Problem: Write an article based on this summary: Resist the urge to turn this into a catastrophe. Talk to a stylist. Search online for images of the worst haircuts. Plan humorous responses for social scenarios. Be cautious of being defensive.

Answer: Perhaps you have a wedding, prom, or another special event at which you wanted to look your best. Even so, remind yourself that your worth isn’t based solely on your appearance, to encourage a proactive mindset, which will help you take measures to improve your hair. Some salons offer touch-ups or corrections for a fraction of the normal price, and if your unfortunate fringe is the result of a stylist's error, you may get your money back. Even if you don't get your money back or a special deal, ask if there are ways you can correct or improve the state of your bangs on your own. Though this will not correct the fringe injustice you have suffered, laughing at ‘’worse’’ haircuts can be therapeutic and put your situation into perspective, and perspective might be just what you need to correct a bad cut. Have a friend join you so that you have an ally that understands how you feel. Laughing together can protect you from psychological pain. Planning can take a great deal of stress off your mind, and planning what you might say if someone comments on your bangs can be an advantage. Some things you might say:  “I decided to hack off my bangs to see if my face could make up for it. How am I looking?” “I said ‘I forgot my wallet.’ My stylist heard, ‘I want a mullet.’” “I decided on trying something different. So did my stylist. I think her version of ‘different’ is the same as my version of ‘bad.’” You probably feel pretty strongly about your terrible haircut. These strong feelings can make you interpret even compliments as an attack. Don’t let bad bangs sour your relationships or get in the way of you taking measures to fix your fringe.


Problem: Write an article based on this summary: Pay more (or offer a path to a raise). Offer potential for advancement. Rebalance the work load. Offer competitive benefits. Encourage friendly employee relationships. Trust your employees with responsibility.

Answer: In the free marketplace, cash is king. If you're willing to pay your employees more than a competitor would, they'll be less likely to leave for other work. An added benefit of increasing your employees' pay is that it allows you to ask more of them — well-paid employees have an incentive to work harder and commit themselves to their job, while employees who are making relatively little won't usually have the same level of dedication or loyalty. If you don't have the cash to pay your employees more than the competition, be creative. For instance, offering company stock options or equity plans is a relatively low-cost way to increase the long-term earning potential of your employees. As an added benefit, these sorts of options give employees a real financial stake in the company — if they work hard and help the company do well, their stock value will go up and they'll make money. Employees like to feel like their hard work is being rewarded. As a manager or business owner, part of making sure your employees feel this way is compensating them fairly for their work, but another part is giving them the opportunity to achieve the non-tangible benefits of recognition and advancement. Reward exceptionally smart, resourceful, and hard-working employees by gradually increasing their responsibility and giving them more important titles. An employee who's advanced from an entry-level position to a manager role is much more likely to be loyal to your company than one who's done the same job for years in spite of her hard work.  It’s not enough to simply ‘’offer’’ the potential for advancement — it’s also important to make sure that employees understand how they can advance in your business. If you're having a hard  time communicating this to your employees, try inviting a career counselor into the workplace once or twice a year to discuss this with them. Try to promote from within your workforce, rather than recruiting outsiders into management roles. While this may sometimes be unavoidable, hiring an outsider to fill a management vacancy when there are qualified employees with years of experience who could conceivably do the job can give the impression that you don't care about your employees' accomplishments. If an employee's work is stressful, monotonous, or extremely difficult, different jobs with comparatively easy work loads will start to look very attractive. Never work your employees to the point of exhaustion — this is one of the easiest ways to cause your employees to start looking for other work en masse. In addition, it's also often financially inefficient: employees with very long or stressful jobs will require significantly higher pay levels to retain than employees with ordinary duties and hours. There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that working your employees extra-hard can actually cause their net productivity to plummet — even to below the level of productivity from a normal 40-hour week in some cases! Some research has found, for instance, that excessively long hours can cause employees to take longer to perform the same tasks as they normally would, deal poorly with problems requiring critical thinking or creativity, make more mistakes, and waste time engaging in recreational or personal activities at work. Increasingly, people looking for work don't just consider the salary being offered by a potential employer, but also the benefits provided. By offering affordable benefits like health insurance, dental insurance, 401K plans, and, as mentioned above, stock options, you can make a job at your company more appealing than one at a competitor's, decreasing employee turnover. Reviewing your benefits package is something your company should do regularly — at least once a year.  Be aware of the benefits your biggest competitors are offering their employees. If they start offering more generous benefits than you, they may be able to steal some of your best employees, so don’t let them get the jump on you! In the U.S., millions of employees depend on an employer's health care plan to make their medical care affordable. Offering a good employee health insurance plan can make a job with your company especially attractive, decreasing turnover and making it easier to hire. In addition, ensuring your employees have decent health coverage can be a wise investment in the long run — healthy employees are productive employees. To long-time employees, coworkers and bosses can function like something of a family, providing friendly relationships, conversation, and sometimes even emotional intimacy. Don't let your employees' jobs become a source of a source of boredom or dread for them. Instead, try to foster a warm, open environment at work. Employees should be comfortable talking, joking, and making outside-of-work plans with each other as long as it doesn't interfere with their work. If your employees seem "cold", standoffish, or emotionally distant, try sponsoring a fun workplace outing to lighten the mood. Going out for drinks, catching a movie, or playing sports after work can be a great way to bond with your employees and allow them to bond with each other, even if you can only do so once or twice a month. People tend to work hardest (and smartest) when they think their jobs matter. Though this is often forgotten by even the best managers, it's surprisingly intuitive. Consider this: who is likely to work harder — a mail room clerk with little responsibility or a heart surgeon with responsibility over other peoples' lives? Try to make an effort to give the employees with even the most minor jobs some sense of importance or responsibility. If they understand exactly how their work is essential to the business's success, they'll have added motivation to succeed in their jobs. Ironically, giving people added duties that increase their responsibility can actually make their jobs more attractive to them. However, if you do this, be open to the possibility of promotion or a raise in the future — employees don't want to deal with increased responsibilities without ever being rewarded for their work.


