Community Response Program Evaluation Design: Fill & Download for Free

First , the definition of Sustainability.Sustainability is the process of maintaining change in a balanced fashion, in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations. For many in the field, sustainability is defined through the following interconnected domains or pillars: environment, economic and social. Sustainability - WikipediaIn practice, in order to achieve a sustainable project/ program environment, you need to have in place a set of conditions that guarantee minimum success criteria is met, but also look at the programs “capacity to endure". A sort of blueprint, that can be used and continuously improved, building processes around it. It is essential to understand and study the processes, their interdependence, benefits and impact now and in the future.This "sustainable mechanism" is observed mostly in Programs run by governments, public institutions and NGOs, but you see it in commercial businesses as well.Below is an example of Sustainable Framework Mechanisms and process for a Community Program.PROJECT LEADERSHIP• Leaders clearly established the project’s mission and vision• Leaders are committed to the long term project goals• Leaders planned within the first two years for sustaining the project• Leaders continue planning for sustainability• Leader developed and followed a realistic project plan• Leaders have identified multiple strategies for project survival• Community institutions (e.g. schools, social service agencies, etc…) are involved in program leadershipCOLLABORATORS• Local decision makers are project collaborators• Representatives from businesses are project collaborators• Community service agencies are project collaborators• Collaborators are involved in program design• Collaborators are involved in program implementation• Collaborators are involved in program evaluation• Collaborators share responsibility for providing program resources• Collaborators share credit for project success• Collaborators have clearly defined roles and responsibilities• There is a shared vision among collaborators• Collaborators have worked through turf issues (if any existed)• This project is part of the mission of participating institutionsCOMMUNITY• Community needs are regularly assessed• Community resources/assets are regularly assessed• Community resources are utilized by the project• Project goals are matched with community resources and needs• The project accounts for diversity in the community• Community members are involved in program design• Community members are involved in program implementation• The project addresses key community needs• The project has strong local governmental supportDEMONSTRATED PROGRAM IMPACT• Evaluation plans are developed prior to implementing programs• Project effectiveness is demonstrated through evaluation• Evaluations are conducted on a regular basis• Evaluation results are used to modify programming• Project successes are made known to the community• Project successes are make know to funders• Public relations (marketing) strategies are in placeFUNDING• Current funding is sufficient for project operations• Funding is available on a long term basis (at least 2 more years)• There are plans in place for obtaining additional funding• There is a person responsible for grant proposal writing• There is adequate funding for hiring and retaining quality staffPROJECT STAFFING• Staff are involved in program design• Staff are involved in program evaluation• Staff are involved in project decision making• Staff turnover is low• Staff are committed to the project’s mission, vision , and goals• Staff are qualified to work on the project• Staff are flexible and creative• Staff are recognized and rewarded for their work• Staff are adequately trained• Staff are from the community that the project servesMODIFICATIONS• Programs are eliminated when they do not meet community needs• New programs are developed when community needs change• Sites are consolidated as necessary

Part of the problem with explaining monads is that when people ask “what are monads?” they are not really interested into what monads are. Rather, they want to know what problems they solve, why would you use it, and how you’d use it. As with everything in abstract algebra (and category theory), answering “what is X?” gives you exactly zero clues to figure out what you’re really interested into, which are those other questions.Monad is an interface (or a contract. or a specification. whatever you want to call it). The interface prescribes that any implementation should provide exactly two methods: “this.bind(x)”, and “pure(x)”.Here’s an example in Java (which I’ll use throughout this answer):interface Monad<A> {  Monad<B> <B>bind(Function<A, Monad<B>> function);  Monad<B> <B>pure(B value); } The names don’t actually matter. We could have called them “this.ohmygod(x)” and “lol(x)” for all it cares. The names don’t matter because the contract says nothing about what each method should do, it only says that they must be there. Implementations are free to do whatever they want, as long as a few rules are followed:“pure(x).bind(f)” should be functionally equivalent to “f(x)”. This is called the “left identity” law.“monad.bind(x -> pure(x))” should be functionally equivalent to “monad”. This is called the “right identity” law.