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© 2014 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution in
any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
Chapter 6-Page 1 of 21
DATA: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Information is powerful. Information tells an organization everything form how its current operations are performing
to estimating and strategizing how future operations might perform. New perspectives open up when people have
the right information and know how to use it. The ability to understand, digest, analyze, and filter information is a
key to success for any professional in any industry.
SECTION 6.1 – DATA, INFORMATION, AND DATABASES
• The Business Benefits of High Quality Information
• Storing Information Using a Relational Database Management System
• Using a Relational Database for Business Advantages
• Driving Websites with Data
SECTION 6.2 – BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
• The Business Benefits of Data Warehousing
• Performing Business Analysis with Data Marts
• Uncovering Trends and Patterns with Data Mining
• Supporting Decisions with Business Intelligence
6
CHAPTER

SECTION 6.1
DATA, INFORMATION, AND DATABASES
This section provides a discussion on the issues found in low quality information and how to obtain high quality
information. The section primarily focuses on the relational database model. It introduces students to entities,
attributes, primary keys, foreign keys, and data driven websites.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning Outcome 6.1: Explain the four primary traits that determine the value of information.
Information is data converted into a meaningful and useful context. Information can tell an organization how its
current operations are performing and help it estimate and strategize about how future operations might perform. It
is important to understand the different levels, formats, and granularities of information along with the four primary
traits that help determine the value of information, which include (1) information type: transactional and analytical;
(2) information timeliness; (3) information quality; (4) information governance.
Learning Outcome 6.2: Describe a database, a database management system, and the relational database
model.
A database maintains information about various types of objects (inventory), events (transactions), people
(employees), and places (warehouses). A database management system (DBMS) creates, reads, updates, and
deletes data in a database while controlling access and security. A DBMS provides methodologies for creating,
updating, storing, and retrieving data in a database. In addition, a DBMS provides facilities for controlling data
access and security, allowing data sharing, and enforcing data integrity. The relational database model allows
users to create, read, update, and delete data in a relational database.
Learning Outcome 6.3: Identify the business advantages of a relational database.
Many business managers are familiar with Excel and other spreadsheet programs they can use to store business
data. Although spreadsheets are excellent for supporting some data analysis, they offer limited functionality in
terms of security, accessibility, and flexibility and can rarely scale to support business growth. From a business
perspective, relational databases offer many advantages over using a text document or a spreadsheet, including
increased flexibility, increased scalability and performance, reduced information redundancy, increased information
integrity (quality), and increased information security.
Learning Outcome 6.4: Explain the business benefits of a data-driven website.
A data-driven website is an interactive website kept constantly updated and relevant to the needs of its customers
using a database. Data-driven capabilities are especially useful when the website offers a great deal of
information, products, or services because visitors are frequently annoyed if they are buried under an avalanche of
information when searching a website. Many companies use the Web to make some of the information in their
internal databases available to customers and business partners.

CLASSROOM OPENER
GREAT BUSINESS DECISIONS – Julius Reuter Uses Carrier Pigeons to Transfer
Information
In 1850, the idea that sending and receiving information could add business value was born. Julius Reuter began
a business that bridged the gap between Belgium and Germany. Reuter built one of the first information
management companies built on the premise that customers would be prepared to pay for information that was
timely and accurate.
Reuter used carrier pigeons to forward stock market and commodity prices from Brussels to Germany. Customers
quickly realized that with the early receipt of vital information they could make fortunes. Those who had money at
stake in the stock market were prepared to pay handsomely for early information from a reputable source, even if it
was a pigeon. Eventually, Reuter’s business grew from 45 pigeons to over 200 pigeons.
Eventually the telegraph bridged the gap between Brussels to Germany, and Reuter’s brilliantly conceived
temporary monopoly was closed.
CLASSROOM OPENER
GREAT BUSINESS DECISIONS – Edgar Codd’s Relational Database Theory
Edgar Frank Codd was born at Portland, Dorset, in England. He studied mathematics and chemistry at Exeter
College, Oxford, before serving as a pilot in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. In 1948, he moved
to New York to work for IBM as a mathematical programmer. In 1953 Codd moved to Ottawa, Canada. A decade
later he returned to the USA and received his doctorate in computer science from the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor. Two years later he moved to San Jose, California to work at IBM's Almaden Research Center.
In the 1960s and 1970s he worked out his theories of data arrangement, issuing his paper "A Relational Model of
Data for Large Shared Data Banks" in 1970, after an internal IBM paper one year earlier. To his disappointment,
IBM proved slow to exploit his suggestions until commercial rivals started implementing them.
Initially, IBM refused to implement the relational model in order to preserve revenue from IMS/DB. Codd then
showed IBM customers the potential of the implementation of its model, and they in turn pressured IBM. Then IBM
included in its Future System project a System R subproject — but put in charge of it were developers who were
not thoroughly familiar with Codd's ideas, and isolated the team from Codd. As a result, they did not use Codd's
own Alpha language but created a non-relational one, SEQUEL. Even so, SEQUEL was so superior to pre-
relational systems that it was copied, based on pre-launch papers presented at conferences, by Larry Ellison in his
Oracle DBMS, which actually reached market before SQL/DS — due to the then-already proprietary status of the
original moniker, SEQUEL had been renamed SQL.
Codd continued to develop and extend his relational model, sometimes in collaboration with Chris Date. One of the
normalized forms, the Boyce-Codd Normal Form, is named after Codd. Codd also coined the term OLAP and
wrote the twelve laws of online analytical processing, although these were never truly accepted after it came out
that his white paper on the subject was paid for by a software vendor. Edgar F. Codd died of heart failure at his
home in Williams Island, Florida at the age of 79 on Friday, April 18, 2003.
CLASSROOM EXERCISE

Understanding Quality Information
Break your students into groups and ask them to compile a list of all of the issues found in the following
information. Ask your students to also list why most low quality information errors occur and what an organization
can do to help implement high quality information.
Customer
ID
Customer
First
Name
Customer
Last Name
Address City State Zip Phone
1771 Larry Shimk 143 S. Denver NY 178908 911
1771 Caroline Shimk 143 N. West
St.
Buffalo NY 14321 716-333-4567
1772 Shimk Caroline 143 N. West
St.
Buffalo NY 14321 716-333-4567
1772 Heather Schwiter 55 N. W. S.
Miss
LaGrange GA 14321 716-333-4567
1772 Debbie Fernandez S. Main St. Denver CO 80252 333-8965
1772 Debbie Fernandez S. Main St. Denver CO 80252 333-8965
1773 Justin Justin 34 Kerry Rd. Littleton CO 98987 716-67-9087
1774 Pam 66 S. Carlton North Glen CO 98765 343-456-6857
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Building an ER Diagram
Break your students into groups and ask them to create an entity relationship diagram similar to the one in Figure
6.5 for a company or product of their choice. If the students are uncomfortable with databases, you should
recommend that they stick to a company similar to the TCCBCE, perhaps a snack food producer, mountain bike
equipment producer, or even a footwear producer. If your students are more comfortable with databases, ask them
to choose a company that would challenge them such as a fast food restaurant, online book seller, or even a
university’s course registration system.
The important part of this exercise is for your students to begin to understand how the tables in a database relate.
Be sure their ER diagrams include primary keys and foreign keys. Have your students present their ER diagrams
to the class and ask the students to find any potential errors with the diagrams.
CORE MATERIAL
The core chapter material is covered in detail in the PowerPoint slides. Each slide contains detailed teaching notes
including exercises, class activities, questions, and examples. Please review the PowerPoint slides for detailed
notes on how to teach and enhance the core chapter material.
VIDEO MATERIALS TO ACCOMPANY APPLY YOUR KNOWLEDGE BOXED ELEMENTS
Use these videos to jump-start a case discussion and get your students thinking about how they are going to apply
the concepts they are learning in real-business and real-world situations.
BUSINESS DRIVEN DISCUSSION – GOOGLE DASHBOARD

