Settlement Discussions This Agreement is part of a proposed settlement of matters that could otherwise be the subject of litigation among the Parties hereto. Nothing herein shall be deemed an admission of any kind. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and any applicable state rules of evidence, this Agreement and all negotiations relating thereto shall not be admissible into evidence in any proceeding other than to prove the existence of this Agreement or in a proceeding to enforce the terms of this Agreement.
Mutual Discussions The Employer and the Union acknowledge the mutual benefits to be derived from dialogue between the parties and are prepared to discuss matters of common interest.
Formal Discussions Section 3.1.1. Pursuant to 5 USC 7114(a)(2)(A), the Union shall be given the opportunity to be represented at any formal discussion between one or more employees it represents and one or more representatives of the Employer concerning any grievance (to include settlement discussions) or any personnel policy or practice or other general condition of employment. This right to be represented does not extend to informal discussions between an employee and a supervisor concerning a personal problem, or work methods and assignments.
Informal Discussions The employee's concerns will be presented orally by the employee to the appropriate supervisor. Every effort shall be made by all concerned in an informal manner to develop an understanding of the facts and the issues in order to create a climate which will lead to resolution of the problem. If the employee is not satisfied with the informal discussion(s) relative to the matter in question, he/she may proceed to the formal grievance procedure.
Results and Discussion Table 1 (top) shows the root mean square error (RMSE) between the three tests for different numbers of topics. These results show that all three tests largely agree with each other but as the sample size (number of topics) decreases, the agreement decreases. In line with the results found for 50 topics, the randomization and bootstrap tests agree more with the t-test than with each other. We looked at pairwise scatterplots of the three tests at the different topic sizes. While there is some disagreement among the tests at large p-values, i.e. those greater than 0.5, none of the tests would predict such a run pair to have a significant difference. More interesting to us is the behavior of the tests for run pairs with lower p-values. ≥ Table 1 (bottom) shows the RMSE among the three tests for run pairs that all three tests agreed had a p-value greater than 0.0001 and less than 0.5. In contrast to all pairs with p-values 0.0001 (Table 1 top), these run pairs are of more importance to the IR researcher since they are the runs that require a statistical test to judge the significance of the per- formance difference. For these run pairs, the randomization and t tests are much more in agreement with each other than the bootstrap is with either of the other two tests. Looking at scatterplots, we found that the bootstrap tracks the t-test very well but shows a systematic bias to produce p-values smaller than the t-test. As the number of topics de- creases, this bias becomes more pronounced. Figure 1 shows a pairwise scatterplot of the three tests when the number of topics is 10. The randomization test also tends to produce smaller p-values than the t-test for run pairs where the t- test estimated a p-value smaller than 0.1, but at the same time, produces some p-values greater than the t-test’s. As Figure 1 shows, the bootstrap consistently gives smaller p- values than the t-test for these smaller p-values. While the bootstrap and the randomization test disagree with each other more than with the t-test, Figure 1 shows that for a low number of topics, the randomization test shows less noise in its agreement with the bootstrap com- Figure 1: A pairwise comparison of the p-values less than 0.25 produced by the randomization, t-test, and the bootstrap tests for pairs of TREC runs with only 10 topics. The small number of topics high- lights the differences between the three tests. pared to the t-test for small p-values.
Discussion Staff has reviewed the proposal relative to all relevant policies and advise that it is reasonably consistent with the intent of the MPS. Attachment B provides an evaluation of the proposed development agreement in relation to the relevant MPS policies.
Justification and Anticipated Results The Privacy Act requires that each matching agreement specify the justification for the program and the anticipated results, including a specific estimate of any savings. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(o)(1)(B).
Discussion of Differences If a difference arises between the Employer and an employee(s) or between the Employer and the Union concerning the interpretation, application, operation or any alleged violation of the Agreement, the employee(s) shall continue to work in accordance with the Agreement until the difference is settled.
Informal Discussion If an employee has a problem relating to a work situation, the employee is encouraged to request a meeting with his or her immediate supervisor to discuss the problem in an effort to clarify the issue and to work cooperatively towards settlement.
Formal Discussion In the event that a difference of a general nature arises regarding interpretation, application, operation or alleged contravention of this Collective Agreement, the Union shall first attempt to resolve the difference through discussion with the Employer, as appropriate. If the difference is not resolved in this manner, it may become a policy grievance.