“monad.bind(f).bind(g)” should be functionally equivalent to “monad.bind(x -> f(x).bind(g))”. This is called the “associative” law.But as long as these three little rules are followed you’re allowed to do literally anything in those methods. So every little thing you can probably think of could (probably) implement the Monad interface. And they could do so in an infinite number of completely different ways. Doing completely different things. The Monad interface does not care.We often use the phrasing “the monad” to refer to the interface itself. And the phrasing “a monad” to refer to any implementation of the interface. This seems to be confusing to a lot of people, but it’s not that much different from how we talk about Iterable—with a signature like “int length(Iterable<A> iterable)”, people are probably going to say that “length takes an iterable” (i.e.: anything that implements Iterable).That was the direct answer to the question. And as you’re probably realising now, it’s a completely useless answer. So we have to dive into the other questions as well, and try to tie it all together.So, why would anyone want to have an interface that does not give you any clues as to what its implementations do? Turns out, we don’t want it. Blackwell et al put it in a better way than I could ever try to in their “The Abstract is the Enemy” paper:What is the worst possible name for a software module? (As the first author asks his first year software design class). Answer: “ProcessData” – which is to say, “this is a module that processes some data”. This surprises students. In their view, ProcessData might even be the best possible name for a module, because it is the module that can do anything, is infinitely adaptable, and for which later implementation detail can account for all necessary variation. The interface to such a module is completely generic, and hides all detail, just as we ask them to do. […]Why are generic names so bad? As Alan tells his class, a generic name demonstrates an abdication of responsibility by the designer. Giving something its proper name is the way that we capture the nature of the thing. In many parts of software design, assigning names (to data and processes) is the hardest task – and one that deserves far more careful attention. […] A generic name is not a name – as if Alan had called his daughter “person”, or his cat “cat” (or in fact, “null”, since he doesn’t have a cat). In software design, a generic name later bites the designer, when he or she realises that the purpose of this component is unknown, or that it has been implemented to deliver functionality incompatible with the requirement (a requirement not captured by the generic name).So Monad (and everything else from abstract algebra and category theory) goes in the complete opposite direction of what we want in good software development. We want concrete things. Things we can name. Things we can understand—because we know what they’re supposed to do. Monads can’t possibly be given a relevant name because they don’t do anything.Now, abstract algebraic concepts are very interesting in mathematics—whether they’re useful or not depends on what you’re looking for in mathematics. It allows us to capture common patterns across mathematical objects, and discuss the behaviour of them under composition. For example, it allows us to discuss the associativity of “a + b + c”, whether those are integers, reals, sets (with + being union), quarternions, or anything else that can have an identity value and some binary operation that’s associative.But it still doesn’t let us talk about set unions or arithmetic addition.The same is true in programming. However, in programming, we hardly ever want to go “well, yes, these operations here are guaranteed to be associative but I have no fucking clue what they’re supposed to be doing here”.It’s a terrible idea, really.But, still, people use it. If they do, why would they?There are, of course, a few reasons. And they’re all programming language/tooling specific.In Haskell, because of the choice of lazy evaluation by default, people were forced to find some way of running effectful procedures in the right order. You can’t just write “f(print(‘hello’), print(‘world’))” because you have no idea when each of those print operations will be ran—or if they’ll be ran at all. You may get “world\nhello”. You may get “hello\nworld”. You may get just “hello”. You may get just “world”. Or you may get nothing at all.Clearly, they had to find something to solve this problem, and thus be able to actually write useful programs in Haskell. And they just went with explicit continuation-passing style. Which means that you’d write your programs like this:print("hello", x ->  print("world", y ->  f(x, y))) If you’re familiar with Node.js, just imagine if your entire module was expressed in terms of asynchronous callbacks—down to the most basic functions. Yup, people were not happy with this. But Haskell was just an academic experiment at the time and nobody really cared.This went on until Wadler came along and said “okay, look, I think we can at least simplify these patterns that appear everywhere in our code.” Incidentally, they called it Monad, but it has nothing to do with the category theoretical concept—some Haskellers would disagree, but oh well.So they went from that thing above, to this:do x <- print("hello")  y <- print("world")  return f(x, y) Which is slightly better, but still quite awful compared to “f(print(‘hello’), print(‘world’))”. Luckily newer languages emerging from the Haskell community are giving up on the laziness-by-default and just making the language usable instead, which means you don’t need any of these “““““monads””””” business.So, in Haskell, “Monad” is an interface that allows a value to be used in this weird “do” notation, which only exists because order of operations is not a thing in Haskell—so you have to be awfully explicit about it. As no other programming language people use has this problem, Haskell’s monads are not useful for them.If you’re interested in knowing more about Haskell’s issues with laziness, I’ve wrote in details about it here: Quildreen Motta's answer to Why do we need monad?FootnotesThe types in the Monad interface example are slightly incorrect, because Java does not have higher-kinds. I don’t really care here because it doesn’t affect the point I’m trying to make.If you’re interested in the mathematical concepts of abstract algebra and category theory, you may try starting with the A Course in Universal Algebra book. And then pick something on category theory for mathematicians. Be warned, however, that most of it will be entirely irrelevant for programming. And may even be counter intuitive for Haskell—as the language has different concepts using the same names.Algebraic laws are indeed very interesting for compiler optimisation and analysis. But I’m not sure we’re at the point where they’re usable. And I don’t think we’re getting there anytime soon—so don’t expect it to be a thing in the next 10 years at least.Note that all side-effecting monads will violate some of the algebraic laws for monads in one sense or another anyway.

