Is the mathematics education a problem for the school or is the school a problem for the mathematics education?

The purpose of this article is to bring school mathematics education to the Wittgensteinian “therapeutic divan.” School mathematics education is depicted as a “disease” that cannot receive a “democratic cure” in light of liberal-meritocratic projects that conceive of school as a preparatory cultural detour to a supposedly qualified insertion into social and professional lives. The recommended therapy is based upon a dialogue between Wittgenstein’s unsystematic, aphoristic-therapeutic, postepistemological views on language, meaning, mathematics, and learning, and Jean Lave’s research on cognition and situated learning

Software for malicious macro detection

The objective of this work is to give a detailed study of the development process of a software tool for the detection of the Emotet virus in Microsoft Office files, Emotet is a virus that has been wreaking havoc mainly in the business environment, from its beginnings as a banking Trojan to nowadays. In fact, this polymorphic family has managed to generate evident, incalculable and global inconveniences in the business activity without discriminating by corporate typology, affecting any company regardless of its size or sector, even entering into government agencies, as well as the citizens themselves as a whole. The existence of two main obstacles for the detection of this virus, constitute an intrinsic reality to it, on the one hand, the obfuscation in its macros and on the other, its polymorphism, are essential pieces of the analysis, focusing our tool in facing precisely two obstacles, descending to the analysis of the macros features and the creation of a neuron network that uses machine learning to recognize the detection patterns and deliberate its malicious nature. With Emotet's in-depth nature analysis, our goal is to draw out a set of features from the malicious macros and build a machine learning model for their detection. After the feasibility study of this project, its design and implementation, the results that emerge endorse the intention to detect Emotet starting only from the static analysis and with the application of machine learning techniques. The detection ratios shown by the tests performed on the final model, present a accuracy of 84% and only 3% of false positives during this detection process.Grado en Ingeniería Informátic

Debugging Type Errors with a Blackbox Compiler

Type error debugging can be a laborious yet necessary process for programmers of statically typed functional programming languages. Often a compiler compounds this by inaccurately reporting the location of a type error, a problem that has been a subject of research for over thirty years. However, despite its long history, the solutions proposed are often reliant on direct modifications to the compiler, often distributed in the form of patches. These patches append another level of arduous activity to the task of debugging, keeping them modernised to the ever-changing programming language they support. This thesis investigates an additional option; the blackbox compiler. Split into three central parts, it shows the individual solutions involved in using a blackbox compiler to debug type errors in functional programming languages. First is a demonstration of how the combination of a blackbox compiler and a generic debugging algorithm can successfully locate type errors. Next tackled is a side-effect of this new combination, the introduction of extra errors, combated with a new speed boosted algorithm, evaluated with a proposed framework based on Data Science techniques to quantify the quality of a type error debugger. Lastly, the algorithms employed throughout this thesis, along with the blackbox compiler, have agnostic properties, they do not need language-specific knowledge. Thus, the final part presents utilising the agnostic abilities for an agnostic debugger to locate type errors

Pot throwing: an investigation into the real-time cognitive and physical processes involved in a craft performance

The ancient pot throwing craft skill involves three elements, maker, material, and technology. It is in the meeting of these three elements that features a complex, dynamic, and constantly changing point of real-time cognitive and physical contact.The research should be of interest to, novice potters learning the skills involved in a pot throwing performance, practitioners wishing to refine their skills through ergonomic study to optimise their pot throwing performance, and educators wishing to enhance their knowledge to add to their teaching skills.The aim of this investigation is to provide pot throwing practitioners and educators with a better understanding of aspects involved in a pot throwing process/ performance, to enable a more inclusive approach in training; and to signpost ways of enabling a safer more efficient, ergonomic and time saving acquisition of complex craft skills.Little academic literature has been written about the pot throwing process, in the context of real-time making and even less on the consideration of pot throwing as a performance. Data was collected, from a purposively- sampled participant population, through the use of verbal protocol, biophysical measures, digital visual observation, and a self-reporting review. Tools from both qualitative and quantitative research methods were combined to form a mixed and integrated research study. The analysis of data from the study shows explicit knowledge that a throwing performance has elements. It is in exeptional and unique tacit responses from individuals that new knowledge can be termed. •In pre-performance activities. •Micro reflective moments. during the throwing performance, and, •Physical stature and muscle bulk affecting the style of throwing and sequence of defined actions e.g. frequency of adding water and wheel rotational speed, grip pattern and posture. The study considered the concept of expertise and the elements that make an expert. The findings of this study leads onto future research into specific pre-performance preparation based on sports metrics and biomechanical analysis associated with fingertip pressure and haptic feedback.</div

