CA-FCM: Towards a formal representation of expert’s causal judgements over construction project changes

Aimed at improving the proactive benefits of Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) for predicting construction project changes, this paper presents CA-FCM: a Context-aware Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping approach. CA-FCM’s main functionality is to imitate the intuitive causal judgements of project experts over change causation in different contextual settings. Invoking the logical inference capabilities of semantic web tools, a hybrid inference mechanism is embedded within the proposed framework which enables establishing contextual connections between prospective causal factors through a semi-automated process of generating relevant causal statements. Hence, CA-FCM can assist decision-makers with (1) a shared sense-making of the domain concepts which would significantly facilitate the manual construction of FCM scenarios, (2) providing contextualized recommendations of causal information required for developing FCM scenarios, (3) dynamic modelling of causal inferences, imitating expert reasoning on change causation and propagation. Towards providing a detailed delineation of CA-FCM’s effectiveness on providing assistance in planning for project changes, a partial implementation of the proposed framework was conducted within a real case scenario.     

Effects of touchscreen gesture’s type and direction on finger-touch input performance and subjective ratings

Abstract

This study examined how finger-touch input performance (i.e. task completion time, failure status, and error rate) and subjective ratings (i.e. performance and physical demand) are influenced by touchscreen gestures’ type and direction. Twenty participants performed one-touch (i.e. drag and swipe) and two-touch (i.e. pinch and spread) gesture tasks on a tablet, using several major directions (i.e. eight directions for one-touch and four directions for two-touch gestures). The results showed that swipe was approximately 4.5 times faster than drag, but pinch and spread showed no significant difference in task completion time. Dragging and pinching showed more failures or higher error rates compared to swiping and spreading, respectively. One-touch gestures in the horizontal directions were rated to have higher performance and lower physical demand than those in the vertical and diagonal directions. Two-touch gestures in the horizontal directions took the shortest time but caused more failures and higher error rates.

Practitioner Summary: This study provides evidence for the effects of touchscreen gestures’ type and direction on human performance and subjective ratings, which varied depending on the number of fingers used. Designers should arrange related touchscreen components accordingly, to improve touch-finger input performance and reduce user workload.     

The analysis of expert opinions’ consensus quality

In many situations we need to obtain one, common decision (which can be understood as a consistent state of knowledge) out of opinions collected from many experts or any other external sources. This entails a problem concerning the reliability of such decision. We would like to know that decisions based on experts’ opinions are trustworthy. Unfortunately, in many cases the determination of such decision is difficult and expensive, especially when big sets of input data are involved in the process. This paper presents a framework which allows to assess the quality of the aforementioned final decision. Its output is based solely on the analysis of its input (e.g. an assumed representation of experts’ opinions). Moreover, the paper contains an overview of several types of possible approaches to the considered topic.     

A logical analysis of banks’ financial strength ratings

We evaluate the creditworthiness of banks using statistical, as well as combinatorics-, optimization-, and logic-based methodologies. We reverse-engineer the Fitch risk ratings of banks using ordered logistic regression, support vector machine, and Logical Analysis of Data (LAD). The LAD ratings are shown to be the most accurate and most successfully cross-validated. The study shows that the LAD rating approach is (i) objective, (ii) transparent, and (iii) generalizable. It can be used to build internal rating systems that (iv) have varying levels of granularity, and (v) are Basel compliant, allowing for their use in the decisions pertaining to the determination of the amount of regulatory capital.     

Sports analytics — Evaluation of basketball players and team performance

Given the recent trend in Data Science (DS) and Sports Analytics, an opportunity has arisen for utilizing Machine Learning (ML) and Data Mining (DM) techniques in sports. This paper reviews background and advanced basketball metrics used in National Basketball Association (NBA) and Euroleague games. The purpose of this paper is to benchmark existing performance analytics used in the literature for evaluating teams and players. Basketball is a sport that requires full set enumeration of parameters in order to understand the game in depth and analyze the strategy and decisions by minimizing unpredictability. This research provides valuable information for team and player performance basketball analytics to be used for better understanding of the game. Furthermore, these analytics can be used for team composition, athlete career improvement and assessing how this could be materialized for future predictions. Hence, critical analysis of these metrics are valuable tools for domain experts and decision makers to understand the strengths and weaknesses in the game, to better evaluate opponent teams, to see how to optimize performance indicators, to use them for team and player forecasting and finally to make better choices for team composition.     

Self-report measures for the assessment of human–machine interfaces in automated driving

Cognition, Technology & Work - For a successful market introduction of Level 3 Automated Driving Systems (L3 ADS), a careful evaluation of human–machine interfaces (HMIs) is necessary....     

