective is to find matches for short strings in many longer texts, in situations where a small number of differences is to be expected. The short strings could come from a dictionary, for instance. Here, one of the strings is typically short, while the other is arbitrarily long. This has a wide range of applications, for instance, spell checkers, correction systems for optical character recognition, and software to assist natural-language translation based on translation memory.

The Levenshtein distance can also be computed between two longer strings, but the cost to compute it, which is roughly proportional to the product of the two string lengths, makes this impractical. Thus, when used to aid in fuzzy string searching in applications such as record linkage, the compared strings are usually short to help improve speed of comparisons.

In linguistics, the Levenshtein distance is used as a metric to quantify the linguistic distance, or how different two languages are from one another. It is related to mutual intelligibility: the higher the linguistic distance, the lower the mutual intelligibility, and the lower the linguistic distance, the higher the mutual intelligibility.

Relationship with other edit distance metrics
There are other popular measures of edit distance, which are calculated using a different set of allowable edit operations. For instance,
 * the Damerau–Levenshtein distance allows the transposition of two adjacent characters alongside insertion, deletion, substitution;
 * the longest common subsequence (LCS) distance allows only insertion and deletion, not substitution;
 * the Hamming distance allows only substitution, hence, it only applies to strings of the same length.
 * the Jaro distance allows only transposition.

Edit distance is usually defined as a parameterizable metric calculated with a specific set of allowed edit operations, and each operation is assigned a cost (possibly infinite). This is further generalized by DNA sequence alignment algorithms such as the Smith–Waterman algorithm, which make an operation's cost depend on where it is applied.

Recursive
This is a straightforward, but inefficient, recursive Haskell implementation of a  function that takes two strings, s and t, together with their lengths, and returns the Levenshtein distance between them:

This implementation is very inefficient because it recomputes the Levenshtein distance of the same substrings many times.

A more efficient method would never repeat the same distance calculation. For example, the Levenshtein distance of all possible suffixes might be stored in an array $$M$$, where $$M[i][j]$$ is the distance between the last $$i$$ characters of string  and the last $$j$$ characters of string. The table is easy to construct one row at a time starting with row 0. When the entire table has been built, the desired distance is in the table in the last row and column, representing the distance between all of the characters in  and all the characters in.

Iterative with full matrix
This section uses 1-based strings rather than 0-based strings. If m is a matrix, $$m[i,j]$$ is the ith row and the jth column of the matrix, with the first row having index 0 and the first column having index 0.

Computing the Levenshtein distance is based on the observation that if we reserve a matrix to hold the Levenshtein distances between all prefixes of the first string and all prefixes of the second, then we can compute the values in the matrix in a dynamic programming fashion, and thus find the distance between the two full strings as the last value computed.

This algorithm, an example of bottom-up dynamic programming, is discussed, with variants, in the 1974 article The String-to-string correction problem by Robert A. Wagner and Michael J. Fischer.

This is a straightforward pseudocode implementation for a function  that takes two strings, s of length m, and t of length n, and returns the Levenshtein distance between them:

Two examples of the resulting matrix (hovering over a tagged number reveals the operation performed to get that number):

 * {|class="wikitable"

! k ! i ! t ! t ! e ! n ! s ! i ! t !t ! i ! n ! g
 * ||0 ||1 ||2 ||3 ||4 ||5 ||6
 * ||0 ||1 ||2 ||3 ||4 ||5 ||6
 * 1 ||1 ||2 ||3 ||4 ||5 ||6
 * 2 ||2 ||1 ||2 ||3 ||4 ||5
 * 3 ||3 ||2 ||1 ||2 ||3 ||4
 * 4 ||4 ||3 ||2 ||1 ||2 ||3
 * 5 ||5 ||4 ||3 ||2 ||2 ||3
 * 6 ||6 ||5 ||4 ||3 ||3 ||2
 * 7 ||7 ||6 ||5 ||4 ||4 ||3
 * }

The invariant maintained throughout the algorithm is that we can transform the initial segment into  using a minimum of  operations. At the end, the bottom-right element of the array contains the answer.

Iterative with two matrix rows
It turns out that only two rows of the table – the previous row and the current row being calculated –  are needed for the construction, if one does not want to reconstruct the edited input strings.