The most useful software packages for a mechanical design engineer are:CAD Software: CAD is useful for modeling parts and creating drawings. Most of my experience is with Solidworks and Unigraphics NX, and I like both of those. I have also enjoyed using Autodesk Inventor. Other common CAD packages include PTC Creo (formerly Pro/Engineer) and CATIA.FEA Software: Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is important if you are focused on structural analysis. This will allow you to analyze stresses and deformations in complicated structures. If you are part of a structural analysis group, then you will probably use either ANSYS or Nastran. If you are more of a generalist, you may use a simpler package such as SolidWorks Simulation. Simulation is very easy to use and gives generally good results (although I and coworkers have found issues with certain things, i.e. shell meshes, bolts with preload, etc.)Mathcad: I use Mathcad constantly, and I would possibly consider this the most useful of all the software I use at my job. Mathcad is good for doing math in a way that is presentable -- i.e. it's good for doing math in a report layout with formatted text, math, images and plots all in a nice document. It's a similar to MS Word in the sense that you compose a document and then you can just print it -- but in this case the document has math that can actually be evaluated. Mathcad is very powerful for doing math with matrices and vectors, it has a solver built in that is useful for doing optimization problems or numerical solutions, and it allows you do to basic programming.Excel: This is an obvious one, but I'll mention it anyway. Every engineer should know Excel. It's useful for quick calculations, for tabulating data, for laying out ideas, for drawing... the possibilities are endless.As long as we’re on the topic of Excel, I’ll briefly mention VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). This is the programming language built into all of the MS Office products. It can be a bit clunky and awkward to use, but since it's embedded in every one of the MS Office products it can be incredibly useful if you want to automate something to do with Excel, Word, etc.MATLAB: This is an amazing analysis tool, and is the programming environment of choice for most mechanical engineers. MATLAB is essential for doing more complex numerical analysis where simple math doesn't cut it and a programming solution is required. Need to analyze the response characteristics of a spring-mass-damper with an externally applied force? Use MATLAB. Need to design a control system to land a rocket on a barge? MATLAB.Python: I have found Python to be an excellent alternative to MATLAB. Python is open-source, and you can achieve comparable functionality to MATLAB by installing NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib (there are other packages such as Pandas that you may also want). Python is a widely respected language and has a major following in the scientific community. One major advantage of Python (besides the price of free) is that it is a general purpose programming language (i.e. it is not specifically tailored to scientific programming, although it is excellent for that). This means that you can use it to do many other things that you may want to do, such as work with your file system or build a website.MechaniCalc: This is a shameless plug, but MechaniCalc is a great site for mechanical design engineers. It includes useful calculators for things such as 2D FEA, bolted joint analysis, lug analysis, column buckling, stress concentrations, and more. It has a database of material properties and cross section properties. It also includes detailed reference material for topics such as strength of materials, beam stress and deflection, bolted joint analysis, lug analysis, and more.Best of luck,Arthur KirkbyMechaniCalc