Academic literature on the topic 'Perplexity'

This thesis examines the ways in which definitions and perceptions of refugees in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia evolved over the course of the American Civil War. It investigates perspectives from individuals in both the United States and Confederate States to illustrate how misconceptions about refugees—who they were, what they wanted, and how they could benefit each side—dominated how displaced people were discussed. I argue that despite significant attention to refugees in newspapers, military reports, and among the public, both sides failed to adequately assist refugees who were displaced as a result of the war. Utilizing a broadly chronological approach allows greater insight into how the situation in the Shenandoah Valley escalated over time with the addition of various refugee demographic groups, including white Unionists, Black self-emancipated people, deserters, and pro-Confederate civilians. This thesis discusses how each of these groups challenged Americans' culturally-constructed definition of the word "refugee." It also demonstrates how military commanders made use of refugees as sources of military intelligence who directly influenced the events of several military campaigns. This thesis argues that misconceptions about refugees hindered an effective and meaningful response to the Valley's refugee crisis among government officials, military officers, and the general populaces of the North and the South.<br>Master of Arts<br>The devastation wrought by the American Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley of western Virginia sparked a refugee crisis that grew in size over the course of the war. From the earliest days of the conflict in 1861, Americans correctly predicted that the war would displace many people. However, mistaken ideas about who qualified as a refugee and what to do with or for refugees prevented an effective response that could have alleviated the suffering of many of these people. This thesis examines how Americans struggled to understand refugees as matters of gender, race, and loyalty appeared to complicate the subject. It offers insight into not only how Americans perceived refugees, but also explores refugee experiences in order to illuminate voices that were overlooked both in the 1860s and in the decades since the war.

In the big data context, the growing volume of textual data presents challenges for traditional structured data-based decision support systems (DSS). DSS based on structured data is difficult to process the semantic information of text data. To meet the challenge, this thesis proposes a solution for the Decision Support System (DSS) based on machine Learning and qualitative analysis, namely TLE-DSS. TLE-DSS refers to three critical analytical modules: Thematic Analysis (TA), Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)and Evolutionary Grounded Theory (EGT). To better understand the operation mechanism of TLE-DSS, this thesis used an experimental case to explain how to make decisions through TLE-DSS. Additionally, during the data analysis of the experimental case, by calculating the difference of perplexity of different models to compare similarities, this thesis proposed a solution to determine the optimal number of topics in LDA. Meanwhile, by using LDAvis, a model with the optimal number of topics was visualized. Moreover, the thesis also expounded the principle and application value of EGT. In the last part, this thesis discussed the challenges and potential ethical issues that TLE-DSS still faces.

The thesis describes a new database of uzun havas, a non-metered structured improvisation form in Turkish folk music, and a system, which uses Variable-Length Markov Models (VLMMs) to predict the melody in the uzun hava form. The database consists of 77 songs, encompassing 10849 notes, and it is used to train multiple viewpoints, where each event in a musical sequence are represented by parallel descriptors such as Durations and Notes. The thesis also introduces pitch-related viewpoints that are specifically aimed to model the unique melodic properties of makam music. The predictability of the system is quantitatively evaluated by an entropy based scheme. In the experiments, the results from the pitch-related viewpoints mapping 12-tone-scale of Western classical theory and 17 tone-scale of Turkish folk music are compared. It is shown that VLMMs are highly predictive in the note progressions of the transcriptions of uzun havas. This suggests that VLMMs may be applied to makam-based and non-metered musical forms, in addition to Western musical styles. To the best of knowledge, the work presents the first symbolic, machine-readable database and the first application of computational modeling in Turkish folk music.

Le Tiers Livre que Rabelais publie en 1546 est sans doute le premier livre qui met au coeur de son écriture et de sa pensée la notion de "perplexité". Une question cocasse ("serai-je cocu ?") fournit la matière de la première réelle mise en scène littéraire de la notion. Elle recueille les fruits d'un double héritage savant, juridique et théologique. Pour les juristes, le terme de "perplexitas" désigne la situation particulièrement délicate où deux lois s'opposent l'une à l'autre, sans espoir de conciliation[. . . ]. Pour les théologiens, le terme désigne prioritairement le conflit de la loi de l'Eglise et de la loi de la conscience. A priori impensable dans un monde où Dieu dit la même chose à son Eglise et à la conscience de chacun, la situation ne survient que par la faute du fidéle [. . . ]Ce double éclairage permet d'envisager le parcours de Panurge d'une manière nouvelle. De la perplexité initiale du héros à sa résolution -problématique- dans le Cinquième Livre se dessine l'esquisse de ce qui pourrait être un cheminement "thélémique". L'aventure de Panurge devient la métaphore de cet autre chemin explicité par différents textes contemporains qui méne de la perplexité à la Jérusalem céleste, autre abbaye de Thélème.