Google Dashboard Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPaJPxhPq_g
BUSINESS DRIVEN MIS – DETERMINING INFORMATION QUALITY ISSUES
Information Revolution - Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM
BUSINESS DRIVEN ETHICS AND SECURITY – FACEBOOK FIASCO
How I Got Sued By Facebook
http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/04/how-i-got-sued-by-facebook.html
BUSINESS DRIVEN GLOBALIZATION – INTEGRITY INFORMATION
Australian Tourism Data Warehouse - Video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1868335/australian_tourism_data_warehouse/
BUSINESS DRIVEN INNOVATION – NEWS DOTS
Visualizing the News Video
http://wmperkins.blogspot.com/2010/03/news-dots-visualizing-news.html
How News Connects
http://infosthetics.com/archives/2010/09/news_dots_revealing_which_news_stories_connect.html
BUSINESS DRIVEN DEBATE – SECURING CREDIT CARD DATA
Card Vault Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3zuiLiF51k
BUSINESS DRIVEN START-UP – THE RYLAXER
The First Bed Relaxing Pillow
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SECTION 6.2
BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
This section takes a step beyond databases and introduces students to data warehousing, data warehousing
tools, and data mining. These technologies allow organizations to gain vast amounts of business intelligence.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Learning Outcome 6.5: Define a data warehouse, and provide a few reasons it can make a manager more
effective.
A data warehouse is a logical collection of information, gathered from many different operational databases, that
supports business analysis and decision making. The primary value of a data warehouse is to combine
information, more specifically, strategic information, throughout an organization into a single repository in such a
way that the people who need that information can make decisions and undertake business analysis.
Learning Outcome 6.6: Explain ETL and the role of a data mart in business.
Extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) is a process that extracts information from internal and external
databases, transforms it using a common set of enterprise definitions, and loads it into a data warehouse. The
data warehouse then sends portions (or subsets) of the information to data marts. A data mart contains a subset of
data warehouse information. To distinguish between data warehouses and data marts, think of data warehouses
as having a more organizational focus and data marts as having a functional focus.
Learning Outcome 6.7: Define data mining, and explain the three common forms for mining structured and
unstructured data.
Data mining is the process of analyzing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone. Data mining
can also begin at a summary information level (coarse granularity) and progress through increasing levels of detail
(drilling down), or the reverse (drilling up). Data mining occurs on structured data that are already in a database or
a spreadsheet. Unstructured data do not exist in a fixed location and can include text documents, PDFs, voice
messages, emails, and so on. Three common forms for mining structured and unstructured data are cluster
analysis, association detection, and statistical analysis.
Learning Outcome 6.8: Identify the advantages of using business intelligence to support managerial
decision making.
Many organizations today find it next to impossible to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, let alone
their biggest competitors, due to enormous volumes of organizational data being inaccessible to all but the MIS
department. Organization data include far more than simple structured data elements in a database; the set of
data also includes unstructured data such as voice mail, customer phone calls, text messages, video clips, along
with numerous new forms of data, such as tweets from Twitter. Managers today find themselves in the position of
being data rich and information poor, and they need to implement business intelligence systems to solve this
challenge.

CLASSROOM OPENER
GREAT BUSINESS DECISIONS – Bill Inmon – The Father of the Data Warehouse
Bill Inmon, is recognized as the "father of the data warehouse" and co-creator of the "Corporate Information
Factory." He has 35 years of experience in database technology management and data warehouse design. He is
known globally for his seminars on developing data warehouses and has been a keynote speaker for every major
computing association and many industry conferences, seminars, and tradeshows.
As an author, Bill has written about a variety of topics on the building, usage, and maintenance of the data
warehouse and the Corporate Information Factory. He has written more than 650 articles, many of them have
been published in major computer journals such as Datamation, ComputerWorld, DM Review and Byte Magazine.
Bill currently publishes a free weekly newsletter for the Business Intelligence Network, and has been a major
contributor since its inception. http://www.b-eye-network.com/home/
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Analyzing Multiple Dimensions of Information
Jump! is a company that specializes in making sports equipment, primarily basketballs, footballs, and soccer balls.
The company currently sells to four primary distributors and buys all of its raw materials and manufacturing
materials from a single vendor. Break your students into groups and ask them to develop a single cube of
information that would give the company the greatest insight into its business (or business intelligence).
• Product A, B, C, and D
• Distributor X, Y, and Z
• Promotion I, II, and III
• Sales
• Season
• Date/Time
• Salesperson Karen and John
• Vendor Smithson
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
The Brain Behind The Big Bad Burger
The Brain Behind the Big, Bad Burger and Other Tales of Business Intelligence
You will enjoy this one! It is an excellent article on the side of BI – but seriously scary on the side of fast food. Be
warned – you might never eat fast food again!!
http://www.cio.com/article/109454/The_Brain_Behind_the_Big_Bad_Burger_and_Other_Tales_of_Business_Intelli
gence
Read the above article and discuss the following:
1. What does business intelligence really mean to a business?
2. What are the negative impacts of business intelligence?
3. How does a database and data warehouse support business intelligence?
4. Any other thoughts or insights you have into this chapter and this case
CLASSROOM VIDEO
Microsoft BI Intelligence Videos

Excellent video to jumpstart your BI lecture.
Is there any business intelligence out there? Mike Arcuri, group program manager on the business intelligence
team shows off Excel 12's new features for looking at how your business is doing. You'll never look at pivot tables
the same way again.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/business-intelligence-in-excel-2007/538243300
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Mining Physician Data: Ethics and BI
Listen to the NPR story at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11382945
Answer the following questions
1. Do you agree that mining physician data should be illegal? Why or why not?
2. As a patient how do you feel about pharmaceutical companies mining your doctor's data?
3. As an employee of one of the pharmaceutical companies how do you feel about mining physician data?
CLASSROOM VIDEO
Illuminate Your Data
Great video by Microsoft on Data.
Data is growing at an alarming rate. So how do you keep the vast amounts of data in your company accessible,
while still being mindful of the latest regulatory and compliance mandates? Watch this new Webcast and find out.
In this Webcast, trusted advisors look at the effects of the data explosion and solutions to manage it. They discuss
the changes in business intelligence and analytics, and how these changes affect the information infrastructure.
http://www.itbriefingcenter.com/programs/gartner_msftsql_smb.html
CLASSROOM EXERCISE
Ask A Ninja.COM
If you need some insight into just about anything you can visit AskANija.com
http://askaninja.com/
I like to show this site to my students and ask why this site is so successful? Why would people assume that just
because someone is dressed as a Nija they are knowledgeable about all subjects? This leads to a great
discussion on how can you validate business intelligence. How do you know the data or analysis you are receiving
is from a credible source? Can you prove the data is complete, accurate, etc? Makes for an interesting classroom
discussion.
CLASSROOM VIDEO
BI for Restaurants
Good video, especially if you teach Excel and Access in your course - helps show the students why they need to
learn these tools. Video shows how a major restaurateur has used Microsoft Office technologies to improve
efficiency, lower costs, and identify key business trends to help keep them ahead of their competition.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/showcase/restaurantbi/demo.mspx
CLASSROOM EXERCISE

Apple’s Customer Strategy
When shoppers sleep outside of stores just to be one of the first to buy an iPhone, it's obvious that Apple Inc. is a
company that enjoys fanatical brand loyalty. However, this brand success is not a result of dumb luck or forces
beyond Apple's control; it's part of a well-thought-out plan to deliver strong products and create an Apple culture.
Find out more about these and other strategies that Apple employs to achieve its tremendous customer loyalty.
http://www.insidecrm.com/features/strategies-apple-loyal-customers/
CORE MATERIAL
The core chapter material is covered in detail in the PowerPoint slides. Each slide contains detailed teaching notes
including exercises, class activities, questions, and examples. Please review the PowerPoint slides for detailed
notes on how to teach and enhance the core chapter material.

