Archive for month: September, 2020

1.        The cost of a manufactured product generally consists of which of the following costs?

a.        Direct materials cost and factory overhead cost

b.        Direct labor cost and factory overhead cost

c.        Direct labor cost, direct materials cost, and factory overhead cost

d.        Direct materials cost and direct labor cost

Rule of 72 can be used to estimate how long it will take for an investment to double in value. The formula is fairly simple and can certainly give an investor an idea as to whether it would be worth making the investment itself. While this formula can certainly estimate the time to double it seems that there may be other reasons for either making or not making an investment. What reasons do you think might make you select an investment that takes longer to double in value? Does it matter if it earns more interest if it takes longer to double? 

7. Do you have any good reason to expect that the sun will rise tomorrow?

(i) State clearly and precisely just what an inductive inference is. Give an example (of your own).

(ii) Clearly and precisely explain Hume’s argument that no inductive inference ever has any rational justification. (This is Hume’s ‘problem of induction’, set out in his section 4 of his Enquiry.)

(iii) Present a reasoned evaluation of that argument. Is Hume right that there could be no rationally justifiable inductive inference? Why or why not?

8. “All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tye between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing, which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be, that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning, when employed either in philosophical reasonings, or common life.” (EHU 7.26)

(i) Explain what Hume’s thesis is in this excerpt.

(ii) Why do you think that he stresses the word “seems” like this (in the phrase “the necessary

conclusion seems to be”)?

(iii) Reconstruct Hume’s argument for the thesis stated here.

(iv) Do you find this argument persuasive? Explain why or why not.

9. In Hume’s Dialogues, the character Cleanthes argues as follows: “The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.” (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion 2.5)

(i) Clearly and precisely reconstruct Cleanthes’s design argument. What exactly is the argument supposed to prove and how is it supposed to work?

(ii) What do you think are the one or two most plausible-sounding objections to this argument introduced by Hume’s characters in the Dialogues? How exactly is (are) this (these) objection(s) supposed to sink the argument?

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(iii) Use these objections to develop a reasoned evaluation of Cleanthes’s argument. Is the argument from design sunk, or can it be successfully defended in the face of this objection (these objections)?

Topic #1: Internal Email Box

The IT department of a reputed company hired you to reinforce their teams. They have an exciting idea to develop a new system to enable the employees to communicate through it (for confidentiality matters). The system is seen as an emailing system and has to be accessible through a Web browser. The system will enable an administrator to add accounts, suspend accounts, and remove accounts. The initial description of the system is as follows:

An email account is associated to each employee in the company. An employee is described by a unique ID, a first name, a last name, a date of joining the company, a position, the date of taking that position, a login, a password and his/her department. A department is described with an ID, a name, and the date of creation. Each position has an ID and a description. We can also associate a minimum salary and a maximum salary of that position. An employee can send an email to one another employee or several employees. The email has the sender, the receiver(s), the subject, and the content.

A special person, called a root, can add employees to the system, remove employees, or update them. Other employees can only access their information (details, email box, etc.), remove emails for their own box, and access the address book for consultation. Finally, an alias email address can be created by the administrator which has a unique id and a set of employees included in that alias. When an email is sent to that alias, all included employees receive the email. An employee can be included in several aliases and an alias contains at least 1 employee.

Requested WorkPart I: Modeling and foundations

1.     Build the conceptual model for the business problem