Philosophy of Computer Science: An Introductory Course

There are many branches of philosophy called “the philosophy of X,” where X = disciplines ranging from history to physics. The philosophy of artificial intelligence has a long history, and there are many courses and texts with that title. Surprisingly, the philosophy of computer science is not nearly as well-developed. This article proposes topics that might constitute the philosophy of computer science and describes a course covering those topics, along with suggested readings and assignments

Food Edu-Care in the Primary Curriculum: A collaborative case study in an inner city DEIS Gaelscoil

This applied case study explored the role of food education and its potential to nurture the lives of children who may experience disadvantage socially, culturally and economically. The research concedes at the outset that the role of ‘food’ in education is complex, that schools do not deal with curriculum matters alone but also with social justice policy issues, and that school-based ‘food poverty’ policy interventions to date are broadly motivated by nutritional concerns. The research was informed by a critical pedagogy perspective using a collaborative enquiry design focused on individual and collective agency at the school level. Multiple theoretical and analytical frameworks related to constructivist learning methodologies, educational psychology, and critical social theory framed the study. The research intervention in the inner-city DEIS Gaelscoil was at the invitation of the Parents’ Council and staff who collectively identified an urgent need for healthier eating practices and a shift to cross-curricular pedagogical practices to meet educational targets in literacy and numeracy. An Integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module was collaboratively developed and delivered in Irish through weekly class sessions and field-trips. The integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module consisted of; sixteen food and cooking lessons, a collaborative Hot Lunch Experience (Pedagogic Meal) and the creation of a ‘Foodbook’ as a class project. The curricular areas included in the integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module included, Mathematics, Language, Social, Environmental and Scientific Education (SESE), Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) and Visual Arts. The outputs from the research include an Integrated Food Edu-Care Pedagogical Guide for teachers and Pupils’ Activity Workbook, an ‘e-Foodbook’, educational videos, flashcards and posters in both English and Irish. The findings indicate that using a collaborative, experiential, caring, active and integrated Food Edu-Care curriculum module has the capacity to reach all learners and to build on classroom relationships, thereby facilitating social and emotional learning particularly in the area of self-efficacy and social skills. The research confirmed that such a curriculum module can incorporate seamless compensation for missed life chances and for on-going disadvantage. The thesis recommends a fifth domain of emotional and self-efficacy development needs among primary school children which is better facilitated by systemic policy change to school food provision and integrated curriculum with target-free pedagogies than by narrowly focused, targeted initiatives for free school lunches

Establishing trust in automated reasoning

Since its beginnings in the 1940s, automated reasoning by computers has become a tool of ever growing importance in scientific research. So far, the rules underlying automated reasoning have mainly been formulated by humans, in the form of program source code. Rules derived from large amounts of data, via machine learning techniques, are a complementary approach currently under intense development. The question of why we should trust these systems, and the results obtained with their help, has been discussed by philosophers of science but has so far received little attention by practitioners. The present work focuses on independent reviewing, an important source of trust in science, and identifies the characteristics of automated reasoning systems that affect their reviewability. It also discusses possible steps towards increasing reviewability and trustworthiness via a combination of technical and social measures

An analysis of the teaching of introductory statistics at university in 'context'

In this research study I explore the teaching of introductory inferential statistics to non- statistics undergraduates. My main aim in this work is a characterisation of teaching practice in the context of two introductory statistics university modules, one aimed at Psychology students and another at Engineering students from the perspective of the lecturers.In the pilot study, I investigated lecturers’ beliefs about intended statistics curricula at university. The study used repertory grid interviews with twenty statistical methods lecturers. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis revealed that lecturers conceptualised the intended curricula around three themes: (1) teaching of statistics with “context”, (2) teaching the statistical process components, and (3) student learning.The main study focused on the teaching of statistics on two introductory modules. Ob- servational and interview data was interpreted at the macro and micro levels of analysis using sociocultural theory as a theoretical lens and applying a grounded analytical approach. In- troductory statistics modules are taught in a range of disciplines, including Psychology and Engineering. Previous research shows that some students find statistics very difficult and challenging. The two lecturers, although approached the teaching of statistics very differ- ently, had a deep concern for their students’ learning. The first lecturer, a Psychologist, approached the teaching of statistics in a ‘philosophical’ way meaning that the explanations were non-mathematical and there was a sequence of cases or “contexts” which the lecturer taught in different ways throughout the module. The second lecturer, a Mathematician, taught a ‘typical’ statistics module consisting of the mathematical underpinnings of statistical models through a sequence of statistical theory and calculations.Through this research, I provided representations into the lecturers’ beliefs, intentions and strategies in relation to their teaching. The application of the sociocultural lens with a grounded analytical approach enabled me to conceptualise the lecturers’ teaching actions and present a model of teaching statistics in context.</div