CHAPTER SIX
CLOSING MATERIAL
OPENING CASE QUESTIONS
INFORMING INFORMATION
1. Knowledge: List the reasons a business would want to display information in a graphic or visual
format.
Information is powerful. Information can tell an organization how its current operations are performing and help
it estimate and strategize about how future operations might perform. The ability to understand, digest,
analyze, and filter information is key to growth and success to any professional in any industry. Remember
that new perspectives and opportunities can open up when you have the right data that you can turn into
information and ultimately business intelligence. The value of timely information is critical to any business that
wants to operate at the same speed as its customers, suppliers, and competitors.
2. Comprehension: Describe how a business could use a business intelligence digital dashboard to
gain an understanding of how the business is operating.
Data visualization describes technologies that allow users to “see” or visualize data to transform information
into a business perspective. Data visualization tools move beyond Excel graphs and charts into sophisticated
analysis techniques such as pie charts, controls, instruments, maps, time-series graphs, and more. Data
visualization tools can help uncover correlations and trends in data that would otherwise go unrecognized.
Business intelligence dashboards track corporate metrics such as critical success factors and key
performance indicators and include advanced capabilities such as interactive controls allowing users to
manipulate data for analysis. The majority of business intelligence software vendors offer a number of different
data visualization tools and business intelligence dashboards.
3. Application: Explain how a marketing department could use data visualization tool to help with the
release of a new product.
Data visualization describes technologies that allow users to “see” or visualize data to transform information
into a business perspective. Data visualization tools move beyond Excel graphs and charts into sophisticated
analysis techniques such as pie charts, controls, instruments, maps, time-series graphs, and more. Data
visualization tools can help uncover correlations and trends in data that would otherwise go unrecognized.
Business intelligence dashboards track corporate metrics such as critical success factors and key
performance indicators and include advanced capabilities such as interactive controls allowing users to
manipulate data for analysis. The majority of business intelligence software vendors offer a number of different
data visualization tools and business intelligence dashboards.
4. Analysis: Categorize the five common characteristics of high-quality information and rank them in
order of importance for Hotels.com.

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Student answers to this question will vary depending on their personal views and experiences with technology.
The important part of the question is understanding the students’ justifications for their order. Potential order
of importance:
• Timeliness – Hotels.com information must be timely. If users are receiving old and outdated answers to
their queries, they will not use the website and head to a competitors.
• Accuracy – Hotels.com website information must be accurate
• Consistency – Hotels.com results must be consistent. Users will not trust the system if it provides different
results or prices for the same hotel at different times.
• Completeness – Hotels.com search results need to be complete and identify all hotels the customer is
looking for based on his/her query.
• Uniqueness – Hotels.com users expect to receive unique answers to their queries, not the same hotels
listed over and over again.
5. Synthesis: Develop a list of some possible entities and attributes located in Hotels.com database.
Entity could include:
• ROOMS
• INVENTORY
• AMENITIES
• EMPLOYEES
• SCHEDULES
• RATES
• GUESTS
Attributes could include:
• Employee Name
• Employee Address
• Employee Title
• Employee Wage
• Room size
• Bed size
• Fridge
• Amenities
• Towels
• Guest Name
• Guest Address
• Guest Payment
• Reservation Dates
• Number in Room
Each table would need to define a primary key and could include:
• Employee ID
• Room ID
• Order ID
• Location ID

The tables in the database would have 1-to-1 relationships, 1-to-many relationships, and many-to-many
relationships. If you are planning on having your students design and build an ERD please review the
associated Access and Database Technology Plug-Ins.
6. Evaluate: Assess how Hotels.com is using BI to identify trends and change associated business
processes.
Organizations can use BI to find the cause to many issues and problems simply by asking “Why?” The
process starts by analyzing a report such as sales amounts by quarter. Managers will drill down into the report
looking for why sales are up or why sales are down. Once they understand why a certain location or product is
experiencing an increase in sales, they can share the information in an effort to raise enterprisewide sales.
Once they understand the cause for a decrease in sales, they can take effective action to resolve the issue.
Here are a few examples of how managers can use BI to answer tough business questions:
• Where has the business been? Historical perspective offers important variables for determining trends and
patterns.
• Where is the business now? Looking at the current business situation allows managers to take effective
action to solve issues before they grow out of control.
• Where is the business going? Setting strategic direction is critical for planning and creating solid business
strategies.
Ask a simple question—such as who is my best customer or what is my worst-selling product—and you might
get as many answers as you have employees. Databases, data warehouses, and data marts can provide a
single source of “trusted” data that can answer questions about customers, products, suppliers, production,
finances, fraud, and even employees. They can also alert managers to inconsistencies or help determine the
cause and effects of enterprisewide business decisions. All business aspects can benefit from the added
insights provided by business intelligence, and you, as a business student, will benefit from understanding how
MIS can help you make intelligent decisions.
CLOSING CASE ONE QUESTIONS
DATA VISUALIZATION: STORIES FOR THE INFORMATION AGE
1. Identify the effects poor information might have on a data visualization project.
Using the wrong information can lead to making the wrong decision. Making the wrong decision can cost time,
money, and even reputations. Business decisions are only as good as the information used to make the
decision. Low quality information leads to low quality business decisions. High quality information can
significantly improve the chances of making a good business decision and directly affect an organization’s
bottom line. A data visualization project must use high quality information whenever it is making business
decisions, especially decisions that affect its business strategy.
2. How does data visualization use database technologies?
Data visualization is a way to make sense of the ever-increasing stream of information with which we’re
bombarded and provides a creative antidote to the analysis paralysis that can result from the burden of
processing such a large volume of information. “It’s not about clarifying data,” says Koblin. “It’s about
contextualizing it.” It’s essential to understand the importance of creative vision along with the technical
mastery of software. Data visualization isn’t about using all the data available, but about deciding which

patterns and elements to focus on, building a narrative, and telling the story of the raw data in a different,
compelling way.
3. How could a business use data visualization to identify new trends?
There are real implications for business here. Most cell phone providers, for instance, offer a statement of a
user’s monthly activity. Most often it’s an overwhelming table of various numerical measures of how much you
talked, when, with whom, and how much it cost. A visual representation of this data might help certain patterns
emerge, revealing calling habits and perhaps helping users save money.
Companies can also use data visualization to gain new insight into consumer behavior. By observing and
understanding what people do with the data—what they find useful and what they dismiss as worthless—
executives can make the valuable distinction between what consumers say versus what they do. Even now,
this can be a tricky call to make from behind the two-way mirror of a traditional qualitative research setting.
4. What is the correlation between data mining and data visualization?
Data visualization isn’t about using all the data that is available and so is data mining. With data mining and
data visualization you are taking pieces of the data and using it to determine patterns and elements to focus
on, building a narrative, and telling the story of the raw data in a different, compelling way.
5. Is data visualization a form of business intelligence? Why or why not?
Yes! Data visualization is a form of storytelling that helps to identify correlations, patterns, trends, in the data.
It’s about telling the story locked in the data differently, more engagingly, in a way that draws us in, makes our
eyes open a little wider and our jaw drop ever so slightly. And as we process it, it can sometimes change our
perspective altogether
6. What security issues are associated with data visualization?
The security and ethical issues associated with data visualization are the same as any information technology
including:
• Information theft
• Information misuse
• Hackers
• Viruses
• Information privacy
7. What might happen to a data visualization project if it failed to cleanse or scrub its data?
A data visualization project might maintain high quality information in its data warehouse. Information
cleansing and scrubbing is a process that weeds out and fixes or discards inconsistent, incorrect, or
incomplete information. Without high quality information the project will be unable to make any correlations in
the data. Potential business effects resulting from low quality information include:
• Inability to accurately track customers
• Difficulty identifying valuable customers
• Inability to identify selling opportunities
• Marketing to nonexistent customers
• Difficulty tracking revenue due to inaccurate invoices
• Inability to build strong customer relationships – which increases buyer power
CLOSING CASE TWO