Towards the processing breakdown of syntactic garden path phenomenon： A semantic perspective of natural language expert system

Processing breakdown involved in garden path phenomenon is a special phenomenon in which the processor has to backtrack on the early understanding and create another path out to process data successfully and perfectly. From the semantic viewpoint of Natural Language Expert System, this paper puts forward a particular schema by which processing procedure of breakdown can be shown clearly and raises a special matching pattern to demonstrate the activity of noun-verb category. According to the analysis of interactive presentation of same word in which noun and verb definitions are involved, it is verified that Natural Language Expert System, only when its semantic database is activated, can clear the misunderstanding of syntactic sentences in which processing breakdown appears.     

Connections between H 2 optimal filters and unknown input observers – performance limitations of H 2 optimal filtering

For linear time invariant continuous-time systems with either unknown or white noise input, two well-known filtering problems are considered. These are the unknown input observer problem and the Kalman filtering problem. Most of the available literature on Kalman filtering considers the so-called regular filtering problem. We consider here the general singular filtering problem. We show that such a Kalman filtering problem for a given system can be transformed to the unknown input observer problem for an auxiliary system constructed from the data of the given system. Such transformations between these two filtering problems enable us to study various properties of Kalman filtering, including existence and uniqueness of Kalman filters, computation of performance indices of Kalman filtering, and performance limitations of Kalman filtering as related to the structural properties of the given system.     

Software verification and graph similarity for automated evaluation of students’ assignments

ContextThe number of students enrolled in universities at standard and on-line programming courses is rapidly increasing. This calls for automated evaluation of students assignments.ObjectiveWe aim to develop methods and tools for objective and reliable automated grading that can also provide substantial and comprehensible feedback. Our approach targets introductory programming courses, which have a number of specific features and goals. The benefits are twofold: reducing the workload for teachers, and providing helpful feedback to students in the process of learning.MethodFor sophisticated automated evaluation of students’ programs, our grading framework combines results of three approaches (i) testing, (ii) software verification, and (iii) control flow graph similarity measurement. We present our tools for software verification and control flow graph similarity measurement, which are publicly available and open source. The tools are based on an intermediate code representation, so they could be applied to a number of programming languages.ResultsEmpirical evaluation of the proposed grading framework is performed on a corpus of programs written by university students in programming language C within an introductory programming course. Results of the evaluation show that the synergy of proposed approaches improves the quality and precision of automated grading and that automatically generated grades are highly correlated with instructor-assigned grades. Also, the results show that our approach can be trained to adapt to teacher’s grading style.ConclusionsIn this paper we integrate several techniques for evaluation of student’s assignments. The obtained results suggest that the presented tools can find real-world applications in automated grading.     

Evasion of a moving object from detection by a system of observers: Sensor–maneuvering search means

Consideration was given to planning the optimal evasion trajectory of a moving object from the system of observers consisting of a sensor and initial and terminal points of the route. An optimization criterion was proposed. The optimal trajectory and the speed mode of the moving object were determined for sector and ring—the two zones of search for the maneuvering search means.     

Comments on ‘Parallel procedure for the design of observers in high-order multivariable systems’

Shafai (1988) proposed a state observer design algorithm which is very slightly different from an earlier algorithm of Tsui (1985). Furthermore, the change made by Shafai severely worsens the parallel computation property, the only key property of his algorithm claimed by Shafai. It is important to mention that this comment is obviously valid for the dual version of Shafai's algorithm (state feedback design for pole assignment), which has appeared elsewhere several times recently.     

Do reviewers’ words affect predicting their helpfulness ratings? Locating helpful reviewers by linguistics styles

Locating helpful reviewers in opinion-sharing communities is an important issue. Numerous studies that examine this using social relations have some shortcomings. This study investigates language use, differing from person to person, and develops a novel prediction model to alleviate the problems. We identify four stylistic aspects and explore their impacts on predicting reviewers’ helpfulness ratings. The analyses show that the proposed model can more accurately locate helpful reviewers than the baseline model. In addition, reviewers’ words impact more than social relations do, although a combination of these will boost prediction performance to a greater extent than one alone.     

A quantitative assessment of the effects of passive upper extremity exoskeletons on expert cardiovascular sonographers’ muscle activity and posture while performing transthoracic echocardiograms (TTE)

During scanning, sonographers often assume significant awkward postures which may lead to musculoskeletal pain and disability. Two exoskeletons were tested as an ergonomic intervention by sonographers during transthoracic echocardiograms (TTE). Four sonographers each performed TTEs using right- and left-handed scanning techniques, with and without two different passive upper extremity exoskeletons in two two-by-two experimental designs. Posture, muscle activity, and subjective discomfort scores were recorded. Of the two exoskeletons tested, the updated FLEX® design significantly reduced 10th percentile upper trapezius muscle activity during left hand scanning, while the AIRFRAME® did not impact muscle activity across all the muscles of interest. Furthermore, there was a slight decrease in the self-reported discomfort levels in their wrist and hands associated with performing TTE when wearing Exos1 compared to baseline. However, participants experienced issues with comfort, limitations on their range of motion (ROM), and interference with tasks with both exoskeletons. Collectively, the results indicate that the tested exoskeleton designs provide minimal benefit for reducing upper extremity muscle workload during TTE ultrasonography tasks.     

