When using "HR" for Human Resources, should "a" or "an" be used in front of it in a sentence? IS HR an acronym?  Should "a" or "an" be used in front of it in a sentence, such as: Do you have an HR question?
Do you use "a" or "an" before acronyms / initialisms? 99% of the time, I'm clear on when I should use "a" versus "an." There's one case, though, where people &amp; references I respect disagree.  Which of the following would you precede with "a" or "an," and why?   FAQ FUBAR SCUBA   [Note: I've read the questions  and , but the rules given there don't necessarily apply here.]    [Edited to add]  Here's a shorter (and hopefully clearer) version of the question…  In written English, which is correct (and why): "a FAQ" or "an FAQ"?  Some references with differing opinions:   an: the  and  a: the Microsoft Manual of Style for Tech Publications, 3e either: the  and
What can I do to lift a 10 year ban for making a mistake in my UK visa application? I am a Nigerian citizen.  In 2007 I was twice denied a visa to the UK.  Recently I was filling out an application for another UK visitor visa and by mistake I answered no to the question whether I had ever been denied a UK visa, instead of yes.  When reviewing my application, the visa officer found out about the previous visa rejections and as a result I got a 10 year ban on travel to the UK.  What can I do to lift my 10 year ban?   Will this ban affect my chances of obtaining a visitor visa to the USA? Consider the equation $$|2^x-3^y|=1$$ in the unknowns $x \in \mathbb{N}$ and $y \in \mathbb{N}$. Is it possible to prove that the only solutions are $(1,1)$, $(2,1)$ and $(3,2)$? I use ps -ef | grep catalina | grep -v grep to print the tomcat process running on the system:  kshitiz   7099     1  0 May11 ?        00:02:29 /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0/bin/java -agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,suspend=y,address=localhost:38156 -Dcatalina.base=/home/kshitiz/Documents/workspaces/ggts/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp1 -Dcatalina.home=/opt/tomcat-7.0.42 -Dwtp.deploy=/home/kshitiz/Documents/workspaces/ggts/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp1/wtpwebapps -Djava.endorsed.dirs=/opt/tomcat-7.0.42/endorsed -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -classpath /opt/tomcat-7.0.42/bin/bootstrap.jar:/opt/tomcat-7.0.42/bin/tomcat-juli.jar:/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0/lib/tools.jar org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start   Then I use ps -ef | grep catalina | grep -v grep | awk -F' ' '{print $2}' to extract the process id:  7099   But when I alias the whole command alias tomcat_id="ps -ef | grep catalina | grep -v grep | awk -F' ' '{print $2}'" and use it via alias, it prints the whole text and awk doesn't seem to work.  type tomcat_id gives:  tomcat_id is aliased to `ps -ef | grep catalina | grep -v grep | awk -F' ' '{print }'' How can I straighten ALL the vertical UV lines at once? Is there a hot keyshort cut? Or if I have to do them one by one .. is there at shortcut for that? Thank you! population and subsamples : mean equality? I want to perform a two sample test, to see whether theirs means are equals. One of the sample is rather big (#60000 values) and represents the scores of a whole population. This population is partitioned in small classes of less that 1000 people. The other sample of the test is a subsamble of the former. It corresponds to people of the same class. So, each time, there is less than 1000 values in it. I have no idea about the variances, so I'd think of using Welch's t-test.  But I'm concerned regarding the independence hypothesis: can it be valid, considering that the second sample is negligible when compared to the overall population? Matrices A+B=AB implies A commutes with B Two rotating discs with same angular momentum when brought in contact completely stop. Why is the angular momentum not conserved in this case? Two discs mounted on different thin, lightweight rods oriented through their centres are made to rotate about their axes seperately such that the angular momentum of the two about their respective axes is same in both magnitude and direction. When both are brought in contact, they stop due to force of friction. Why is the angular momentum not conserved about their axes in this case?