Environments of Intelligence

What is the role of the environment, and of the information it provides, in cognition? More specifically, may there be a role for certain artefacts to play in this context? These are questions that motivate "4E" theories of cognition (as being embodied, embedded, extended, enactive). In his take on that family of views, Hajo Greif first defends and refines a concept of information as primarily natural, environmentally embedded in character, which had been eclipsed by information-processing views of cognition. He continues with an inquiry into the cognitive bearing of some artefacts that are sometimes referred to as 'intelligent environments'. Without necessarily having much to do with Artificial Intelligence, such artefacts may ultimately modify our informational environments. With respect to human cognition, the most notable effect of digital computers is not that they might be able, or become able, to think but that they alter the way we perceive, think and act. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315401867, has been made available under a Creative Commons CC-BY licenc

Exploration of the relationship between tacit knowledge and software system test complexity

This research has explored the relationship between system test complexity and tacit knowledge. It is proposed as part of this thesis, that the process of system testing (comprising of test planning, test development, test execution, test fault analysis, test measurement, and case management), is directly affected by both complexity associated with the system under test, and also by other sources of complexity, independent of the system under test, but related to the wider process of system testing. While a certain amount of knowledge related to the system under test is inherent, tacit in nature, and therefore difficult to make explicit, it has been found that a significant amount of knowledge relating to these other sources of complexity, can indeed be made explicit. While the importance of explicit knowledge has been reinforced by this research, there has been a lack of evidence to suggest that the availability of tacit knowledge to a test team is of any less importance to the process of system testing, when operating in a traditional software development environment. The sentiment was commonly expressed by participants, that even though a considerable amount of explicit knowledge relating to the system is freely available, that a good deal of knowledge relating to the system under test, which is demanded for effective system testing, is actually tacit in nature (approximately 60% of participants operating in a traditional development environment, and 60% of participants operating in an agile development environment, expressed similar sentiments). To cater for the availability of tacit knowledge relating to the system under test, and indeed, both explicit and tacit knowledge required by system testing in general, an appropriate knowledge management structure needs to be in place. This would appear to be required, irrespective of the employed development methodology

Computing genomic science: bioinformatics and standardisation in proteomics

Science is divided and compartmentalised into distinct areas of research. As science develops new research areas emerge and nurture new technologies, new methodological approaches, new disciplines and new research communities. These demarcations are socially constructed spaces that impose a sense of order on science by authenticating the new forms of knowledge that surface. Simply stated, the specific research areas and the social relations contained within them, enable science to progress in a proficient, communal, and sometimes cumulative manner. In this sense the constructed boundaries can be viewed as a set of ordering devices. The mapping of the Human Genome was a significant technical event that reordered biological activity by creating a number of these new socially constructed spaces. This celebrated scientific achievement helped yield a number of emerging 'omic' disciplines, numerous innovative high-throughput technologies, and a myriad of embryonic scientific communities, each with its own distinct identity. In this thesis the Human Genome Project is viewed as the genomic stage of the omic revolution or stage one. The period directly after the sequencing has been coined the post-genomic era and this is described in the thesis as stage two of the social reorganisation of biology. Underpinning the whole thesis is the understanding that omic science is driven by a systems biology (SB) approach to twenty-first century biology. The realisation of this will constitute stage three. Computational biologists are also using a similar model of scientific practice in order to map, trace and direct future scientific practice. However in using this developmental model, the organisation of scientific practice may turn messy when boundaries need to be permeated, re-aligned and re-ordered in the movement from post-genomic science to systems biology science. Consequently the specific aim of this research is to trace how two of these maturing research areas, 'proteomics' and 'bioinformatics', are emerging and stabilising within stage two of the omic model, and to explore some of the social issues that are being reordered within their infrastructure. Drawing upon thirty-one interviews the research provides valuable insight into the social construction of post-genomic knowledge and adds to the growing literature in the field of science and technology studies (STS) by revealing how socially constructed knowledges are translated and transferred within and between newly created scientific communities. This is achieved through an examination of scientific identity, interdisciplinary expertise and community-based standardisation