Zillow
1. List the reasons Zillow would need to use a database to run its business.
Without a database Zillow would be unable to store and quickly query the billions of records. There are many
different models for organizing information in a database, including the hierarchical database, network
database, and the most prevalent—the relational database model.
• In a hierarchical database model, information is organized into a tree-like structure that allows repeating
information using parent/child relationships, in such a way that it cannot have too many relationships.
Hierarchical structures were widely used in the first mainframe database management systems. However,
owing to their restrictions, hierarchical structures often cannot be used to relate to structures that exist in
the real world.
• The network database model is a flexible way of representing objects and their relationships. Where the
hierarchical model structures information as a tree of records, with each record having one parent record
and many children, the network model allows each record to have multiple parent and child records,
forming a lattice structure.
• The relational database model is a type of database that stores information in the form of logically related
two-dimensional tables. The relational database model stores information in the form of logically related
two-dimensional tables. Entities, entity classes, attributes, primary keys, and foreign keys are all
fundamental concepts included in the relational database model.
2. Describe how Zillow uses business intelligence to create a unique product for its customers.
Zillow uses business intelligence to analyze internal organization information and external information such as
market trends, competitor information, and industry trends. Zillow could then analyze its business across
markets, among its competitors, and throughout different industries.
3. How could the marketing department at Zillow use a data mart to help with the release of a new
product launch?
The marketing department could use a data mart to determine which houses or apartments are currently the
best selling and then use that information to generate mailing lists to customers looking for potential homes.
4. Categorize the five common characteristics of high-quality information and rank them in order of
importance to Zillow.
Student answers to this question will vary depending on their personal views and experiences with technology.
The important part of the question is understanding the students’ justifications for their order. Potential order
of importance:
• Timeliness – Zillow information must be timely. If users are receiving old and outdated answers to their
queries, they will not use the website and head to a competitors.
• Accuracy – Zillow’s website information must be accurate
• Consistency – Zillow’s results must be consistent. Users will not trust the system if it provides different
results or prices for the same home on different dates or times.
• Completeness – Zillow’s search results need to be complete and identify all homes the customer is looking
for based on his/her query.
• Uniqueness – Zillow users expect to receive unique answers to their queries, not the same home listed
over and over again.
5. Develop a list of some possible entities and attributes of Zillow’s mortgage database.
Entity could include:
• HOME

• MORTGAGE
• SALES HISTORY
Attributes could include:
• Home Address
• Home Square Footage
• Sale Price
6. Assess how Zillow uses a data-driven website to run its business.
The data in Zillow’s website must be continuously updated based on current information. Homes are sold all
over the country every minute and the website must keep up or it would be unable to compete in the fast
paced real estate market.
CRITICAL BUSINESS THINKING
Instructor Note: There are few right or wrong answers in the business world. There are really only efficient and
inefficient, and effective and ineffective business decisions. If there were always right answers businesses would
never fail. These questions were created to challenge your students to apply the materials they have learned to
real business situations. For this reason, the authors cannot provide you with one version of a correct answer.
When grading your students’ answers, be sure to focus on their justification or support for their specific answers. A
good way to grade these questions is to compare your student’s answers against each other.
1. INFORMATION – BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE OR A DIVERSION FROM THE TRUTH?
Project Purpose: To understand business intelligence and the global business environment.
Potential Solution: Student answers to this question will vary. It is important to ensure that they provide the
proper justification for their answers. Technology-focused students will tend to disagree with President
Obama, especially if they are familiar with the data mining and business intelligence he used to run his
campaign.
2. ILLEGAL DATA ACCESS
Project Purpose: To gain insight into database access and security issues.
Potential Solution: This question really touches on ethics and how companies need to monitor employees
behavior since they are ultimately responsible for their actions. There are many data related policies the
company could implement to help prevent this type of issue from occurring.
3. DATA STORAGE
Project Purpose: To review the websites that offer online data storage.
Potential Solution: Students will have fun visiting the different websites to determine which site offers the
best solution. They might also find sites where they want to backup their critical data saving them time,
energy, and frustration if they ever experience computer issues.
4. GATHERING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
Project Purpose: To understand the value of data.
Potential Solution: Student answers to this question will vary depending on the business they choose to start.
5. FREE DATA!
Project Purpose: To ensure the students understand the amount of data available on the Internet.

Other documents randomly have
different content

weather-wise. Certain physicians consider the emanations from the
ass’s body to possess beneficial medical properties; while, in former
days, the blood of the bull was considered poisonous.
The credulous Plutarch declared that Themistocles poisoned himself
with bullock’s blood, upon the authority of the priests of Egina, who
are also cited by Pliny; and this same bullock’s blood, esteemed
poisonous, was also considered a moral purification;—sins being
expiated by the sprinkling of the human body with the blood of the
bull. On solemn occasions, when the criminal was a man of wealth
and distinction, so that a bull was dedicated to his use, the blood
was made to fall in a perforated vessel, and the criminal standing
beneath, received the sacred aspersion upon his face and attire. The
Emperor Julian submitted to this act of expiation. Bullock’s blood is
now known to be as innocuous as that of other animals; and is
extensively used in more than one manufacture.
During the Middle Ages, ground glass was supposed to act as an
infallible poison; and was long known by the name of “Succession
Powder.” Montfleury speaks of it in one of his comedies. One of the
personages, showing a packet of it, observes: “Here is the making of
many an heir!”
Portal, and several other French physicians, have asserted in their
works, that ground glass is fatal to the swallower; and it is
frequently used by the poor as ratsbane, mixed up with the
compositions intended for the extermination of vermin. Jugglers
were the first to controvert this error, by publicly swallowing it with
impunity, a feat which Dr. Franck having witnessed, he immediately
experimentalized on himself, and published the results as conclusive
against the received opinion.
About the year 1810, a physician of Caen, named Sauvage,
confirmed the opinion of Franck. A young lady under his care
swallowed a quantity of powdered glass for the purpose of self-
destruction without experiencing the least injury; upon which
Sauvage tried experiments on various animals, administering ground

glass to cats, dogs, and rats, on opening the bodies of which, he
could not detect the smallest effect. Many similar experiments
produced the same results. Dr. Cayol, in presence of his colleagues,
swallowed a quantity of irregular fragments of glass. So, also, did
Sauvage, without producing the smallest derangement of the
digestive organs.
It is worthy of remark, that mountebanks often clear the way for the
march of science; a proof that the most trivial observations may be
the origin of the grandest results. Some students of Oxford, on
visiting Newton, found him blowing bubbles from a straw, and
considered the occupation childish. The philosopher was studying
the theory of light.
Since we have alluded to mountebanks, let us devote a few more
words to them. Jugglers have been known to swallow, not only
pounded glass, but stones and knife blades. A celebrated Spaniard,
accused by the Inquisition, proved his innocence by swallowing fiery
coals without injury; and the savage found in the woods at Aveyron,
devoured all sorts of fowls with their feathers. But these exploits will
not bear comparison with those of the Molucca savage, of whom we
read an account in a volume entitled: “The Testament of Jerome
Sharp,” printed in 1786.
“I entered,” says the narrator, “with one of my friends, and found a
man resembling an ourang-outang crouched upon a stool in the
manner of a tailor. His complexion announced a distant climate, and
his keeper stated that he found him in the island of Molucca. His
body was bare to the hips, having a chain round the waist, seven or
eight feet long, was fastened to a pillar, and permitted him to
circulate out of the reach of the spectators. His looks and
gesticulations were frightful. His jaws never ceased snapping, except
when sending forth discordant cries, which were said to be indicative
of hunger. He swallowed flints when thrown to him, but preferred
raw meat, which he rushed behind his pillar to devour. He groaned
fearfully during his repast, and continued groaning until fully
satiated. When unable to procure more meat, he would swallow

stones with frightful avidity; which, upon examination of those which
he accidentally dropped, proved to be partly dissolved by the acrid
quality of his saliva. In jumping about, the undigested stones were
heard rattling in his stomach.”
The men of science quickly set to work to account for these feats, so
completely at variance with the laws of nature. But before they had
hit upon a theory, the pretended Molucca savage proved to be a
peasant from the neighbourhood of Besançon, who chose to turn to
account his natural deformities. When staining his face for the
purpose, in the dread of hurting his eyes, he left the eyelids
unstained, which completely puzzled the naturalists. By a clever
sleight of hand, the raw meat was left behind the pillar, and cooked
meat substituted in its place. Some asserted his passion for eating
behind the pillar to be a proof of his savage origin; most polite
persons, and more especially Kings, being addicted to feeding in
public. The stones swallowed by the pretended savage were taken
from a vessel left purposely in the room full of them; small round
stones, encrusted with plaster, which afterwards gave them the
appearance of having been masticated in the mouth. Before the
discovery of all this, the impostor had contrived to reap a plentiful
harvest.
Some time afterwards, a woman was exhibited near the Louvre, who
devoured flints and slate with the utmost avidity. But the scientific
world, forewarned by its former credulity, took no note of her
peculiarities of appetite.
It is recorded in the Gazette of Health, that the Abbé Monnier, of St.
Jean d’Angély, used in his youth to grind between his teeth
fragments of stone for recreation, and even in his declining age,
continued the custom. He would swallow a spoonfull during the day,
and did not consider his dinner complete without them. He was
always pale and emaciated, which was attributed to his singular diet.
But his brother, who did not feed upon stones, was precisely of the
same temperament and appearance. The Abbé lived till the age of
ninety-eight. Diseased persons have been known to devour without