The Levenshtein distance may be calculated iteratively using the following algorithm:

Hirschberg's algorithm combines this method with divide and conquer. It can compute the optimal edit sequence, and not just the edit distance, in the same asymptotic time and space bounds.

Automata
Levenshtein automata efficiently determine whether a string has an edit distance lower than a given constant from a given string.

Approximation
The Levenshtein distance between two strings of length $n$ can be approximated to within a factor

 * $$(\log n)^{O(1/\varepsilon)},$$

where $ε > 0$ is a free parameter to be tuned, in time $O(n^{1 + ε})$.

Computational complexity
It has been shown that the Levenshtein distance of two strings of length $n$ cannot be computed in time $O(n^{2 − ε})$ for any ε greater than zero unless the strong exponential time hypothesis is false.

title: Levenshtein distance


text:
Dinghy racing

Dinghy racing is a competitive sport using dinghies, which are small boats which may be rowboats, have an outboard motor, or be sailing dinghies. Dinghy racing has affected aspects of the modern sailing dinghy, including hull design, sail materials and sailplan, and techniques such as planing and trapezing.

Organization of competitive dinghy sailing
Dinghy racing comes under the auspices of World Sailing. Organisations such as the Royal Yachting Association, National School Sailing Association (UK) and Canadian Yachting Association (Canada) organise and regulate the sport at a national level. Sailing dinghies compete on an international, national, state, association, club and class basis, using the ISAF International Racing Rules of Sailing, which are revised every four years. There are several courses used, such as the Olympic triangle.

The International Association for Disabled Sailing (IFDS) is the body authorized by ISAF to be responsible for disabled sailing worldwide. IFDS works with yachting associations worldwide to run regional events all the way to the Paralympic Games, as well as adapt ISAF Racing Rules of Sailing to meet disability requirements. Many standard boats are suitable for people with disabilities which can be made more accessible by adaptations. More boats are being designed with disabled people in mind and used regularly around the world by people with disabilities.

Racecourse
Dinghies often race around a windward-leeward racecourse. There is a start/finish "line", set up perpendicular to the wind, marked by a committee boat at one end, and a buoy on the other. After the starting signal, competitors are allowed to cross the line and begin to race to the next mark. The next mark is called the windward mark. The windward mark is placed directly upwind from the start/finish line. Competitors must round the mark going counterclockwise, leaving the mark on the port side of the boat. After rounding the windward mark, the fleet now heads towards the leeward mark. The leeward mark is positioned directly downwind from the windward mark, below the start/finish line. Sailors also round this mark counterclockwise. After rounding, competitors head upwind to cross the finish line. The course may require more than one lap around the marks.

Not all courses are windward-leeward. Variations include triangles, offset marks, gates, and rectangles. Sometimes the finish is to leeward instead of to windward.

Bermuda Fitted Dinghy racing
In Bermuda, the Bermuda rig, now almost universal on small sailing vessels, can still be seen in its purest form in the Bermuda Fitted Dinghy, used for a series of races contested each year by the colony's yacht clubs. The first race of this type was held in 1880, as a way of reducing the costs then experienced racing larger Bermudian sloops, with their similarly larger professional crews. BFD racing was restricted to amateurs, although each dinghy carries a crew of six.

Single-handed or more than one crew
Most racing dinghies can be classified as being either single-handed (one person only) such as the Laser, RS Vareo or double-handed, such as the 470, 505, Heron, Tasar, Flying Junior, International Fireball or the International Fourteen. A few classes of dinghy carry more than two crew whilst racing, typically heavier dayboat types, but also a couple of high-performance, Australian-origin skiff-type dinghies. Some classes allow children to sail double handed until a particular age and then require them to compete single-handed. Some double-handed boats are ideal for an adult and child like the Heron, while some such as the Tasar have weight restrictions which ensure they are sailed competitively by two adults or near-adults. Weight equalisation is also used on certain high-performance classes to ensure that comparative levels of performance are attained.

One-design, or development class
Sailing dinghies can be strict one-design, with virtually no difference between boats and strict rules controlling construction. This allows the competition to be more about sailing ability than about who can afford the newest innovation, although the weight of the boat and sail age and quality may be differentiating factors even in strict one-design classes.

At the other extreme are the development classes where there is wide leeway to experiment with the latest technology. Many classes fall in between these two extremes and allow some limited variations between the boats; this is typical in classes that have multiple builders.

