This chapter introduces simple and multiple Bayesian linear regression models, in which parameters are treated as latent random variables. Thanks to their simplicity, these models yield closed-form posteriors. With flat priors, the posterior closely resembles the frequentist sampling distribution. We also explore the use of shrinkage priors to penalise model complexity and reduce overfitting. A Gaussian prior on the coefficients leads to ridge regression, where the MAP estimate corresponds to L2-regularised least squares. A Laplace prior yields lasso regression, based on L1 regularisation. Both are examples of regularisation techniques, but they behave differently: ridge regression shrinks all coefficients toward zero, while lasso tends to set some exactly to zero, producing a sparse model.

This chapter introduces probabilistic models for supervised learning tasks where the prediction target is categorical. In binary classification, the target takes two values; models output the conditional probability of one of these, given the predictors. Logistic regression expresses the log odds as a linear function of the predictors and is fitted by minimising (regularised) cross-entropy loss. Minimising unregularised cross-entropy is equivalent to maximising likelihood, but in linearly separable cases, a maximum likelihood solution may not exist. Regularisation ensures the problem is well posed and helps control overfitting. In multiclass classification, the target can take K > 2 values, and models output a K-dimensional probability vector. Multinomial logistic regression expresses a K-dimensional score vector as a linear function of the predictors and applies the softmax function to convert scores into probabilities. k-nearest neighbours (k-NN) is a non-parametric method that estimates class probabilities from nearby training points. In high-dimensional predictor spaces, parametric models like logistic regression often outperform non-parametric ones like k-NN.

The European invasions of the Americas generated an extended period of world-historic significance. Through individual and societal interactions and accompanying exchanges—friendly, exploitative, and warlike—imperial collisions wrought profound societal, cultural, economic, and political changes. War influenced tactics, strategies, weaponry, gender norms and relations, racial interactions, and settlement patterns. It affected the development of colonial, Indigenous, and enslaved peoples. The more that war demanded of societies, the more they in turn demanded of war and politics. Recentering the focus from traditional military history to the broader and more complex panorama of war and society places at center stage the observation that armies and navies fight battles, but societies fight wars. War’s imprint on European and Indigenous societies presaged future patterns of contact, conflict, warfare, and societal development. The broad patterns established during this moment of imperial collisions portended that which followed, from the era of the American Revolution through the United States’ most recent conflicts, and forward into the country’s unknowable future.

This chapter reviews the dilation/model theory for a single contraction operator from four points of view: (i) the coordinate-free geometric picture, (ii) the Douglas model theory, (iii) the Schäffer model theory, and (iv) the Sz.-Nagy–Foias model theory. This chapter also presents certain canonical decomposition theorems for an isometry, a general contraction operator, and the isometric embedding involved in an isometric lifting of a general contraction operator.

This chapter begins with a historical introduction to the concept of keyness and the various methods that have been proposed to operationalize keyness in order to obtain keywords and, more recently, key features. It then gives an overview of the wide range of linguistic questions that have been addressed using these two methods, illustrating several of these areas through detailed discussions of published studies on topics such as gender differences, register variation, language ideologies, political debates, and literary stylistics. It then provides a summary of state-of-the-art methods for keyword or key feature analysis. We present a corpus-based study of the keywords that distinguish two UK newspapers – The Daily Mail and The Guardian – in their coverage of the Just Stop Oil movement, presenting keyword lists for two keyness methods: corpus frequency keyness and text dispersion keyness. We use this case study as a basis for discussing the strengths and limitations of different corpus-based methods for analyzing keywords. We conclude the chapter by commenting on areas for future research that will help us better understand and apply keyness methods.

This chapter presents an introduction to Dynare, which is a computer software that macroeconomists use to solve DSGE models. It illustrates basic functions and potential pitfalls through a working example that resembles one of the social planner problems from earlier chapters.

This chapter begins by introducing standards of conduct – implementing the integrity and independence attributed to the international civil service by the treaty-basis of international organizations. Second, the legal principles of conduct are identified, namely: (1) The interests of the international organization are paramount; (2) Abuse of authority must be manifest, to be contestable; (3) International officials must be uncorrupted; and (4) External authority must not compromise international officials. Third, three attendant legal duties of conduct are considered, as follows: (1) Integrity requires honesty and reputability; (2) Integrity requires reserve and respect; and (3) Integrity requires discipline and hierarchical authority. Fourth, the duty to report alleged beaches of the standards of conduct (sometimes styled, ‘whistleblowing’) is considered. Fifth, the chapter examines the interaction between the immunity typically possessed by international officials in the course of their duties and the exercise of national legal jurisdictions, notably when crimes may have been committed in connection to the workplace. Sixth, and in conclusion, this employment law of standards of conduct at international organizations is restated. The employment law of the enforcement of integrity and the independence of the international civil service – procedures to ascertain and sanction breaches of standards of conduct – is the subject of Chapter 10, ‘Misconduct’.