injury, earth, stones, chalk, and plaster; and an eminent physician
used to eat small lumps of plaster-of-Paris, as others swallow sugar-
plums.
In the anatomical inquiries of Menelaus Winsemius, a Dutch
physician, he relates that in his time, a peasant of Friesland was in
the habit of swallowing flints, wood, glass, and live fish. In
Wurtemberg, there was also a miller, who for money would swallow
birds, mice, lizards, caterpillars, or fragments of glass and stone. He
one day swallowed an inkstandish, with all its appurtenances. These
feats were publicly attested by the Senate of Wurtemberg; after
which, the man lived nineteen years, subsisting upon twelve pounds
of food per diem. There is scarcely a fair throughout Europe at which
such feats are not exhibited on a minor scale.

CHAPTER XXXII.
DREAMS.
In modern times, dreams have become a gratuitous affair; but in the
time of lotteries they possessed the greatest value with the votaries
of Blind Fortune. At the French offices, a register was kept of lucky
numbers, whose prizes were the result of dreams. Not a day passed
but the office keepers were applied to for numbers, the combination
of which was foretold by dreams.
However great the weakness of those who put undue faith in such
omens, it must be admitted that the wanderings of the mind during
sleep have been productive of marvellous results. But just as the
slightest opinions of Montaigne are the result of the minutest self-
study, a person desirous to ascertain the real importance of a dream
ought to consider what was the state of health, disposition, mind
and feeling of the dreamers. Many dreams constitute a mere
continuation of the occupations of the day. Others arise from our
habitual strain of mind. During illness or fever, the mind, and
consequently the dreams by which it is perplexed, assume an
exalted and unnatural tone.
Authors have been known to compose during their sleep. Voltaire
declares that he composed his verses to Monsieur Touron while
asleep; and on returning from a ball, what young dancer does not
fancy during the night, that the violins of the orchestra are still
ringing in his ears? Hippocrates was so persuaded of the analogy of
dreams with our physical condition, that he points out specifics
against evil dreaming. If the stars turn pale in your dreams, you are
to run in a circle; if the moon, you must run in a straight line; if the
sun, you must run both in a straight line and a circle to avoid a
repetition of the evil omen.

By these prescriptions, he prevailed upon the lazy Athenians to assist
their bad digestion by the effect of exercise, so as to procure a calm
and gentle sleep.
Pliny, the younger, mentions the following fact: “One of my slaves,
who was sleeping with his companions in the place usually allotted
to them, dreamed that two men, dressed in white, entered through
the window, and having shaven their heads, departed by the way
they came. The following morning he was found shaved, and his hair
scattered on the ground.” This was probably some waggish trick
practised on him by his companions when in a state of intoxication.
Valerius Maximus, on the authority of Cicero, relates a remarkable
dream:
“Two fellow-travellers arrived at Megara; the one putting up at an
hotel, the other at the house of a friend. Scarcely had the former
fallen asleep, when he saw his companion imploring him to come to
his aid, as his host was attempting to murder him. The impression
was so strong as to wake him; when, finding it a delusion, he went
to sleep again. Once more, his friend appeared, announcing the
accomplishment of the crime, and that his assassin had concealed
his body under the dunghill, to which he begged his companion to
repair betimes, before they had time to remove it out of the city.
Overawed by so awful a vision, the friend rose forthwith, and
proceeding to the scene of the murder, found a carter and his cart
about to quit the court. On insisting to examine the load, the carter
fled; when the body was extricated from the dung, the whole affair
discovered, and the host condemned to death.”
This Greek story is related on the authority of Cicero, who was never
at Megara, and consequently knew the fact by hearsay. Had Cicero
asserted that he witnessed the affair, the story would have been
difficult to believe; as it is, posterity is absolved from the smallest
credence.

There lived at Marseilles, a bigoted woman, who passed her days at
church, and dreamt every night that she was transformed into a
lamp: a dream she chose to verify; for, on the day of her death, a
silver lamp was suspended, at her cost, in the choir of the church in
which she was wont to follow her devotions.
Dreams are the peculiar province of the poet. Æneas, to justify his
abandonment of Dido, cites the commands of his father, who
appears to him every night. What more beautiful, except perhaps
the dream of Athalia, than the dream of Æneas, in which Hector
presents himself to the son of Anchises, pale and ghastly, as after he
had become a victim to the vengeance of Achilles? In the Greek
plays, and the French tragedies imitated from the Greek, dreams
form a prominent feature. The family of Atrides were great
dreamers:—Atreus, Agamemnon, Orestes, and Egisthus, the son of
Atreus, had all remarkable dreams.
In Lemercier’s tragedy of “Agamemnon,” Egisthus relates that which
is evidently the result of a dream;—but he will not admit it to be a
dream, declaring that he “did not sleep.”
The impressions of dreams are often so vivid that we confound in
our memory real facts with the visions of sleep. Hence, no doubt,
the popular expression of “You must have dreamt that!”
The existence of dreams must be coeval with the human race. By
the ancients, the Gods were thought to preside over them. The
dreams of Pharaoh made the fortune of Joseph; and Artemidorus
acquired a great reputation under the Antonines, by interpreting
dreams. According to him, to dream of being weighed down by a
mountain, portended proscription; and to dream of death, meant
marriage. To dream that you are deprived of sight, intimates that
you are about to lose one of your children. Artemidorus interpreted
dreams in the same manner as the celebrated Mademoiselle
Lenormand, or as Mrs. Williams, so well-known in London at the
commencement of the present century.

Business Driven Information Systems 4th Edition Paige Baltzan Solutions Manual

CHAPTER XXXIII.
OF PREJUDICES ATTACHED TO CERTAIN ANIMALS.
Innumerable are the auguries which the remnants of ancient
superstition have attached to certain animals. To meet a flock of
sheep, is considered a lucky omen. To overtake one when
proceeding to the house of a friend, determines many people to turn
back as indicative of an inhospitable reception.
Two magpies are sure forerunners of good news; but a single one is
supposed to foreshow tidings of the death of a friend.
Spiders are of evil omen; though the mischief they convey is
attributed, in Scotland, solely to the family of Bruce. There is a
French proverb which says, “Arraignée du soir—espoir,” as if the hour
of the day influenced the nature of the omen. Lalande, the
astronomer, is known to have been fond of eating spiders. Yet the
insect is an object of repugnance to most people; and is, in some
species, venomous.
Of all reptiles, the toad is the most universally detested; as if gifted
with a magnetism of repulsion. The Abbé Rousseau asserts in his
Treatise on Natural History, that the sight of a toad has been known
to produce convulsions and death. “Having enclosed one of these
reptiles,” says he, “in a glass jar, I stood watching it; when the
creature rose on its hinder legs, fixing its red and inflamed eyes
upon me, till I became so faint and depressed, as to be on the point
swooning. A cold dew rose upon my face, such as announces the
approach of death.” This was probably the result of fear alone. Two
living beings cannot long stare fixedly at each other without one
giving way. The power of the visual organ is very great; and the
stronger controls the weaker. As the pointer arrests the partridge,