One designs may be strictly controlled, as in the ubiquitous Laser, with all boats being factory produced from identical moulds, with identical rigs and sails. Strict-one designs suffer from being very crew weight specific. Other one-design classes such as the Europe and Flying Dutchman (1960 to 1992) allow differences in hull dimensions within certain tight tolerances. Despite these tolerances only being intended to allow some leeway for boats built by different builders, this usually results in certain builders' boats being perceived as faster due to the way they make use of the tolerances to create a subtly different hull shape. This type of one-design generally allows more freedom in choice of masts, sails and deck layouts.

Restricted classes like the National 12 and Merlin Rocket were previously referred to as one-designs, with tightly controlled rules which keep the boats closely competitive but allow the owner to customize the boat to their preferences and weight.

Full development classes such as the International Moth and International C class catamaran represent the cutting edge of the sport, with fleets being very diverse and often using the latest ideas and technology, including hydrofoils and solid wings in place of sails.

The oldest known one-design sailing dinghy is the Water Wag. Thomas Middleton proposed the idea of one design sailing punts, with centreboards all built and rigged the same in 1887. The first race took place on April 12, 1887, in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) Harbour. The Water Wag Club still race Water Wag dinghies in Dún Laoghaire every Wednesday during the summer season.

Olympic dinghy sailing
Current Olympic sailing classes include several dinghy classes for both men and women, the Laser (men), Laser Radial (women), 470 (mixed), and Nacra 17 catamaran (mixed), the 49er skiff (men.), and the 49erFX skiff(women). The 49erFX is an identical hull to the men's 49er with a slightly reduced rig and sail area to accommodate lighter women's crews.

In scholastic sport
Many secondary schools and universities worldwide have adopted dinghy racing as either a club or varsity sport.

In the United States secondary school sailing is governed by the Interscholastic Sailing Association. College sailing in the United States is governed by the Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Both organizations have been in continuous existence since the early 20th century and, indeed, college racing began in 1928. College sailing in Canada is now governed by the Canadian Intercollegiate Sailing Association, founded in 2010.

In the United Kingdom secondary school sailing is governed by the National School Sailing Association. They not only organize 6 large events each year but support teachers by using sailing as a way of making education interesting and fun. They also offer schools, sailing clubs and youth clubs support on navigating the legal obligations surrounding involving youngsters in adventurous activities. They will be celebrating 50 years existence in 2012.

Most school programs own fleets of at least 6 dinghies, and the well funded programs often have more than 20 dinghies in addition to support boats and paid coaches. Often schools cooperate with local yacht clubs to share fleets. The schools compete in both the fall and spring within regional districts and then, if they qualify through district championships, at a national championship regatta. Additionally, schools also compete in team racing regattas where they are able to compete one-on-one against other schools.

Many clubs also sponsor junior programs for younger sailors. Junior sailors generally compete in club races and, if eligible, can compete in national events like those sponsored by US Sailing and internationally.

Handicap events - an attempt to even the playing field between different boat speeds
Races involving mixed fleets (different classes of boat, different ages, weights and abilities of sailors) can be organised on a handicap basis. The most commonly used handicapping system is the Portsmouth yardstick, which assigns a different rating to each class of boat in a mixed fleet and (at least in theory) gives every boat an equal chance of winning. Handicaps can also be personal (sometimes called a back-calculated yardstick), taking into account the results of the sailor over past races, so an inexperienced person who sails significantly better than previously over a season or regatta can win on handicap. There are unfortunately certain classes of boats which do better or worse because of their particular handicap, and as boats are modified the handicap system are often slow to catch up. However, for the purposes of large fleet racing with many different classes, the handicap systems seem to work quite well.

Class, association, club
Clubs generally have a number of different classes competing on any one day, often sailing the same course at the same time, or sometimes with each class starting a few minutes apart. Keen club sailors join and compete in events with their State and National Associations. Associations generally cater for only one class of boat, but generally have competitors in several divisions.

Competitive areas
The UK has one of the most diverse dinghy racing scenes in the world with over 100 different classes of dinghy and strongly supported clubs both inland and around the coast. Other competitive areas include the Eastern seaboard of the United States and Southern California. In these areas the junior programs are well funded and provide excellent training experience. The most popular boats are Naples Sabots, the Flying Junior, the Laser, 420s and 29ers.

