"On the Improvement of the Understanding" is a work by the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, published posthumously in 1677. In the work, the author attempts to formulate a philosophical method that would allow the mind to form the clear and distinct ideas necessary for its developent.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

This book provides techniques to become numerically literate and able to understand and digest data.

This new edition of this bestselling guide offers an integrated approach to process improvement that delivers quick and substantial results in quality and productivity in diverse settings. The authors explore their Model for Improvement that worked with international improvement efforts at multinational companies as well as in different industries such as healthcare and public agencies. This edition includes new information that shows how to accelerate improvement by spreading changes across multiple sites. The book presents a practical tool kit of ideas, examples, and applications.

Understanding, Measuring, and Improving Daily Management explains the critical parts of a continuous improvement strategy to achieve Operational Excellence and where reactive improvement through effective daily management fits in. In addition, it shows the consequences to your Operational Excellence journey if daily management is not performed well. Reactive improvement develops the capability and discipline within the organization to be able to rapidly recover from an event or incident that stops you from achieving your expected or target performance for the day, shift, or hour and most importantly -- your ability to capture the learning and initiate corrective actions so that the event or incident will not re-occur anywhere across the organization. As such, reactive improvement focuses on improving daily management through your daily review meetings, your information centers supporting the daily review meetings, and your frontline problem-solving root cause analysis capability at all levels. The book introduces the seven elements of reactive improvement that must work in concert for effective daily management and allows the reader to rate their site or department to determine their starting point compared to best practices: 1. Supportive organization structure to support development of your people so they have ownership and accountability for the performance of their area of responsibility; 2. Effective frontline leaders to ensure everyone else in the leadership structure are not working down a level; 3. Appropriate measures with expected targets that are linked to the site’s Key Success Factors for Operations to ensure goal alignment, and are relevant to the area being focused on; 4. Structured daily review meetings to identify opportunities (problems/incidents) and monitor progress of their solution so they don’t happen again; 5. Visual information centers that visually display daily and trending performance along with monitoring of actions to address problems/issues raised; 6. Frontline problem-solving root cause analysis capability across the site; and 7. Rapid sharing of learning capability across shifts, departments, and the organization. The author outlines in detail why each of the seven elements are important to achieving Operational Excellence, and most importantly, how to implement each element supported with many templates and tools.

Originally published in 1994. In The Improvement of the Estate, Alistair Duckworth contends that understanding Mansfield Park is fundamental to appreciating Jane Austen's body of work. Professor Duckworth understands Mansfield Park as underscoring the central uniting theme in Austen's work—her concept of the "estate" and its "improvement." The author illustrates Austen's connection to the values of Christian humanism, which she conveys through the uniting theme of estate improvement. According to Duckworth, the estate represents moral and social heritage, so the manner in which individuals seek to improve their estates in Jane Austen's novels represents the direction in which she saw the state and society moving. Finally, Duckworth underscores Austen's awareness of the importance of a society of individuals whose behavior is socially informed.