Asymptotic distribution functions of extremes were applied to sequences of various events; duration of marriages before divorce, length of courtship periods before engagement, loss of information from memory, and retrieval of words belonging to a specified category, etc. There are a large number of conditions leading to occurrence of each event. A sequence of events will be the distribution of minima (Weibull) if each event occurs as soon as one condition is met, and that of maxima if it occurs when all the conditions are fulfilled. This model is “soft” and hence covers various series because what is assumed is only the behavior of possible causes but not their substantive nature.

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The Cold War has two kinds of effect in the modern world system. The first one is the excess defense spending of each individual country, specially that of both US and USSR, which probably weakened both big economies. The second one is to bring about serious regional conflicts in the world. This paper is focusing on the first effect of the Cold War. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to describe the state of the Cold War on the main OECD countries' defense spending. It would be made clear how the disarmament affects these countries' military spending. The models used were action-reaction type, which depicts the determination of one country's defense spending in response to that of the enemy country. And it was confirmed that this type of models is adequate for describing the Cold War.

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In the present paper, it is proved that the latent Markov chain (LMC) model and the latent mixed Markov chain (LMMC) model are equivalent, and it is shown that LMC model can be applied to various dynamic latent structure models based on the Markov chain model. A numerical example is also presented to illustrate the present discussion.

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The authors developed a new latent trait model for polytomous data. A unique feature of this model is that it explains the psychological process through which a subject reaches correct or wrong responses. This model is an integration of two parts. One part discriminates states of knowledge, namely, it classifies them into three categories, i.e., a) complete knowledge, b) partial knowledge, and c) complete ignorance. Another feature of the model is that we have two different kinds of manifest data, i.e. confidence data and correct/wrong responses. The subject is required to choose whether he is confident of his answer or not. In this paper, we make use of confidence data as auxiliary information in making effective estimation of parameters. Then the new model was applied to mathematics test data of high school students.

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This paper presents a mathematical analysis of magical numbers on human memory span. This analysis shows that, if memory is hierarchically organized, (1) the optimal chunk size of human short-term memory (STM) may be 7.34…±1.74…for an exhaustive search strategy and 3.59…±0.49…for a self-terminating search strategy. Furthermore, it is shown how the optimal form of memory may change in a trade-off between memory organization cost and searching cost (or time). Comparing the theoretical estimates with previous empirical estimates, it is shown that limitations of human STM capacity may be related to the efficiency of design. It is also shown that the coding system of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) may be interpreted as a means of efficient information retrieval as in human STM.

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The secularization thesis contends that religious affiliation and religious commitment (religious faith) decline as a nation undegoes industrialization, being supplanted, at least in part, by the growing impact of science and technology. But the secularization thesis is by no means universally accepted. The present paper attempts to verify the secularization thesis in five industrialized nations by identifying characteristics common to those who have and do not have religious commitment, by determining how religious values and issues differ among the principal denominations and between them and those not religiously affiliated, and by identifying the importance of religion vis-à-vis other elements of everyday life. A subset of questions from general social attitude surveys in the five nations (Federal Republic of Germany, France, The United Kingdom, the United States and Japan) was used for Multivariate Descriptive Analysis. Religious commitment and its absence were found to have differing, and often opposing, impacts on social and religious values and issues in most or all of the five nations, particularly with regard to respect for ancestors, respondent's age, home as a place to relax and feel good, and opinions about marriage. For those with religious commitment, filial piety and leading a pure and just life were significant, whereas for those without religious commitment, individual freedom was significant. The church was identified as important in both the United States and Federal Republic of Germany, thereby drawing into question the secularization thesis in those two nations. Indeed, for Americans in particular the church seems to have a cohesive quality in providing a means for individuals to get involved in their communities. It has been suggested that the declines seen in religious affiliation and commitment may actually be rooted in deteriorating sense of community rather than in deteriorating traditional beliefs. Further study of a longitudinal nature is suggested, particularly one using a means like cohort analysis, to pursue stronger validation or invalidation of the secularization thesis.

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