Discussion
I agree with your answer regarding the advantages of Cobb- Douglas are acceptable because you have set it clear that both empirical and theoretical work on CD model may sometimes be unrealistic especially in the healthcare production because it does not address the relationship between the inputs and outputs.
Question: do the alternative models such as the translog and additive model (AM) show the relationship between inputs and outputs in the healthcare?
Answer: the alternative methods enjoy the above disadvantage of CD in the sense that it shows the interaction that exists between inputs and outputs. Therefore, most health care institutions use the translog and AM in analyzing their production functions.
It is true that the output is measured in a homogeneous unit of production (UPH). Then why are outputs measured in a homogeneous unit?
Answer: It is because the treatment of patients in hospitals can lead to additional homogeneous units of output that have a capability of tracking the actual cost per treatment over time due to rapid change of mixed services nurtured by technological developments.
I agree with all answers provided by the students concerning clustering of data in hospitals. However, what are the reasons for clustering and classification of data?
Answer: the main reason for clustering data is to make the available data to be sensible. Therefore, there will ease of extracting the values from larger sets of both structured and unstructured data. That is someone working with huge and unstructured data should try to portion them into smaller parts and sort them in a logical manner after grouping them before making any attempt to their analysis.
Answer: the hospital in this case had to cluster its data to take a sweep glance of the data. This will enable the data analyst to create logical structures before taking the deep analysis of the data. Consequently, this is why the hospital data were grouped into three (3) clusters.
Answer: the number of people to hire and the corresponding price to pay them.