the eye of Marius arrested the arm of the Cimber sent to assassinate
him; and by fixing his eye upon a troublesome dog, Talma could
always prevent its barking. The toad is a disgusting animal, but not a
noxious animal. It destroys many insects injurious to the beauty of
our flower-gardens, and plumpness of our esculents; while for
sobriety, it has no competitor. Toads have been found imbedded in
blocks of marble and trunks of trees, deprived of all chance of
external air or nutriment.
The lizard, which is nearly as unseemly to look on as the toad, has
long been deemed the friend of man; and the vulgar had formerly a
superstition that a piece of lizard’s tail worn on the person secured
good fortune.
Lizards are sociably disposed, and fond of the human voice. They
are said by travellers in Surinam and Cayenne, to awake a sleeping
person on the approach of the rattlesnake. Alarmed at the approach
of a snake, they have probably been known to cross the face of
some man lying asleep; and have thus given rise to a popular fallacy.
But if lizards be not the benefactors of the human race, at least they
do us no harm; a quality that might be advantageously transferred
to many of our own species.
Pliny maintains that oysters grow fat or thin according to the phases
of the moon; while most modern oyster-eaters attribute the change
to certain months rather than certain weeks of the year. It is an
equally erroneous supposition that milk promotes the digestion of
oysters; which may be proved by trying to dissolve them in hot or
cold milk. The prejudice that they are out of season when no R
figures in the name of the month, originated in the difficulty of
transferring them fresh from the coast to the capital during the
months of May, June, July, and August. By the sea-side, they will be
found good at all seasons of the year.
In ancient times, the appearance of an owl in the day-time was
esteemed a prodigy; and the Romans used to rush to the temples,
offering incense to the Gods! Pliny considers the apparition of an owl

an omen of sterility; and an omelet made of owl’s eggs was a
sovereign specific against ebriety. Among villagers, the shriek of the
owl is still dreaded as a summons to the other world. Yet this bird
was favoured by dedication to the Goddess of Wisdom, though
ungifted with the powers of divination ascribed by the Greeks to the
vulture. According to the ancients, the vulture possessed such
olfactory powers, that it could foreshow the death of a person three
days previous to his decease.
It may be observed, that all the animals to which particular
superstitions are attached, were known to the ancients; whereas
those discovered during the latter ages are free from imputation of
supernatural power.
The wild beasts of all climates make man their prey; but none kill
him by a look, as was said of the basilisk. Among the ancients,
Aristotle, Pliny, and Galen, persisted in the foregoing opinion; and
among modern propagators of errors, the German Athazen, and the
Italian Vitello. If Rome, the superb, crouched before an owl, a
basilisk compelled Alexander to raise the siege of an Asiatic city.
Taking the besieged under its protection, a basilisk, esconced
betwixt two stones on the ramparts, repulsed, without moving, two
hundred Macedonians who were rash enough to attack it. Sir
Thomas Brown suggests the possibility, that the poison of the
basilisk may be so intense and subtle, as to be darted forth by
means of its visual organ.
The venomous bite of the viper has given rise to a variety of popular
prejudices. The tooth of St. Amable was once the only specific; to
which succeeded a faith in the antidote of Maltese earth. Meanwhile
the utmost efforts of the faculty remain fruitless against the bite of
the rattle-snake, of the cobra di manilla, and several other of the
more venomous species. The quality of their venom is supposed to
remain unimpaired by the death of the reptiles; and instances are
cited of individuals having died of handling them, even after being
preserved in spirits of wine. The venom is deposited in two vesicles
on either side the head, above the muscle of the upper jaw, the

remainder of its body being completely innocuous; so that, in former
days, viper broth was frequently prescribed in pulmonary complaints.
The venom of the viper becomes less intense as it advances in age.
It used to be believed, that the saliva of man was fatal to vipers, as
their venom to ourselves; an opinion maintained by Aristotle, Galen,
Varro, Pliny, and Figuier, the surgeon. The latter asserts that he killed
a viper by the effect of his own saliva. The experiments by Redi, the
learned physician of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and many others,
proved the absurdity of the idea.
Benvenuto Cellini declares, in his Memoirs, that he saw a salamander
in the midst of his own fire; probably a lizard, inadvertantly brought
from the country among the logs of wood. No one has yet pleaded
guilty to having seen a phœnix, though for ages, a popular
superstition attached to this fabulous bird. The unicorn also
continues to be placed among the apocryphal animals, with the
great sea-serpent of the American coast.
The bite of the tarentula spider was long said to produce involuntary
dancing; simply because the persons bitten, on applying to the local
practitioners of the healing art, were instantly ordered to dance the
pizzica, the rapid Sicilian dance of the provinces where the tarentula
abounds, in order to promote circulation and neutralize the effects of
the poison. Whole villages used to assemble to witness the result,
and whenever the patient expired of the bite of the reptile, he was
said to have danced himself to death. Such is the origin of the
Neapolitan superstition of the tarentula.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
CONTENT AND COURTESY.
The first ambition of mankind is to be happy. To the brute creation,
and to man in a state of nature, happiness consists in sensual
gratification. To this, succeeds the factitious happiness of civilization;
whence the origin of a variety of popular errors and prejudices. From
the days of Horace to our own, people have been prone to envy
those who pursue any career but their own. But if the soldier envy
the position of the civilian, and vice versâ, it is clear that the
ambition of being what one is not, arises from the fact that every
one is acquainted with the drawback on his own profession, and only
appreciates the advantages of that to which he does not belong. La
Fontaine never imagined anything more true, or more charming,
than the fable of the cobbler entreating the financier to restore him
his song and peaceful sleep, in exchange for the hundred crowns he
had bestowed upon him. Every one has heard the Persian apologue
of the Sophi, to whom, in a fit of acute suffering, the sole remedy
prescribed was the shirt of a happy man; a treasure difficult to
discover either in Court or city; till at length a ragged wretch was
found in the suburbs of Ispahan, who admitted himself to be
perfectly happy; but alas! he had not a shirt to his back; and the
cure of the Sophi was not more advanced than before.
History has its lessons on this head as well as fiction. The Comte de
Ségur relates in his Memoirs, that previous to the Revolution, the
Duke de Lauraguais wrote to him as follows:
“Congratulate me, my dear Ségur. Thanks be to Heaven, I am
completely ruined! I have nothing left, but am delivered from the
importunities of my creditors.”

Towards the termination of his career, this witty nobleman subsided
into voluntary habits of simplicity, differing strangely from his past
splendours. Never, however, had he been happier!—His peace of
mind was from within; superior to all incidents of birth, position, and
fortune.
It requires to have inhabited the various stories of the social edifice,
to be able to judge man under the various aspects resulting from
fortune and station. Happiness has little to do with either; fortune
and misfortune have alike their evil influences. Covetousness is as
insatiable as ambition. In proportion as people scale the ladder of
opulence, they discover others richer than themselves to excite their
envy; and vanity pervades every rank of society, marring the
quietude of the human mind. The laurels of Miltiades gave umbrage
to Themistocles; and Cæsar declared that he would rather be the
first of a village, than second in Rome. A wiser man was the
shepherd who said: “Were I a King, I would keep my sheep on
horseback.”
The ceremonies of politeness, when carried to excess, are a source
of public inconvenience. The custom of addressing a lady bare-
headed, as was the case in France a century ago, when Louis XIV.,
even in a shower, refused to put on his hat in the presence of
females, was the cause of many a serious indisposition. The custom
of appearing bare-headed in church is also dangerous to many; and,
so far unreasonable, that men are unable to appear in hats, while it
would be accounted singular for a woman to appear there without a
bonnet. Can any reasonable motive be assigned for such a
distinction?
Again, what is the origin of the ridicule attached to a person who is
left-handed? It is clear that some are born with an instinctive facility
in the use of the right hand—some of the left. Yet mothers punish
their children for using the left hand, as an act of awkwardness. The
preference given to the use of the right hand, though existing from
the times of antiquity, is not the less ridiculous.