Europe has a very active circuit in many classes. Asia, Australia and South America are all large contenders at international events,

Examples
 * 1) Class: 470: http://www.470.org
 * 2) Class: Laser: http://www.laser.org
 * 3) Class: GP14: http://www.gp14.org
 * 4) Discussion: The Laser Forum: http://www.laserforum.org
 * 5) Discussion: The Sunfish Forum: http://www.sunfishforum.com
 * 6) Class: Lark: http://www.larkclass.org
 * 7) Class: 505: http://www.int505.org
 * 8) Club: Concord & Ryde Sailing Club: http://www.concordrydesailing.org.au
 * 9) Association: NSW Heron Association: https://web.archive.org/web/20060219183812/http://herons.dinghies.org/
 * 10) Puddle Duck Racer: http://www.pdracer.com
 * 11) Association: Flying 11 Association of Australia: https://www.revolutionise.com.au/feaa/

Motor-driven dinghy racing
Motor-driven dinghy races include the Dinghy Derby in Australia, using aluminium boats that are variants of the Stacer 319 Proline type.

title: Dinghy racing


text:
Frederick Roberts

Frederick or Fred Roberts may refer to:

Military

 * Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts (1832–1914), British Army field marshal and Victoria Cross recipient
 * Frederick Roberts (VC, born 1872) (1872–1899), British Army officer and Victoria Cross recipient, son of the above
 * Fred Roberts, British soldier and editor of the First World War trench newspaper The Wipers Times
 * Fred Roberts (RAF officer) (1913–1996), British Royal Air Force officer and cricketer

Politics

 * Frederick Roberts (British politician) (1876–1941), British Labour Party Member of Parliament, 1918–1931, 1935–1941
 * Frederick Madison Roberts (1879–1952), first African-American elected to the California State Assembly

Cricket

 * Frederick Roberts (cricketer, born 1848) (1848–1903), English cricketer for Surrey
 * Frederick G. Roberts (1862–1936), English cricketer for Gloucestershire
 * Frederick Roberts (Somerset cricketer) (1881–?), English cricketer for Somerset

Other sports

 * Fred Roberts (baseball) (1873–?), American baseball player
 * Fred Roberts (American football coach) (1875–1959), American football coach of the Oklahoma Sooners
 * Fred Roberts (rugby union) (1881–1956), New Zealand rugby union footballer for The Original All Blacks
 * Fred Roberts (footballer, born 1905) (1905–1988), Irish footballer
 * Fred Roberts (American football guard) (1907–1982), American football player for Iowa Hawkeyes and Portsmouth Spartans
 * Fred Roberts (footballer, born 1909) (1909–1979), English football forward for Birmingham and Luton Town
 * Fred Roberts (born 1960), American basketball player

Others

 * Fred C. Roberts (1862–1894), English physician and medical missionary
 * Fred S. Roberts (born 1943), American mathematician

title: Frederick Roberts


text:
Edit distance

In computational linguistics and computer science, edit distance is a string metric, i.e. a way of quantifying how dissimilar two strings (e.g., words) are to one another, that is measured by counting the minimum number of operations required to transform one string into the other. Edit distances find applications in natural language processing, where automatic spelling correction can determine candidate corrections for a misspelled word by selecting words from a dictionary that have a low distance to the word in question. In bioinformatics, it can be used to quantify the similarity of DNA sequences, which can be viewed as strings of the letters A, C, G and T.

Different definitions of an edit distance use different sets of like operations. Levenshtein distance operations are the removal, insertion, or substitution of a character in the string. Being the most common metric, the term Levenshtein distance is often used interchangeably with edit distance.

Types of edit distance
Different types of edit distance allow different sets of string operations. For instance: Some edit distances are defined as a parameterizable metric calculated with a specific set of allowed edit operations, and each operation is assigned a cost (possibly infinite). This is further generalized by DNA sequence alignment algorithms such as the Smith–Waterman algorithm, which make an operation's cost depend on where it is applied.