Frameworks, models, and case studies

This thesis focuses on models of conceptual change in science and philosophy. In particular, I developed a new bootstrapping methodology for studying conceptual change, centered around the formalization of several popular models of conceptual change and the collective assessment of their improved formal versions via nine evaluative dimensions. Among the models of conceptual change treated in the thesis are Carnap’s explication, Lakatos’ concept-stretching, Toulmin’s conceptual populations, Waismann’s open texture, Mark Wilson’s patches and facades, Sneed’s structuralism, and Paul Thagard’s conceptual revolutions. In order to analyze and compare the conception of conceptual change provided by these different models, I rely on several historical reconstructions of episodes of scientific conceptual change. The historical episodes of scientific change that figure in this work include the emergence of the morphological concept of fish in biological taxonomies, the development of scientific conceptions of temperature, the Church-Turing thesis and related axiomatizations of effective calculability, the history of the concept of polyhedron in 17th and 18th century mathematics, Hamilton’s invention of the quaternions, the history of the pre-abstract group concepts in 18th and 19th century mathematics, the expansion of Newtonian mechanics to viscous fluids forces phenomena, and the chemical revolution. I will also present five different formal and informal improvements of four specific models of conceptual change. I will first present two different improvements of Carnapian explication, a formal and an informal one. My informal improvement of Carnapian explication will consist of a more fine-grained version of the procedure that adds an intermediate, third step to the two steps of Carnapian explication. I will show how this novel three-step version of explication is more suitable than its traditional two-step relative to handle complex cases of explications. My second, formal improvement of Carnapian explication will be a full explication of the concept of explication itself within the theory of conceptual spaces. By virtue of this formal improvement, the whole procedure of explication together with its application procedures and its pragmatic desiderata will be reconceptualized as a precise procedure involving topological and geometrical constraints inside the theory of conceptual spaces. My third improved model of conceptual change will consist of a formal explication of Darwinian models of conceptual change that will make vast use of Godfrey-Smith’s population-based Darwinism for targeting explicitly mathematical conceptual change. My fourth improvement will be dedicated instead to Wilson’s indeterminate model of conceptual change. I will show how Wilson’s very informal framework can be explicated within a modified version of the structuralist model-theoretic reconstructions of scientific theories. Finally, the fifth improved model of conceptual change will be a belief-revision-like logical framework that reconstructs Thagard’s model of conceptual revolution as specific revision and contraction operations that work on conceptual structures. At the end of this work, a general conception of conceptual change in science and philosophy emerges, thanks to the combined action of the three layers of my methodology. This conception takes conceptual change to be a multi-faceted phenomenon centered around the dynamics of groups of concepts. According to this conception, concepts are best reconstructed as plastic and inter-subjective entities equipped with a non-trivial internal structure and subject to a certain degree of localized holism. Furthermore, conceptual dynamics can be judged from a weakly normative perspective, bound to be dependent on shared values and goals. Conceptual change is then best understood, according to this conception, as a ubiquitous phenomenon underlying all of our intellectual activities, from science to ordinary linguistic practices. As such, conceptual change does not pose any particular problem to value-laden notions of scientific progress, objectivity, and realism. At the same time, this conception prompts all our concept-driven intellectual activities, including philosophical and metaphilosophical reflections, to take into serious consideration the phenomenon of conceptual change. An important consequence of this conception, and of the analysis that generated it, is in fact that an adequate understanding of the dynamics of philosophical concepts is a prerequisite for analytic philosophy to develop a realistic and non-idealized depiction of itself and its activities

The potential of a classroom network to support teacher feedback:a study in statistics education.