(Was positive before contact, but zero after the process completes, no external force present either) One of is followed by plural noun/pronoun and singular helping verb Let $f$ be a function of bounded variation on $[0,1]$. Let $\{[a_n,b_n]\}_{n=1}^\infty$  such that $(a_n,b_n)$ are pairwise disjoint and $\cup_{n=1}^\infty [a_n,b_n]=[0,1]$. (for example, $[1/2, 1], [0,1/3], [1/3,1/3+1/3^2], \cdots$ ) Can we write  $$ \operatorname{Var}_{[0,1]} f=\sum_{k=1}^\infty \operatorname{Var}_{[a_k,b_k]} f? $$ I've just downloaded a CD image of Ubuntu. I know the installer has a check CD option, but how can I check that the image is good before burning it to CD? Prove the identity $\binom{2n+1}{0} + \binom{2n+1}{1} + \cdots + \binom{2n+1}{n} = 4^n$ I've worked out a proof, but I was wondering about alternate, possibly more elegant ways to prove the statement. This is my (hopefully correct) proof:  Starting from the identity $2^m = \sum_{k=0}^m \binom{m}{k}$ (easily derived from the binomial theorem), with $m = 2n$:  $2^{2n} = 4^n = \binom{2n}{0} + \binom{2n}{1} + \cdots + \binom{2n}{2n-1} + \binom{2n}{2n}$  Applying the property $\binom{m}{k} = \binom{m}{m-k}$ to the second half of the list of summands in RHS above:  $4^n = \binom{2n}{0} + \binom{2n}{1} + \cdots + \binom{2n}{n-1} + \binom{2n}{n} + \underbrace{\binom{2n}{n-1} +\cdots \binom{2n}{1} + \binom{2n}{0}}_{\binom{m}{k} = \binom{m}{m-k} \text{ has been applied}}$  Rearranging the above sum by alternately taking terms from the front and end of the summand list in RHS above (and introducing the term $\binom{2n}{-1} = 0$ at the beginning just to make explicit the pattern being developed):  $4^n = (\binom{2n}{-1} + \binom{2n}{0}) + (\binom{2n}{0} + \binom{2n}{1}) + \cdots + (\binom{2n}{n-1} + \binom{2n}{n})$  Finally, using the property $\binom{m}{k} + \binom{m}{k-1} = \binom{m+1}{k}$ on the paired summands, we get the desired result:  $4^n = \binom{2n+1}{0} + \binom{2n+1}{1} + \cdots + \binom{2n+1}{n}$ I can't review posts anymore—was the minimum reputation changed? Is it just for me, or has the privilege to review new posts and late answers changed for everyone?  I recently started being more active in reviewing, but the rep requirement just shot up and I can not review anymore? The rep requirement has shot up to 500. Is this just for me, as a 'process", or has it been changed site wide? Every time I think I have the curve modifier mastered, it throws me a another curve ball (no pun intended).  Why in  can I not get the lights to follow the spiral curve? When the modifier is activated, the lights are stretched and distorted along the curve.  I created the curve by converting it from a mesh (string of verts). Why does it not display like a normal Bezier? Is that related to my problem?  I am following all the "rules" that I am aware of, as detailed here: . The curve seems to run in the correct direction. The origin point is at the first point of the curve. The curve modifier on the lights is set to -Y which is the local orientation of the curve's direction.  What am I missing? Why do we say that the Earth moves around the Sun? How to create a new object instance from a Type Create a tar archive split into blocks of a maximum size I need to backup a fairly large directory, but I am limited by the size of individual files. I'd like to essentially create a tar.(gz|bz2) archive which is split into 200MB maximum archives. Clonezilla does something similar to this by splitting image backups named like so:  sda1.backup.tar.gz.aa sda1.backup.tar.gz.ab sda1.backup.tar.gz.ac   Is there a way I can do this in one command? I understand how to use the split command, but I'd like to not have to create one giant archive, then split it into smaller archives, as this would double the disk space I'd need in order to initially create the archive. Student t as mixture of gaussian Using the student t-distribution with $k &gt; 0$ degrees of freedom, location parameter $l$ and scale parameter $s$ having density  $$\frac{\Gamma \left(\frac{k+1}{2}\right)}{\Gamma\left(\frac{k}{2}\sqrt{k \pi s^2}\right)} \left\{ 1 + k^{-1}\left( \frac{x-l}{s}\right)\right\}^{-(k+1)/2},$$  how to show that the Student $t$-distribution can be written as a mixture of Gaussian distributions by letting $X\sim N(\mu,\sigma^2)$, $\tau = 1/\sigma^2\sim\Gamma(\alpha,\beta)$, and integrating the joint density $f(x,\tau|\mu)$ to get the marginal density $f(x|\mu)$? What are the parameters of the resulting $t$-distribution, as functions of $\mu,\alpha,\beta$?  I got lost in calculus by integrating the joint conditional density with the Gamma distribution. Growing a PostGIS geometry by a percentage Need to reset the value of sequence in Oracle Orthonormal basis with specific norm I need to show that $v_1,...,v_n$ is basis for $V$ whenever $e_1,...,e_n$ is an orthonormal basis for V and $v_1,...,v_n$ are vectors in $V$ such that $$\left\Vert e_i-v_i\right\Vert &lt; \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}.$$ I know already that I only need to prove that they are lineary independent. Also I tried to prove it by contradiction, but I got stuck fairly fast. Any help, or hint how to prove it (with ot without contradiction) will be appriciated.