Formal definition and properties
Given two strings $a$ and $b$ on an alphabet $Σ$ (e.g. the set of ASCII characters, the set of bytes [0..255], etc.), the edit distance d($a$, $b$) is the minimum-weight series of edit operations that transforms $a$ into $b$. One of the simplest sets of edit operations is that defined by Levenshtein in 1966:

 * Insertion of a single symbol. If $a$ = $u$$v$, then inserting the symbol $x$ produces $u$$x$$v$. This can also be denoted ε→$x$, using ε to denote the empty string.
 * Deletion of a single symbol changes $u$$x$$v$ to $u$$v$ ($x$→ε).
 * Substitution of a single symbol $x$ for a symbol $y$ ≠ $x$ changes $u$$x$$v$ to $u$$y$$v$ ($x$→$y$).

In Levenshtein's original definition, each of these operations has unit cost (except that substitution of a character by itself has zero cost), so the Levenshtein distance is equal to the minimum number of operations required to transform $a$ to $b$. A more general definition associates non-negative weight functions $w$ins($x$), $w$del($x$) and $w$sub($x$, $y$) with the operations.

Additional primitive operations have been suggested. Damerau–Levenshtein distance counts as a single edit a common mistake: transposition of two adjacent characters, formally characterized by an operation that changes $u$$x$$y$$v$ into $u$$y$$x$$v$. For the task of correcting OCR output, merge and split operations have been used which replace a single character into a pair of them or vice versa.

Other variants of edit distance are obtained by restricting the set of operations. Longest common subsequence (LCS) distance is edit distance with insertion and deletion as the only two edit operations, both at unit cost. Similarly, by only allowing substitutions (again at unit cost), Hamming distance is obtained; this must be restricted to equal-length strings. Jaro–Winkler distance can be obtained from an edit distance where only transpositions are allowed.

Example
The Levenshtein distance between "kitten" and "sitting" is 3. A minimal edit script that transforms the former into the latter is:

 * 1) kitten → sitten (substitute "s" for "k")
 * 2) sitten → sittin (substitute "i" for "e")
 * 3) sittin → sitting (insert "g" at the end)

LCS distance (insertions and deletions only) gives a different distance and minimal edit script:

 * 1) kitten → itten (delete "k" at 0)
 * 2) itten → sitten (insert "s" at 0)
 * 3) sitten → sittn (delete "e" at 4)
 * 4) sittn → sittin (insert "i" at 4)
 * 5) sittin → sitting (insert "g" at 6)

for a total cost/distance of 5 operations.

Properties
Edit distance with non-negative cost satisfies the axioms of a metric, giving rise to a metric space of strings, when the following conditions are met:

 * Every edit operation has positive cost;
 * for every operation, there is an inverse operation with equal cost.

With these properties, the metric axioms are satisfied as follows:

 * $d$($a$, $b$) = 0 if and only if a=b, since each string can be trivially transformed to itself using exactly zero operations.
 * $d$($a$, $b$) > 0 when $a$ ≠ $b$, since this would require at least one operation at non-zero cost.
 * $d$($a$, $b$) = $d$($b$, $a$) by equality of the cost of each operation and its inverse.
 * Triangle inequality: $d$($a$, $c$) ≤ $d$($a$, $b$) + $d$($b$, $c$).

Levenshtein distance and LCS distance with unit cost satisfy the above conditions, and therefore the metric axioms. Variants of edit distance that are not proper metrics have also been considered in the literature.

Other useful properties of unit-cost edit distances include:

 * LCS distance is bounded above by the sum of lengths of a pair of strings.
 * LCS distance is an upper bound on Levenshtein distance.
 * For strings of the same length, Hamming distance is an upper bound on Levenshtein distance.

Regardless of cost/weights, the following property holds of all edit distances:

 * When $a$ and $b$ share a common prefix, this prefix has no effect on the distance. Formally, when $a$ = $uv$ and $b$ = $uw$, then $d$($a$, $b$) = $d$($v$, $w$). This allows speeding up many computations involving edit distance and edit scripts, since common prefixes and suffixes can be skipped in linear time.

Computation
The first algorithm for computing minimum edit distance between a pair of strings was published by Damerau in 1964.