The impact of global dispersion on coordination,team performance and software quality – A systematic literature review

ContextGlobal software development (GSD) contains different context setting dimensions, which are essential for effective teamwork and success of projects. Although considerable research effort has been made in this area, as yet, no agreement has been reached about the impact of these dispersion dimensions on team coordination and project outcomes.ObjectiveThis paper summarizes empirical evidence on the impact of global dispersion dimensions on coordination, team performance and project outcomes.MethodWe performed a systematic literature review of 46 publications from 25 journals and 19 conference and workshop proceedings, which were published between 2001 and 2013. Thematic analysis was used to identify global dimensions and their measures. Vote counting was used to decide on the impact trends of dispersion dimensions on team performance and software quality.ResultsGlobal dispersion dimensions are consistently conceptualized, but quantified in many different ways. Different dispersion dimensions are associated with a distinct set of coordination challenges. Overall, geographical dispersion tends to have a negative impact on team performance and software quality. Temporal dispersion tends to have a negative impact on software quality, but its impact on team performance is inconsistent and can be explained by type of performance.ConclusionFor researchers, we reveal several opportunities for future research, such as coordination challenges in inter-organizational software projects, impact of processes and practices mismatches on project outcomes, evolution of coordination needs and mechanism over time and impact of dispersion dimensions on open source project outcomes. For practitioners, they should consider the tradeoff between cost and benefits while dispersing tasks, alignment impact of dispersion dimensions with individual and organizational objectives, coordination mechanisms as situational approaches and collocation of development activities of high quality demand components in GSD projects.     

An expert system for predicting Manning’s roughness coefficient in open channels by using gene expression programming

Manning’s roughness coefficient (n) has been widely used in the estimation of flood discharges or depths of flow in natural channels. Accurate estimation of Manning’s roughness coefficient is essential for the computation of flow rate, velocity. Conventional formulae that are greatly based on empirical methods lack in providing high accuracy for the prediction of Manning’s roughness coefficient. Consequently, new and accurate techniques are still highly demanded. In this study, gene expression programming (GEP) is used to estimate the Manning’s roughness coefficient. The estimated value of the roughness coefficient is used in Manning’s equation to compute the flow parameters in open-channel flows in order to carry out a comparison between the proposed GEP-based approach and the conventional ones. Results show that computed discharge using estimated value of roughness coefficient by GEP is in good agreement (±10%) with the experimental results compared to the conventional formulae (R ² = 0.97 and RMSE = 0.0034 for the training data and R ² = 0.94 and RMSE = 0.086 for the testing data).     

Similarity of users’ (content-based) preference models for Collaborative filtering in few ratings scenario

Collaborative filtering is an efficient way to find best objects to recommend. This technique is particularly useful when there is a lot of users that rated a lot of objects. In this paper, we propose a method that improve the Collaborative filtering in situations, where the number of ratings or users is small. The proposed approach is experimentally evaluated on real datasets with very convincing results.     

Optimal formation of fuzzy rule-base for predicting process’s performance measures

For various physical processes, especially those demanding high cost or operational time, it becomes crucial to have accurate predictions of their key performance measures based on given settings of different input parameters. Among other artificial intelligence based tools, fuzzy rule-based systems have also been widely used for this purpose. Widespread applicability of the rule-based systems has been restricted by lack of accuracy in the prediction results and inherent difficulties in different approaches that have been utilized for improving their prediction capabilities. The paper presents a two-stage approach for enhancing accuracy of prediction results. The first stage seeks best possible assignment of fuzzy sets of a response variable to the rules of a fuzzy rule-base, while the second stage looks for further improvement by adjusting shapes of the fuzzy sets of the response variable. For accomplishment of both of the stages, simulated annealing algorithm has been utilized and the approach has been practically applied on experimental data related to a turning process. The process has resulted in development of a rule-base that predicts with highly acceptable levels of accuracy.     

Strategy implications of IS planning: Executives’ perceptions on firm performance

This paper aims to explore the effect on business performance of both Information Technology (IT) and business strategy. All data were obtained form 294 IS executives in Greek Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and analyzed using Ordinal Regression Analysis. As the results of this survey indicate, SMEs cannot increase business value without strategic planning. IT executives should be aware of IT issues because this can be an obstacle for the organization and will prevent them achieving their planning goals and increasing the value of the business.