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Statistics and Actuarial Science: Financial Risk Management 778

Assignment example

Find and conduct an academic article review (sometimes called a critical review) on an academic paper that relates to Low Default Portfolios with specific reference to Synthetic Minority Oversampling Techniques (SMOTE)

  • Find academic peer reviewed article/journal
  • Use Stellenbosch Harvard Reference Style
  • Find Internet guide  - article review/critical review

Effective searching

Databases contains articles with information that will guide you to the answers you seek. Instead of searching with questions on databases, you have to search for information using KEYWORDS.

When extracting KEYWORDS from your assignment or essay, you need to look at the key concepts that encapsulate your assignment.

Example:
s it true that economic growth makes the rich richer and the poor poorer?

KEYWORDS:

  • Economic growth
  • Inequality OR income inequality

Note: The concepts that you are looking for are not always expressed in the
language of the assignment or question, but often through other related terms.

See the Guide for step-by-step instructions.

AND – returns results with both keywords. AND usually limits the search results
OR – returns results with one or the other keyword.It broadens your results by connecting two or more synonyms.
NOT – returns results excluding specific keywords

Use the Boolean Machine for visualizing the effects of Boolean operators .

More tips:

Quotation Marks “ ” – keep keywords together, for exact phrase searching
Brackets ( ) – keep concepts together, used for synonyms

Example:

("green energy" OR "sustainable energy" OR "renewable energy") AND (logistics OR "supply chain")

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Use the "Search strategy builder" to help you create a search string, using Boolean logic. You can cut and paste the results into most databases’ search boxes.

 

Building blocks Search strategy
Identify keywords, write next to each other
Think of synonyms or alternatives for these words
Write these words under the corresponding keywords in blocks

Example
Find articles about the tax treatment and regulations of cryptocurrencies
Tax                       cryptocurrency                      Regulation
levy                       virtual currency                    rules
tariff                      bitcoin                                   policy
fee                        digital currency                    act
rate                       peercoin                             

Combine rows with AND and columns with OR operators.
Search string: (tax OR levy OR tariff OR fee OR rate) AND (cryptocurrency OR "virtual currency" OR bitcoin OR "digital currency" OR peercoin) AND (regulation OR rules OR policy OR act)

 

Quick-and-easy” search method

Steps:

1. What would be the title of your search?
2. Identify the main keywords
3. Which keyword is most vital (and which next)?
4. think about some proper search terms (other than those words jotted down already, synonyms, related terms, scientific names etc.)

5. Compose a simple query using a few important terms linked by ‘AND’ or ‘OR’ operators

Use quotation marks “…” for adjacent words or two or more words that make up a single concept (e.g. “attention deficit disorder”). Group synonyms and related terms together in brackets

5. The search engine or database will give lists of records. Reduce the number of records displayed and increase relevancy by restricting them according to publication date, etc.

My example:

The impact of genetically modified foods on our lives

Search terms: genetically modified food, GM food, transgenic food, food safety, food risks, allergic reactions, health

 Search string: (“genetically modified food” OR “GM food” OR “transgenic food") AND ("food safety"OR "food risks" OR "allergic reactions"OR health)

Suggested Databases

What is an academic/peer-reviewed journal/article?

Peer-reviewed or academic articles are articles written by academics/experts/researchers on a specific field of study. These articles usually contain a bibliography at the end of the article and information on the author’s academic qualifications and university at the beginning of the article. A peer-reviewed journal article was reviewed by people with credentials in the article's field of study before being accepted for publication.

 

Keywords Example using Boolean

Example of search using Boolean
low default portfolios AND (Synthetic Minority Oversampling Techniques OR SMOTE)

Google & Google Scholar

What is a Library Links preference on Google Scholar and how can I do it from home?

A Library Links preference allows you set your preferred Library Choice in Google Scholar. It will then automatically detect when an article is freely available via any of the electronic platforms that Stellenbosch University Library subscribes to. Use the guide below to change your Google Scholar settings on your own computer.

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*Google puts an AND between spaces

*Case does not matter - except for operators (AND/OR/NOT)Can use + (AND) or - (NOT)

*Word order matters, Google ranks results according to the order you search in

*Google ignores punctuation

 
Search specific domains:
intitle:
inurl:
Search specific files or results:

     filetype:

A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a web address for a page or document on the World Wide Web. We can make some educated guesses about the reliability of a web site if we know a little about URLs. 

Each URL (for example http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/internships), consists of an access protocol (http), a domain name (www.whitehouse.gov), and an optional path to a file or resource residing on that server (about/internships).

The domain name indicates the organization responsible for the site (www.whitehouse.gov in the example above). The top-level domain indicates the type of site (gov in the example above).

The most common top-level domains and the type of site they indicate are:

  • com     commercial business or for-profit organizations
  • co.za   commercial South Africa
  • gov      United States government agencies
  • gov.za   government South Africa
  • edu      educational institutions
  • ac        academic institutions
  • mil       United States military organizations
  • org       non-profit organizations

In general, .gov and .edu web sites are more reliable than .com web sites.

Referencing & Plagiarism

"Plagiarism is the theft and use of the ideas, material and other intellectual property of others that are passed off as one’s own." SU Senate. 1 Dec 2016. Stellenbosch University policy on academic integrity: the prevention and handling of plagiarism [Internet]. Stellenbosch University. Available: Policy document. [2017, 1 February].

Turnitin is a tool to check the originality of your written work and it will provide guidelines where necessary to you regarding where and how you can improve it. Consult the Turnitin Libray Guide for more detail.

TURNITIN is available via http://learn.sun.ac.za; be sure to use Mozilla Firefox.

TURNITIN login problems & Help:

How does TURNITIN work:
See video on how Turnitin works and an explanation for the colour-coding in the feedback report.