Common algorithm
Using Levenshtein's original operations, the (nonsymmetric) edit distance from $$a = a_1\ldots a_m$$ to $$b = b_1\ldots b_n$$ is given by $$d_{mn}$$, defined by the recurrence

 * $$\begin{align}d_{i0} &= \sum_{k=1}^{i} w_\mathrm{del}(a_{k}), & & \quad \text{for}\; 1 \leq i \leq m \\

d_{0j} &= \sum_{k=1}^{j} w_\mathrm{ins}(b_{k}), & & \quad \text{for}\; 1 \leq j \leq n \\ d_{ij} &= \begin{cases} d_{i-1, j-1} & \text{for}\; a_{i} = b_{j}\\ \min \begin{cases} d_{i-1, j} + w_\mathrm{del}(a_{i})\\ d_{i,j-1} + w_\mathrm{ins}(b_{j}) \\ d_{i-1,j-1} + w_\mathrm{sub}(a_{i}, b_{j}) \end{cases} & \text{for}\; a_{i} \neq b_{j}\end{cases} & & \quad \text{for}\; 1 \leq i \leq m, 1 \leq j \leq n.\end{align}$$ This algorithm can be generalized to handle transpositions by adding another term in the recursive clause's minimization.

The straightforward, recursive way of evaluating this recurrence takes exponential time. Therefore, it is usually computed using a dynamic programming algorithm that is commonly credited to Wagner and Fischer, although it has a history of multiple invention. After completion of the Wagner–Fischer algorithm, a minimal sequence of edit operations can be read off as a backtrace of the operations used during the dynamic programming algorithm starting at $$d_{mn}$$.

This algorithm has a time complexity of Θ($m$$n$) where $m$ and $n$ are the lengths of the strings. When the full dynamic programming table is constructed, its space complexity is also Θ($m$$n$); this can be improved to Θ(min($m$,$n$)) by observing that at any instant, the algorithm only requires two rows (or two columns) in memory. However, this optimization makes it impossible to read off the minimal series of edit operations. A linear-space solution to this problem is offered by Hirschberg's algorithm. A general recursive divide-and-conquer framework for solving such recurrences and extracting an optimal sequence of operations cache-efficiently in space linear in the size of the input is given by Chowdhury, Le, and Ramachandran.

Improved algorithms
Improving on the Wagner–Fisher algorithm described above, Ukkonen describes several variants, one of which takes two strings and a maximum edit distance $s$, and returns min($s$, $d$). It achieves this by only computing and storing a part of the dynamic programming table around its diagonal. This algorithm takes time O($s$×min($m$,$n$)), where $m$ and $n$ are the lengths of the strings. Space complexity is O($s$2) or O($s$), depending on whether the edit sequence needs to be read off.

Further improvements by Landau, Myers, and Schmidt give an O($s$$2$ + max($m$,$n$)) time algorithm.

For a finite alphabet and edit costs which are multiples of each other, the fastest known exact algorithm is of Masek and Paterson having worst case runtime of O(nm/logn).

Applications
Edit distance finds applications in computational biology and natural language processing, e.g. the correction of spelling mistakes or OCR errors, and approximate string matching, where the objective is to find matches for short strings in many longer texts, in situations where a small number of differences is to be expected.

Various algorithms exist that solve problems beside the computation of distance between a pair of strings, to solve related types of problems.

 * Hirschberg's algorithm computes the optimal alignment of two strings, where optimality is defined as minimizing edit distance.
 * Approximate string matching can be formulated in terms of edit distance. Ukkonen's 1985 algorithm takes a string $p$, called the pattern, and a constant $k$; it then builds a deterministic finite state automaton that finds, in an arbitrary string $s$, a substring whose edit distance to $p$ is at most $k$ (cf. the Aho–Corasick algorithm, which similarly constructs an automaton to search for any of a number of patterns, but without allowing edit operations). A similar algorithm for approximate string matching is the bitap algorithm, also defined in terms of edit distance.
 * Levenshtein automata are finite-state machines that recognize a set of strings within bounded edit distance of a fixed reference string.

Language edit distance
A generalization of the edit distance between strings is the language edit distance between a string and a language, usually a formal language. Instead of considering the edit distance between one string and another, the language edit distance is the minimum edit distance that can be attained between a fixed string and any string taken from a set of strings. More formally, for any language L and string x over an alphabet $Σ$, the language edit distance d(L, x) is given by $$d(L,x) = \min_{y \in L} d(x,y)

$$, where $$d(x,y)$$ is the string edit distance. When the language L is context free, there is a cubic time dynamic programming algorithm proposed by Aho and Peterson in 1972 which computes the language edit distance. For less expressive families of grammars, such as the regular grammars, faster algorithms exist for computing the edit distance.

