Reinspection of curriculum areas, 1997–1998: report from the Inspectorate

FEFC INSPECTION REPORT 109/98 Reinspection of Curriculum Areas, 1997–1998 The Council has agreed that colleges with curriculum areas judged by the inspectorate to have more weaknesses than strengths (grade 4 or 5) may have their funding agreement with the Council qualified to prevent them increasing the number of new students enrolled in those areas until the Council is satisfied that the weaknesses have been addressed satisfactorily. The Council requires that colleges are given the opportunity to have curriculum areas graded 4 or 5 reinspected within a year of their original inspection. Colleges may request the Council to defer reinspection if they do not believe that sufficient improvements in provision have been achieved

Graphics calculators and assessment

Graphics calculators are powerful tools for learning mathematics and we want our students to learn to use them effectively. The use of these hand held personal computers provides opportunities for learning in interactive and dynamic ways. However, it is not until their use is totally integrated into all aspects of the curriculum that students regard them with due importance. This includes their use in all kinds of assessment tasks such as assignments, tests and examinations as well as in activities and explorations aimed at developing students’ understanding. The incorporation of graphics calculators into assessment tasks requires careful construction of these tasks. In this paper, discuss issues of equity relating to calculator models, levels of calculator use and the purpose and design of appropriate tasks. We also describe a typology we have developed to assist in the design and wording of assessment tasks which encourage appropriate use of graphics calculators, but which do not compromise important course objectives

A Data Science Course for Undergraduates: Thinking with Data

Data science is an emerging interdisciplinary field that combines elements of mathematics, statistics, computer science, and knowledge in a particular application domain for the purpose of extracting meaningful information from the increasingly sophisticated array of data available in many settings. These data tend to be non-traditional, in the sense that they are often live, large, complex, and/or messy. A first course in statistics at the undergraduate level typically introduces students with a variety of techniques to analyze small, neat, and clean data sets. However, whether they pursue more formal training in statistics or not, many of these students will end up working with data that is considerably more complex, and will need facility with statistical computing techniques. More importantly, these students require a framework for thinking structurally about data. We describe an undergraduate course in a liberal arts environment that provides students with the tools necessary to apply data science. The course emphasizes modern, practical, and useful skills that cover the full data analysis spectrum, from asking an interesting question to acquiring, managing, manipulating, processing, querying, analyzing, and visualizing data, as well communicating findings in written, graphical, and oral forms.Comment: 21 pages total including supplementary material

Large-Scale Analysis of the Accuracy of the Journal Classification Systems of Web of Science and Scopus

Journal classification systems play an important role in bibliometric analyses. The two most important bibliographic databases, Web of Science and Scopus, each provide a journal classification system. However, no study has systematically investigated the accuracy of these classification systems. To examine and compare the accuracy of journal classification systems, we define two criteria on the basis of direct citation relations between journals and categories. We use Criterion I to select journals that have weak connections with their assigned categories, and we use Criterion II to identify journals that are not assigned to categories with which they have strong connections. If a journal satisfies either of the two criteria, we conclude that its assignment to categories may be questionable. Accordingly, we identify all journals with questionable classifications in Web of Science and Scopus. Furthermore, we perform a more in-depth analysis for the field of Library and Information Science to assess whether our proposed criteria are appropriate and whether they yield meaningful results. It turns out that according to our citation-based criteria Web of Science performs significantly better than Scopus in terms of the accuracy of its journal classification system

A numerical algorithm for L2L_2 semi-discrete optimal transport in 3D

This paper introduces a numerical algorithm to compute the $L_2$ optimal transport map between two measures $\mu$ and $\nu$, where $\mu$ derives from a density $\rho$ defined as a piecewise linear function (supported by a tetrahedral mesh), and where $\nu$ is a sum of Dirac masses. I first give an elementary presentation of some known results on optimal transport and then observe a relation with another problem (optimal sampling). This relation gives simple arguments to study the objective functions that characterize both problems. I then propose a practical algorithm to compute the optimal transport map between a piecewise linear density and a sum of Dirac masses in 3D. In this semi-discrete setting, Aurenhammer et.al [\emph{8th Symposium on Computational Geometry conf. proc.}, ACM (1992)] showed that the optimal transport map is determined by the weights of a power diagram. The optimal weights are computed by minimizing a convex objective function with a quasi-Newton method. To evaluate the value and gradient of this objective function, I propose an efficient and robust algorithm, that computes at each iteration the intersection between a power diagram and the tetrahedral mesh that defines the measure $\mu$. The numerical algorithm is experimented and evaluated on several datasets, with up to hundred thousands tetrahedra and one million Dirac masses.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figure

Notions of optimal transport theory and how to implement them on a computer

This article gives an introduction to optimal transport, a mathematical theory that makes it possible to measure distances between functions (or distances between more general objects), to interpolate between objects or to enforce mass/volume conservation in certain computational physics simulations. Optimal transport is a rich scientific domain, with active research communities, both on its theoretical aspects and on more applicative considerations, such as geometry processing and machine learning. This article aims at explaining the main principles behind the theory of optimal transport, introduce the different involved notions, and more importantly, how they relate, to let the reader grasp an intuition of the elegant theory that structures them. Then we will consider a specific setting, called semi-discrete, where a continuous function is transported to a discrete sum of Dirac masses. Studying this specific setting naturally leads to an efficient computational algorithm, that uses classical notions of computational geometry, such as a generalization of Voronoi diagrams called Laguerre diagrams.Comment: 32 pages, 17 figure

Architectural building safety and health performance model for stratified low-cost housing: education and management tool for building managers

The safety and health performances aspects of a building are the most challenging aspect of facility management. It requires a deep understanding by the building managers on the factors that contribute to health and safety performances. This study attempted to develop an explanatory architectural safety performance model for stratified low-cost housing in Malaysia. The proposed Building Safety and Health Performance (BSHP) model was tested empirically through a survey on 308 construction practitioners using partial least squares (PLS) and structural equation modelling (SEM) tool. Statistical analysis results supports the conclusion that architecture, building services, external environment, management approaches and maintenance management have positive influence on safety and health performance of stratified low-cost housing in Malaysia. The findings provide valuable insights for construction industry to introduce BSHP model in the future where the model could be used as a guideline for training purposes of managers and better planning and implementation of building management