In Holy Writ, the right hand is made an instrument of benediction;
which probably conferred a superiority over the left. Theologians
also contend that the Son of God sat on the right of the heavenly
throne. The Romans conceded such superiority to the right hand,
that when at table, they lay on the left side that the right hand
might be free. Aristotle maintained that the pre-eminence of the
right hand proceeded from the same conformation by which the
cray-fish have the right claw larger than the left. Politeness in these
days requires we should place the person we wish to distinguish, on
the right. The indiscriminate use of both hands is the best lesson to
teach a child:—indifference to the distinction bestowed by the
assignment of a place on either, the best lesson to be practised by
adolescence.
Parisians consider it a lesson of politeness to their young children to
kiss their right hand before receiving any thing presented to them.
The left hand is, however, devoted to the wedding-ring. This is not a
Christian custom; but prevailed among the Assyrians, Medes,
Egyptians, Babylonians, and most of the people of antiquity.
Many people object to uttering the word farewell in parting from a
friend, influenced by a prejudice that a fatality attaches to the word.
Whence the French mode of taking leave with “sans adieu!”
The compliments formerly paid to a person sneezing are now happily
abandoned; having arisen in those early days of civilization when
epidemics were so far more frequent and fatal than now. It was the
custom, in most European countries, to say “God bless you,” to the
person who sneezed, lest it should be symptomatic of the
commencement of an illness.
Sneezing has been the object of a variety of ridiculous prejudices.
Aristotle pronounces sneezing to be a gift from the Gods, and to be
honoured as a thing of holiness, and a sign of good health.
Hippocrates agrees with Aristotle, and pronounces it a great relief to
parturient women. The Rabbins assert that Adam sneezed after his
fall; and that in the primitive times, sneezing was a sure prognostic

of death; and remained so till the patriarch Jacob obtained from God
that it should no longer be the forerunner of dissolution. It is
fortunate this change took place previous to the use of snuff; or the
snuffbox would have been accounted fatal as that of Pandora.

CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DIVINING ROD.
The superstition of the divining rod prevailed only a century and a
half ago. The following story concerning it, is too curious to be
omitted. In the year 1692, a vintner of Lyons and his wife were
murdered in their cellar, their assassins making away with their
money. All attempts to discover the culprits were vain, till a simple
Dauphinese peasant, named Jacques Aymar, boasted that, with the
aid of a simple hazel twig, he could discern the assassins. Having
visited the scene of the murder, rod in hand, it became agitated; and
on following its indications till he reached the right bank of the
Rhone, Aymar entered the house of a gardener, where three bottles
stood on the table; when, lo! the rod instantly intimated that the
bottles had been emptied by the assassins! Two children of the
house owned that three ill-looking men had been there; on which
Aymar began to obtain some credit. Traces of three men were found
imprinted on the sand by the river-side; and, persuaded that they
had embarked, Aymar followed them, inquiring as he proceeded,
and detecting the spots where they had halted, to the astonishment
of those who accompanied him.
At the Sablon, the rod becoming agitated, Aymar announced that
the assassins were evidently in the camp; and his divining rod led
him as far as the gate of the prison of Beaucaire; which being
opened, twelve of the fifteen prisoners confined were brought before
him. But the divining rod was motionless till the approach of a
certain humpbacked prisoner, who declared his utter ignorance of
the crime committed at Lyons. On the indications of the rod,
however, the hunchback being conducted to the gardener’s house
was recognised as having been one of the party. At length he

confessed his guilt; protesting, however, that he was an involuntary
spectator, and did not participate in the murder. Having furnished
Aymar with information concerning the direction the assassins had
taken, he traced their steps to an inn at Toulon, where they had
dined the previous evening. On finding that the culprits had put to
sea, he also embarked and followed the course of their boat to its
landing-place. But on reaching the frontier, all further trace of them
was lost.
This wonderful story afforded a topic of discussion to the whole
kingdom. So many persons bore testimony to the truth of the story,
that it was impossible to doubt it; the more so, that Aymar followed
it up with exploits equally wonderful. He detected several thieves, as
well as the places where they had concealed their booty; and as a
test of his powers, the lady of the chief officer of police possessed
herself, by stealth, of the purse of one of her friends, and begged
him to come to her and detect the thief. Aymar instantly declared
that they were amusing themselves at his expense.
The Prince de Condé, who, far from being superstitious, had greater
faith in his Field-Marshal’s baton than the divining rod, could not
resist his curiosity to witness the feats of Aymar, and sent for him to
Paris. As soon as he recovered the fatigues of his journey, he was
conducted to a bureau, from which something of considerable value
had disappeared; but whether or not the magnificence of the place
annihilated the power of the divining rod, the charm was gone!
Holes were dug in various parts of the garden, in which were
deposited gold, copper, stones, and other substances. But the rod
failed to point out the hidden treasure. In the interim, a pair of silver
candlesticks having been stolen from Mademoiselle de Condé,
Aymar’s rod pointed out a goldsmith’s shop, the master of which
being accused, was highly indignant. Thirty-six livres were
forwarded, however, the following morning as the price of the
objects; and it was supposed that Aymar had resorted to this
expedient, with the view of re-establishing his reputation. But it was

all in vain! The divining rod had lost its reputation, and Jacques
Aymar was pronounced to be an impostor.
At his own request, however, he accompanied the King’s advocate to
a street in which a murder had been committed; and the result
being unsatisfactory, Aymar was considered either a mountebank, or
a man following, with new pretensions, the old trade of recovering
for reward the stolen goods, in the abstraction of which he had
participated.
Science becomes dangerous in the hands of empirics, as weapons in
the hands of children. About forty years ago, a German doctor
revived the marvels of the divining rod, grounding his system upon
the phenomena of galvanism. But the philosophy of Volta disdained
such an association. Pleasantly exposed to ridicule in the admirable
pages of the antiquary, it is now estimated as on a par with the
charm once supposed to be inherent in the rope by which a human
being had suffered the sentence of the law. It is still proverbial with
the vulgar, that any singularly lucky person “carries a bit of
hangman’s rope in his pocket.”
Uninquiring incredulity is as great a proof of weakness as over
credulousness. The following instance of that incomprehensible
foresight which flashes upon the brain of certain individuals, under
the name of presentiment, passed under the notice of Gratien de
Sémur.
Madame de Saulce, the wife of a rich planter of St. Domingo, was
residing in France about the time of the Revolution. Her husband
occasionally visited his native country, leaving his lady at Paris, who
was a woman of sense and piety, by no means of a nervous
temperament. During the last voyage of her husband, being
engaged at cards at an evening party, she suddenly uttered a shriek,
and sunk on her chair, exclaiming, “Monsieur Saulce is dead!” Her
friends crowding about her, attempted to tranquillize her by their
remonstrances, till by degrees she recovered her reason. So

powerful, however, had been the sensation or presentiment, that she
had no peace till she obtained news of her husband.
A favourable letter arrived; but, alas! the date was anterior to that of
her vision. And soon afterwards, one of the friends present at the
scene of Madame de Saulce’s ejaculation, received a communication
from a stranger in St. Domingo, requesting him to communicate to
that lady the distressing news of her husband’s decease. Monsieur
de Saulce had been assassinated by his negroes, on the very day
and hour of her fatal presentiment. The event occurred in the
presence of at least twenty persons; and till the day of her death,
the widow remained a prey to sorrow mingled with awe and
consternation.
In the Memoirs of the great Sully will be found the record of the
presentiments of assassination, which oppressed the mind of Henry
IV. “The King,” says he, “had the strongest presentiment of his
dreadful destiny. As the moment of his coronation approached, his
alarm and consternation increased; and in answer to my
remonstrance, he exclaimed: ‘In spite of all you can urge, this
ceremony is most distasteful to me. My heart assures me that some
misfortune will be the result.’ After uttering these desponding words,
he sank back, overcome by gloomy anticipations; and remained
tapping the case of his spectacles, absorbed in gloomy reverie.”
The presentiment of Henri IV. of his approaching assassination, is
confirmed by the testimony of L’Etoile and Bassompierre, who, in
their Memoirs, relate the same particulars; and the fact is as
historically established as the evil dream of Calphurnia, and the
denunciation of the soothsayer to Julius Cæsar, on a parallel
occasion.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
BEES AND ANTS.
Dull must be the blockhead, who could reproach La Fontaine with
ignorance of Natural History, and pronounce the fable of the “Ant
and the Grasshopper” bad, because the fabulist has not shown
himself a rigid naturalist. The great fault charged against La
Fontaine, by the critics, is having made the grasshopper sing. Its cry
is considered by most people far from melodious.
The bee possesses a thousand poetical associations derived from our
early conversancy with the Georgics. From the remotest periods of
antiquity, bees have been recognised as attached to monarchical
government, though not to the Salique law. A hive has been
compared to the palace of a Czarina of Muscovy.
The queen bee reigns over hundreds of male subjects with the
despotism of a Sultan; with the additional privilege of peopling her
own dominions. When the queen is on the point of increasing her
numerous subjects, the females invade the seraglio of their
sovereign, and with their stings exterminate all the male admirers of
her majesty. The fecundity of a queen is such, that she can produce
sixty thousand of her species annually. The males are easily
recognized, being the sleekest and best formed of the hive; and all
its labours are carried on by them. To gather honey, and bring back
every day to the common exchequer the fruits of the plunder,
separate the honey from the wax, and with the latter construct their
cell, distil the honey, and die, constitute the duties of the bee.
It has been asserted that the queen bee has no sting, which is an
error. Another error prevails, that after a bee has stung, it dies,
leaving its sting in the wound. Some one probably crushed a bee,