Language edit distance has found many diverse applications, such as RNA folding, error correction, and solutions to the Optimum Stack Generation problem.

title: Edit distance


text:
Deposition (geology)

Deposition is the geological process in which sediments, soil and rocks are added to a landform or landmass. Wind, ice, water, and gravity transport previously weathered surface material, which, at the loss of enough kinetic energy in the fluid, is deposited, building up layers of sediment.

This occurs when the forces responsible for sediment transportation are no longer sufficient to overcome the forces of gravity and friction, creating a resistance to motion; this is known as the null-point hypothesis. Deposition can also refer to the buildup of sediment from organically derived matter or chemical processes. For example, chalk is made up partly of the microscopic calcium carbonate skeletons of marine plankton, the deposition of which induced chemical processes (diagenesis) to deposit further calcium carbonate. Similarly, the formation of coal begins with the deposition of organic material, mainly from plants, in anaerobic conditions.

Null-point hypothesis
The null-point hypothesis explains how sediment is deposited throughout a shore profile according to its grain size. This is due to the influence of hydraulic energy, resulting in a seaward-fining of sediment particle size, or where fluid forcing equals gravity for each grain size. The concept can also be explained as "sediment of a particular size may move across the profile to a position where it is in equilibrium with the wave and flows acting on that sediment grain". This sorting mechanism combines the influence of the down-slope gravitational force of the profile and forces due to flow asymmetry; the position where there is zero net transport is known as the null point and was first proposed by Cornaglia in 1889. Figure 1 illustrates this relationship between sediment grain size and the depth of the marine environment.

The first principle underlying the null point theory is due to the gravitational force; finer sediments remain in the water column for longer durations allowing transportation outside the surf zone to deposit under calmer conditions. The gravitational effect or settling velocity determines the location of deposition for finer sediments, whereas a grain's internal angle of friction determines the deposition of larger grains on a shore profile. The secondary principle to the creation of seaward sediment fining is known as the hypothesis of asymmetrical thresholds under waves; this describes the interaction between the oscillatory flow of waves and tides flowing over the wave ripple bedforms in an asymmetric pattern. "The relatively strong onshore stroke of the waveforms an eddy or vortex on the lee side of the ripple, provided the onshore flow persists, this eddy remains trapped in the lee of the ripple. When the flow reverses, the eddy is thrown upwards off the bottom and a small cloud of suspended sediment generated by the eddy is ejected into the water column above the ripple, the sediment cloud is then moved seaward by the offshore stroke of the wave." Where there is symmetry in ripple shape the vortex is neutralised, the eddy and its associated sediment cloud develops on both sides of the ripple. This creates a cloudy water column which travels under the tidal influence as the wave orbital motion is in equilibrium.

The Null-point hypothesis has been quantitatively proven in Akaroa Harbour, New Zealand, The Wash, U.K., Bohai Bay and West Huang Sera, Mainland China, and in numerous other studies; Ippen and Eagleson (1955), Eagleson and Dean (1959, 1961) and Miller and Zeigler (1958, 1964).

Deposition of non-cohesive sediments
Large-grain sediments transported by either bedload or suspended load will come to rest when there is insufficient bed shear stress and fluid turbulence to keep the sediment moving; with the suspended load this can be some distance as the particles need to fall through the water column. This is determined by the grain's downward acting weight force being matched by a combined buoyancy and fluid drag force and can be expressed by:

 * $$ \frac{4}{3} \pi R^3 \rho_s g = \frac{4}{3} \pi R^3 \rho g  + \frac{1}{2} \Complex_d \rho \pi R^2 w_s^2\,$$

Downward acting weight force	= Upward-acting buoyancy force  +  Upward-acting fluid drag force

where:
 * π is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
 * R is the radius of the spherical object (in m),
 * ρ is the mass density of the fluid (kg/m3),
 * g is the gravitational acceleration (m/s2),
 * Cd is the drag coefficient, and
 * ws is the particle's settling velocity (in m/s).

In order to calculate the drag coefficient, the grain's Reynolds number needs to be discovered, which is based on the type of fluid through which the sediment particle is flowing, laminar flow, turbulent flow or a hybrid of both. When the fluid becomes more viscous due to smaller grain sizes or larger settling velocities, the prediction is less straightforward and it is applicable to incorporate Stokes Law (also known as the frictional force, or drag force) of settling.