This essay argues that the war and society motif has deeply influenced modern political and cultural understandings of the American Civil War, revising the academic and public narratives from martial (emphasizing battles and leaders and themes of heroism, sacrifice, and reconciliation) to social (emphasizing slavery and emancipation, civilians and common soldiers, social disruptions, and irreconciliation). Previously, a sentimentalized “brothers’ war” narrative of the war tacitly accepted the Lost Cause narrative by deemphasizing slavery as a war cause, criticizing Reconstruction, and emphasizing reconciliation. New generations of “post-revisionist” academic historians have emphasized the Civil War’s violence, trauma, dislocation, and chaos through new subfields including emancipation, nationalism, homefront, borderlands, guerrillas, and death studies. National conversations over race, memory, and the unfinished legacy of the Civil War have resulted from this war and society paradigm. Renewed debate about enduring Confederate symbols is being actively waged for the first time in a half-century, manifesting itself publicly in recent unrest over Confederate monuments and iconography.

This chapter explores William Burroughs’ fraught engagement with queerness, colonialism, and nationalism across such key texts as Queer, The Yage Letters, Naked Lunch, and The Wild Boys. Drawing on Oliver Harris’ and Alex Wermer-Colan’s insights into Burroughs’ overidentification with imperial tropes, Carmody argues that Burroughs simultaneously critiques and reappropriates colonial discourse through a queer lens. Through grotesque, parodic routines, Burroughs exposes the libidinal underpinnings of American exceptionalism and neocolonialism. Carmody situates Burroughs’ postwar expatriate writing – especially in 1950s Tangier – as emblematic of a nostalgic yet radical vision for a postnational community, rooted in aesthetic freedom and sexual plurality. Highlighting the transformation from colonial critique to postcolonial fantasy, Carmody demonstrates how Burroughs reimagines the colony as a site of anarchic potential, rather than nationalist redemption. The chapter ultimately suggests that Burroughs’ literary project is less a political blueprint than an unstable, generative terrain where queer desire and imperial critique intersect.

This chapter begins by introducing international administrative tribunals – independent, judicial, subsidiary organs of international organizations, competent to compulsorily adjudicate employment-related disputes involving international officials – that whilst ubiquitous, are implied, but not expressly stated, by the treaty-basis of all multilateral institutions. Second, the legal characteristics of international administrative tribunals are identified, namely: (1) Capacity to establish administrative tribunals is treaty-based; (2) Administrative tribunals possess an independent and judicial status; and (3) The jurisdiction of administrative tribunals is determined by their statute. Third, the chapter considers the ability – and related approach – of administrative tribunals to impose administrative relief upon, and financial awards against, the employing international organization. Fourth, and in conclusion, this legal basis of international administrative tribunals is restated.

At the opening of Chapter 2 I explained how the introduction and spread of coinage were a part of a new dynamism of the eastern Mediterranean world in the seventh and sixth centuries, and I posed the questions of the extent to which the invention and use of coinage were both encouraged by the changes that were taking place and in turn contributed to that dynamism. Attempts to explore those questions must be based on clear assessments of the nature of early coinage – what it was and what it was not. It is only on the basis of such assessments that interpretations of the potential impact of coinage on economic, social and cultural developments can rest. My aim here therefore is to summarise the characteristics of early coinage as they have emerged in the course of the book.

The word “liberation” has dominated recent American history of the Second World War in Europe. The celebratory “liberation narrative,” in which American GIs brought freedom to France, Italy and Germany, does not accurately portray the war’s end, at least from the perspective of Europeans themselves. To them, the allied victory and occupation brought freedom, but also a bitter taste of defeat, as well as exploitation and repression. U.S. officers often viewed the French, Italians, and Germans with condescension, even contempt. They looked the other way when their subordinates committed acts of theft and sexual assault. Throughout Europe the American word “liberation” became a neologism for looting. Defeat meant different things to different peoples, depending on their geographical location, their status as an occupied, victorious, or defeated nation. Still, female sexuality and heterosexual relations played major symbolic roles in how Europeans understood the war’s end. The prostitution and rape of female civilians became powerful signifiers of defeat and emasculation. Likewise women who sexually engaged with American GIs symbolized national betrayal and decline.