Alan J. Munn

1. MunnName^tm

   MunnName^tm is a user-friendly computer program which recognizes Greek names. If the program is given a list of names (using copy and paste, for example), the program marks the names that are Greek. The program, which can process thousands of names at a time, runs on PCs and Macs, and requires Excel. The program may be useful for demographic direct mail advertising, scholarly research, political organizing, and other activities. Contact me for a license to use the program. The program is available on CDs, zip disks, and DVDs, in DOS format (also called PC format) and Macintosh format.

   The program recognizes Greek names transliterated into English. Tell me if you want a version of the program for Greek names transliterated into other languages (for example, French). Also, tell me if you want a program for names derived from any language other than Greek (names from Chinese, Arabic, Urdu, Russian, Gaelic [Irish], Italian, Japanese, Scottish, etc.).

   MunnName^tm analyzes and evaluates names to measure the amount of Greekness in those names, then marks the Greek names. MunnName^tm is remarkably useful and user-friendly. The program is hard to trick. The program has an uncanny ability to spot Greek names. Furthermore, sophisticated users may, if they want to, set the program for any level of sensitivity to Greekness of name. This feature (which should be used seldom or never) allows sophisticated users to adjust the frequency of false positives (non-Greek names wrongly marked as Greek) and false negatives (Greek names wrongly not marked as Greek).

   It is widely thought that American blacks' names are indistinguishable from American whites' names, because the freed slaves took their former owners' surnames, and faithfully kept those names through the present. This belief is somewhat wrong. The truth is that some surnames are disproportionately common among blacks, and some are disproportionately rare. If you have a list of English names (e.g., John Smith), I can provide a program that will identify the names that are disproportionately likely to be black. The black name detector is not as amazingly accurate as Munnname, but the black name detector is impressive and may be accurate enough for your purposes. I can also supply a program that distinguishes Sephardic Jewish names from Ashkenazic Jewish names.

   Contact me if you want more information.

2. Munn Emergency Presponse^tm

   I can make a predictive computer system that will automatically dispatch police to emergency sites before the police department receives a telephone call requesting emergency help (police presponse, not response). As a simplified example, a computer would advise a dispatcher at 8:30 one night, "Send an officer to the north side of Liberty Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues, and have him stay there until 9:15 p.m.". Sometimes, a human's emergency request phone call will come to the police while the officer is going to the emergency site. Other times, the officer will arrive, then briefly stop his car (or briefly patrol very close to the emergency site) until a human dispatcher broadcasts the emregency that he's waiting for. A low percentage of computer-generated presponses would be false alarms: no emergency request would come in for that site. The obvious benefit is that, by arriving earlier, the police will be more useful. There are other, less obvious benefits. For example, when one analyzes on-the-job injuries of police, one sees that many injuries result from auto collisions of police rushing to emergencies. To the extent that police can safely drive to emergencies instead of rushing, there should be fewer collisions, and therefore fewer police on-the-job injuries. A second benefit is that some fuel may be saved, because driving at high speed burns more fuel. The presponse system would have many other benefits, which I'll explain if you're curious. The presponse system would be for many police emergencies but not for most or even half. Contact me for details. Useful predicting more difficult than this is common (although not for law enforcement agencies). If you don't have me make a system which predicts specific police emergencies, you should have someone else do it.

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