ply of nurses and better track and disseminate information on patient outcomes and nurse workloads. While there is much debate about the pros and cons of these alternatives, participants at the 25th Massachusetts Health Policy Forum generally agreed on the following points: • The number of staff nurses and their skill play a critical role in patient outcomes across a range of conditions in the ...

Responding to a related pair of measurements is often expressed as a single discrimination ratio. Authors have used various discrimination ratios; yet, little information exists to guide their choice. A second use of ratios is to correct for the influence of a nuisance variable on the measurement of interest. I examine 4 discrimination ratios using simulated data sets. Three ratios, of the form...

Some general connections between martingales and character ratios of finite groups are developed. As an application we sharpen the convergence rate in a central limit theorem for the character ratio of a random representation of the symmetric group on transpositions. A generalization of these results is given for Jack measure on partitions. We also give a probabilistic proof of a result of Burn...