Problem: Write an article based on this summary: Understand the terminology. Lie with mean averages. Lie with median averages. Lie with mode averages. Lie with representational numbers.

Answer:
The word “average” gets thrown around an awful lot when statistical data are being discussed. At first glance, the term sounds straightforward enough: the average is the amount that falls roughly in the middle. However, there are actually  few different types of averages, all of which can be misleading if not properly understood.  The mean average is reached by adding up all the numbers in a data set and dividing them by the number of entries in the set. In other words, if you have the numbers 3, 3, 5, 4, and 7, the mean average can be reached by adding them together (to get 22) and then dividing the sum by 5 (since there are 5 numbers in the set).In this example, the mean average is 4.4.  The median average is the number in a data set that falls midway between the lower numbers and the higher numbers. Using the same data as before (3, 3, 5, 4, and 7), the median average is 4, since 2 of the numbers are lesser and 2 are greater.  The mode average is a representation of the most common number in the data set. Using our example set, the mode average is 3, since it appears twice. The mean average might seem like the most foolproof of all the methods described above, but that actually isn't the case. This is because abnormally high or low numbers in the data set can significantly swing the average. To lie with a mean average, gather outlying data and use it in your equation.  For example, imagine you survey 50 households in a neighborhood for their income. Most households make between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, but one household makes $5 million a year. When you compute the mean average, the number will be significantly higher than the “real” average income in that area, because the $5 million number is so much bigger than the others. In a similar way, if you had data showing that 9 people each had $1,000 in their bank accounts, but a tenth person only has $1, the median average would work out to $900.10 – almost 10% less than the most common amount. Reputable surveys often throw out the very highest and very lowest numbers before computing the mean average. However, not every survey you see in the news is reputable. Unless you either have access to the entire data set yourself, or see a written assurance that the outliers were removed, it's safer to assume they weren't. The median average is actually the toughest number to “lie” with, because it can never be too high or too low compared to most data sets. It must lie in the center by necessity. However, you can use the median average to hide a very large or small number. For instance, if your data set is 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3000, the median average is 3.  When you have an even amount of entries, you can reach the median average by finding the mean of the two entries in the middle. This still doesn't account for outliers. Beware of median averages being used to describe changes over time. A company that raises the price of its services by 3% every year could raise them by 20% this year and hide it by presenting a median average of 3% over the last 9 years. In some things, mode averages are almost impossible to lie with – the average number of tickets purchased per person for a ball game, for example, is almost always going to be accurately reflected by the mode. Nevertheless, mode averages, too, can exclude important data, especially in smaller data sets.  For instance, if you have a data set of all numbers ranging from 1 to 100, but the number 1 is included 3 times, 1 will be the mode average of the set, even though the mean (and in this case, more sensible) average is much closer to 50. Any survey that rates on a broad scale can be manipulated to emphasize the mode. If you survey 100 people on a scale of 1 to 10 about their feelings on a subject, and more people rate it “10” than any other number, then even if only one more person gave a 10 rating than gave a 1 rating, 10 is the mode average. If you have a set of data that's defined by abstract, rather than concrete numbers (for example, a customer satisfaction survey), it's almost frighteningly easy to lie with that set. If you ask people to rate their satisfaction on a scale from 1 to 3, that doesn't necessarily prove that customers who chose 3 are three times as happy as those who chose 1. This fact is used to skew mean averages in particular, but can also be applied to median and sometimes, even mode averages.