and found the sting in his finger, from which isolated fact a general
conclusion has been made.
Réaumur applied himself to the study of bees; not, however, so
devoutly as the philosopher, Aristomachus, who consecrated fifty-
eight years to it; or the philosopher, Hytiscus, who conceived so
great a passion for bees, that he retired into the Desart, the better
to observe them. He simply cleared the way of errors, and
discountenanced old traditions; but all was conjecture with regard to
bees, till the invention of glass hives; when the government of those
interesting insects became no longer a secret. The devotion of the
working bees to their queen is now well-known. When in danger, or
the hive is attacked, they rush to her aid; and even form a mass to
conceal her, and die in her defence.
Réaumur relates the following anecdote of which he was a witness.
A queen bee, and some of her attendants were apparently drowned
in a brook. He took them out of the water, and found that neither
the queen bee, nor her attendants were quite dead. Réaumur
exposed them to a gentle heat, by which they were revived. The
plebeian bees recovered first. The moment they saw signs of
animation in their queen, they approached her, and bestowed upon
her all the care in their power, licking and rubbing her; and when the
queen had acquired sufficient force to move, they hummed aloud, as
if in triumph!
It has been thought that bees were prejudicial to the fructification of
plants, by robbing them of their pollen. This is not only an error, but
naturalists worthy of faith, are of opinion that their movement in a
blossom tends to sprinkle the pollen, and promote fecundity.
Bees are of twofold service to the human race, by furnishing us with
the most refined means of lighting our houses, and of brightening
our furniture; to say nothing of their aromatic honey, surpassing the
sweetness of sugar.

Little is known of the republics or monarchies of ants; or indeed of
their precise form of government. From the most remote period,
however, it has been the custom to represent the ant as the symbol
of industry.
The industrious habits of the ant cannot be questioned; but their
much vaunted foresight, as described by Boileau, and Addison’s
Spectator, is now recognized as fabulous.
According to naturalists, the ant is not without a certain analogy with
the bee; seeing that they have not one queen to each swarm, but a
certain number of queens for the reproduction of the species; there
being productive and unproductive ants. The working class is of a
neutral sex. The female ant deposits an egg, whence proceeds a
worm, which becomes the ant. As architects, also, to ants must be
assigned the precedence over bees; their cellular formations
resulting from instinct, and not from calculation. In the stupendous
ant-hills so frequently seen in forests, what a series of galleries,
dormitories, corridors, and magazines is contained; so that the
numerous occupants find ample means of circulation. But the ant
cannot pretend to the gratitude of man in the same degree as the
bee.
The following is a curious and well-attested fact. After the death of
the illustrious Lagrange, Parseval Deschênes, his coadjutor in his
scientific pursuits, who announced the coming of Pallas ten years
previous to the discovery of that planet—renounced his
mathematical researches; and from long habits of study acquired
fresh occupation for his mind.
While spending the summer with his friend, M. d’Aubusson de la
Feuillade, in the course of one of his rambles in the woods, he found
an immense ant-hill, and immediately resolved to make ants his
study. He went every day early enough to the ant-hill to see the first
ant issue forth; and followed it from the moment of its departure to
that of its return.

“About four o’clock in the afternoon,” says he, “I saw my own
particular ant arrive heavily laden at the foot of the diminutive
mountain; and, finding it impossible to carry its burthen up the hill,
deposit it and look around for a confederate. None being at hand, it
set forth again; and about fifteen steps on its progress I saw my ant
meet another equally loaded. Both halted, and seemed to hold
council; after which, they proceeded together to the foot of the ant-
hill. Then began the most interesting scene I ever witnessed. The
second ant disembarrassed itself of its burthen; and, having
provided themselves with a blade of grass, they slipped it under the
overweighted load, and, by their united efforts, conveyed it over the
hillock, and entered their respective cells!
“After abandoning the study of mathematics as too abstruse,”
observes Parseval, “I found the lever of Archimedes in use in an ant-
hill.”

CHAPTER XXXVII.
PREPOSSESSIONS AND ANTIPATHIES.
Undue prepossession against or in favour of some object, is as much
to be guarded against as any other irrational prejudices.
It is not uncommon to hear people reply when some particular dish
is offered to them: “Thank you, I have never eaten any, and nothing
could persuade me to touch it.” Such a prepossession scarcely would
be pardonable in women or children.
An anecdote is related in the life of Talma, which has lately formed
the subject of a drama.
A poor strolling player, universally rejected, arrived, at his wits’ end,
in a city where the illustrious actor was expected. A bright idea
flashed across his mind to personate Talma; as whom he accordingly
announced himself. The authorities of the town hastened to offer
him their homage. The theatre was crowded, and all the world
enraptured with his performance. In the midst of his popularity, the
real Talma arrived; but foreseeing that a prepossession once
established in favour of the imitator was not likely to be easily
reversed, departed without making himself known. The chances
were that he might have been hissed.
It is difficult to comprehend the use of the flatteries of painters to
Princes and Princesses about to be married by proxy. The portraits
being exchanged, the betrothed receive a first strong impression,
and form their opinions accordingly. A favourable prepossession is
conceived; and in place of an agreeable and expressive
countenance, a frightful reality is often rendered more frightful by
disappointment.

With regard to literary predilections, the works of an unknown
author, however meritorious, often lie mildewed on the shelf, while
some trash, protected by a favourite name, becomes popular. The
admirable leading articles of Benjamin Constant produced no effect
till he signed them with his well-known name, when their merit was
instantly recognised. When Michael Angelo first exhibited the
productions of his chisel, they were treated as far inferior to the
sculptures of the ancient world. In the seclusion of his studio, and
unknown to any one, he accordingly set to work on a statue of
Cupid; of which he broke off the arm, and concealed the mutilated
statue in the midst of the excavations making by the Pope. When
the statue was discovered, all Rome fell into ecstasies; pronouncing
it to be the work of Phidias or Praxiteles. Michael Angelo immediately
produced the mutilated arm, and his former critics became rebuked
into silence.
At the time when the rage for Italian music excluded every other
composition from the stage, and the great French composers had
fallen in public estimation, Méhul avenged himself much in the
manner of Michael Angelo. Zealous in the cause of French music, he
composed the opera of the Irato, the words by the ingenious
Hoffmann; who, to render the illusion complete, made the libretto as
incomprehensible as possible. The opera was rehearsed in secret,
though fifty persons were engaged in it; and it was circulated in the
world, that the forthcoming opera was a mere pasticcio, borrowed
from the operas recently in vogue in Italy.
When the curtain rose, the overture was enthusiastically applauded.
Still more so, the different airs executed by Ellevion, Martin, and the
excellent company of the Comic Opera. The theatre was crowded
with enthusiastic admirers of Italian music, whose applause was
vehement; one person declaring that the music was by Fioravanti,
and that he had heard it at Naples; another, that it was by Cimarosa.
At the end of the opera, it was announced to be by Méhul, when the
amateurs of the Italian school were confounded.

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