Deposition of cohesive sediments
The cohesion of sediment occurs with the small grain sizes associated with silts and clays, or particles smaller than 4ϕ on the phi scale. If these fine particles remain dispersed in the water column, Stokes law applies to the settling velocity of the individual grains, although due to seawater being a strong electrolyte bonding agent, flocculation occurs where individual particles create an electrical bond adhering each other together to form flocs. "The face of a clay platelet has a slight negative charge where the edge has a slight positive charge when two platelets come into close proximity with each other the face of one particle and the edge of the other are electrostatically attracted." Flocs then have a higher combined mass which leads to quicker deposition through a higher fall velocity, and deposition in a more shoreward direction than they would have as the individual fine grains of clay or silt.

The occurrence of null point theory
Akaroa Harbour is located on Banks Peninsula, Canterbury, New Zealand, -43.8°N, 172.93333°W. The formation of this harbour has occurred due to active erosional processes on an extinct shield volcano, whereby the sea has flooded the caldera, creating an inlet 16 km in length, with an average width of 2 km and a depth of −13 m relative to mean sea level at the 9 km point down the transect of the central axis. The predominant storm wave energy has unlimited fetch for the outer harbour from a southerly direction, with a calmer environment within the inner harbour, though localised harbour breezes create surface currents and chop influencing the marine sedimentation processes. Deposits of loess from subsequent glacial periods have in filled volcanic fissures over millennia, resulting in volcanic basalt and loess as the main sediment types available for deposition in Akaroa Harbour

Hart et al. (2009) discovered through bathymetric survey, sieve and pipette analysis of subtidal sediments, that sediment textures were related to three main factors: depth, distance from shoreline, and distance along the central axis of the harbour. This resulted in the fining of sediment textures with increasing depth and towards the central axis of the harbour, or if classified into grain class sizes, "the plotted transect for the central axis goes from silty sands in the intertidal zone to sandy silts in the inner nearshore, to silts in the outer reaches of the bays to mud at depths of 6 m or more". See figure 2 for detail.

Other studies have shown this process of the winnowing of sediment grain size from the effect of hydrodynamic forcing; Wang, Collins and Zhu (1988) qualitatively correlated increasing intensity of fluid forcing with increasing grain size. "This correlation was demonstrated at the low energy clayey tidal flats of Bohai Bay (China), the moderate environment of the Jiangsu coast (China) where the bottom material is silty, and the sandy flats of the high energy coast of The Wash (U.K.)." This research shows conclusive evidence for the null point theory existing on tidal flats with differing hydrodynamic energy levels and also on flats that are both erosional and accretional.

Kirby R. (2002) takes this concept further explaining that the fines are suspended and reworked aerially offshore leaving behind lag deposits of the main bivalve and gastropod shells separated out from the finer substrate beneath, waves and currents then heap these deposits to form chenier ridges throughout the tidal zone, which tend to be forced up the foreshore profile but also along the foreshore. Cheniers can be found at any level on the foreshore and predominantly characterise an erosion-dominated regime.

Applications for coastal planning and management
The null point theory has been controversial in its acceptance into mainstream coastal science as the theory operates in dynamic equilibrium or unstable equilibrium, and many fields and laboratory observations have failed to replicate the state of a null point at each grain size throughout the profile. The interaction of variables and processes over time within the environmental context causes issues; "a large number of variables, the complexity of the processes, and the difficulty in observation, all place serious obstacles in the way of systematisation, therefore in certain narrow fields the basic physical theory may be sound and reliable but the gaps are large"

Geomorphologists, engineers, governments and planners should be aware of the processes and outcomes involved with the null point hypothesis when performing tasks such as beach nourishment, issuing building consents or building coastal defence structures. This is because sediment grain size analysis throughout a profile allows inference into the erosion or accretion rates possible if shore dynamics are modified. Planners and managers should also be aware that the coastal environment is dynamic and contextual science should be evaluated before the implementation of any shore profile modification. Thus theoretical studies, laboratory experiments, numerical and hydraulic modelling seek to answer questions pertaining to littoral drift and sediment deposition, the results should not be viewed in isolation and a substantial body of purely qualitative observational data should supplement any planning or management decision.

title: Deposition (geology)