In het wiskundeonderwijs ervaren docenten voortdurend een gebrek aan tijd om hun leerlingen goed te instrueren. In Nederland is daarbij de contacttijd voor wiskunde in de afgelopen vijftien jaar nog eens afgenomen. Wiskunde wordt door leerlingen bovendien als moeilijk ervaren. Dit onderzoek richt zich op de vraag: hoe kunnen we de contacttijd in het wiskundeonderwijs beter benutten? Meta-analyses van leeropbrengsten, zoals die beschreven door Hattie (2009), laten zien dat feedback één van de krachtigste enkelvoudige middelen is om die leeropbrengst te verhogen. In dit onderzoek benutten we de mogelijkheid van grafische rekenmachines (GR), verbonden met de computer van de docent via een draadloos netwerk, om de feedback in wiskundeonderwijs te verbeteren. Enerzijds kregen de leerlingen via hun GR onmiddellijke feedback op bepaalde opgaven en anderzijds gaf de docent, meestal in de volgende les, feedback op het werk van de leerlingen, daarbij ondersteund door een analyse van dat werk door het systeem. Het onderzoek richtte zich in eerste instantie op het ontwikkelen van zogenaamde 'gegevens geletterdheid' bij de leerlingen, waarbij de 'algoritmische vaardigheden' niet vergeten werden. Gedurende vier empirische rondes is deze wijze van werken in negen klassen ontworpen, getest, geëvalueerd en bijgesteld. De wiskundedocenten en hun leerlingen waren over het algemeen enthousiast over het resultaat. Zo adviseren zij bijvoorbeeld om de helft van de lessen aan deze werkvorm te besteden. De docenten geven daarbij aan dat ze een hoge werkdruk hebben ervaren om deze manier van doceren onder de knie te krijgen. De studie expliciteert de voorwaarden waaraan moet worden voldaan voordat de werkwijze succesvol kan zijn. In mathematics education teachers experience a constant lack of time to properly instruct their students. In the Netherlands the contact time for mathematics in secondary education during the last fifteen years again declined. Mathematics is also perceived as difficult by students. This research focuses on the question: how can we better utilize contact time in mathematics education? Meta-analyses of learning outcomes, such as those described by Hattie (2009), show that feedback is one of the most powerful single tools for improving learning achievements. In this study we explore the possibility of graphing calculators (GR), connected to the teacher computer through the use of a wireless network, to improve the feedback in mathematics education. First, students received immediate feedback on their worked out mathematics assignments GR and second, the teacher, usually in the next lesson, gave feedback on the work of the students, supported by an analysis of that work through the system. This study focused primarily on the development of 'data literacy' among students, while the 'algorithmic skills' were not forgotten. In four stages, a prototype of the intervention designed, tested, evaluated and adjusted in nine groups of students. The mathematics teachers and their students are generally enthusiastic about the results. They for instance recommend to spend half of each lesson working this way. Though, the teachers explicitly state that they have experienced a tough workload while mastering this way of teaching. The study makes the conditions to be met before the method can be successful explicit.

Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics

This book collects fifteen papers published in s Special Issue of Mathematics titled “Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics”, which was published in 2021. These paper cover a wide range of different tools from Fuzzy Set Theory and applications in many areas of Business Management and other connected fields. Specifically, this book contains applications of such instruments as, among others, Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Neuro-Fuzzy Methods, the Forgotten Effects Algorithm, Expertons Theory, Fuzzy Markov Chains, Fuzzy Arithmetic, Decision Making with OWA Operators and Pythagorean Aggregation Operators, Fuzzy Pattern Recognition, and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets. The papers in this book tackle a wide variety of problems in areas such as strategic management, sustainable decisions by firms and public organisms, tourism management, accounting and auditing, macroeconomic modelling, the evaluation of public organizations and universities, and actuarial modelling. We hope that this book will be useful not only for business managers, public decision-makers, and researchers in the specific fields of business management, finance, and economics but also in the broader areas of soft mathematics in social sciences. Practitioners will find methods and ideas that could be fruitful in current management issues. Scholars will find novel developments that may inspire further applications in the social sciences

Teaching programming for secondary school : a pedagogical content knowledge based approach

The general research aim of this thesis is to understand what the PCK of CS for secondary school is, with a special focus on the subject "programming", being programming one of the core subjects of CS. Knowledge of PCK will then be used to assess the Dutch situation, with special focus on Dutch CS textbooks and Dutch teachers. The final aim is to find tailor made solutions for the Dutch CS scenario, where CS risks to disappear from the secondary school curriculum due to several problems. Among the problems evidenced: most Dutch teachers have no solid disciplinary background, being mostly teachers from other disciplines re-trained to teach CS. To support these teachers ad hoc solution, it is necessary to understand the PCK of CS. To do so a preparatory literature study reveals to what extent the PCK of programming has been explored. Because no real effort to portray such knowledge has been done in CS before, an exploratory study has been designed and conducted with expert CS teachers in order to unveil this knowledge. With the knowledge about PCK gathered through this exploratory study, the PCK of textbooks and teachers in the Dutch scenario is evaluated