Integration of Forecasting, Scheduling, Machine Learning, and Efficiency Improvement Methods into the Sport Management Industry

Sport management is a complicated and economically impactful industry and involves many crucial decisions: such as which players to retain or release, how many concession vendors to add, how many fans to expect, what teams to schedule, and many others are made each offseason and changed frequently. The task of making such decisions effectively is difficult, but the process can be made easier using methods of industrial and systems engineering (ISE). Integrating methods such as forecasting, scheduling, machine learning, and efficiency improvement from ISE can be revolutionary in helping sports organizations and franchises be consistently successful. Research shows areas including player evaluation, analytics, fan attendance, stadium design, accurate scheduling, play prediction, player development, prevention of cheating, and others can be improved when ISE methods are used to target inefficient or wasteful areas

LEARNING-BY-DOING AND PROJECT CHOICE: A DYNAMIC STRUCTURAL MODEL OF CROWDSOURCING

This paper studies determinants of project choice in online crowdsourcing contests using a unique dataset from the world’s largest competitive software development portal. Particular attention is given to the strategic roles of learning and forward-looking behavior in influencing contestants’ decisions. We use a structural dynamic discrete programming (DDP) model to conduct our analysis and adopt a Bayesian approach to estimation. Our preliminary results provide evidence of learning-by-doing influencing propensities of users to choose projects of different types. The value of the parameter of intertemporal substitution that we identify suggests that while users are forward-looking, the aggregate behavior is far from fully rational. We attribute that result to mix of forward-looking and myopic users in the population

Conjunto clash : competition and sustainability in 21st-century cultural heritage management

Scholar Dan Margolies has noted the growing presence of music initiatives in the Texas-Mexican conjunto community that conform to the framework of “cultural sustainability,” as defined by ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon (Margolies 2011: 30). Titon’s model “decenters the top-down discourse by cultural heritage experts, and instead … repositions cultural workers collaboratively” (Titon 2009: 703). One program identified by Margolies as culturally sustainable is the Big Squeeze statewide youth accordion contest (Margolies 2015). The Big Squeeze attempts to promote the many accordion traditions of Texas by showcasing talented young performers. In practice, the event conforms to a co-operative mode of cultural heritage management in that it stages auditions throughout the state, often in underserved or rural areas, and collaborates extensively with local musicians, teachers, cultural workers, and business owners. The Big Squeeze has also created professional opportunities for its winners. On the other hand, many issues emerge as a result of the event’s sustainable structure. In the case of conjunto, the element of competition is at constant odds with the music’s resonance as a symbol of working-class solidarity among Mexican-Americans. More broadly, competition can have the effect of discouraging young participants from playing. Other problems arise when attempting to address the needs of multiple music communities through one framework. Ultimately, the lessons from the Big Squeeze build upon Titon’s scholarship by identifying and attempting to create solutions for unforeseen issues presented by culturally sustainable heritage efforts.Musi

Exploring Automated Code Evaluation Systems and Resources for Code Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey

The automated code evaluation system (AES) is mainly designed to reliably assess user-submitted code. Due to their extensive range of applications and the accumulation of valuable resources, AESs are becoming increasingly popular. Research on the application of AES and their real-world resource exploration for diverse coding tasks is still lacking. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive survey on AESs and their resources. This survey explores the application areas of AESs, available resources, and resource utilization for coding tasks. AESs are categorized into programming contests, programming learning and education, recruitment, online compilers, and additional modules, depending on their application. We explore the available datasets and other resources of these systems for research, analysis, and coding tasks. Moreover, we provide an overview of machine learning-driven coding tasks, such as bug detection, code review, comprehension, refactoring, search, representation, and repair. These tasks are performed using real-life datasets. In addition, we briefly discuss the Aizu Online Judge platform as a real example of an AES from the perspectives of system design (hardware and software), operation (competition and education), and research. This is due to the scalability of the AOJ platform (programming education, competitions, and practice), open internal features (hardware and software), attention from the research community, open source data (e.g., solution codes and submission documents), and transparency. We also analyze the overall performance of this system and the perceived challenges over the years

Jutge.org: characteristics and experiences

Jutge.org is an open educational online programming judge designed for students and instructors, featuring a repository of problems that is well organized by courses, topics and difficulty. Internally, Jutge.org uses a secure and efficient architecture and integrates modern verification techniques, formal methods, static code analysis and data mining. Jutge.org has exhaustively been used during the last decade at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya to strengthen the learn-by-doing approach in several courses. This paper presents the main characteristics of Jutge.org and shows its use and impact in a wide range of courses covering basic programming, data structures, algorithms, artificial intelligence, functional programming and circuit design.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Case Study: Motivational Attributes of 4-H participants engaged in Robotics

Robotics has gained a great deal of popularity across the United States as a means to engage youth in science, technology, engineering, and math. Understanding what motivates youth and adults to participate in a robotics project is critical to understanding how to engage others. By developing a robotics program built on a proper understanding of the motivational influences, the program can be built on a foundation that addresses these influences. By engaging more youth in the robotics program, they will be able to envision a future for themselves as a high-school or college graduate, in addition to a viable employee with marketable skills in tough economy. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the underlying motivational attributes or factors that influenced 4-H youth, parents, volunteers, and agents to participate in the Mississippi 4-H robotics project. Specifically, this research focuses on two unique counties in Mississippi with very diverse populations. Interviews with participants, observation, and document analysis which took place occurred over the course of a robotics year – October to July. This study sought to identify motivational attributes of participants in the robotics project. Once identified these attributes could be used when developing new program curricula or expanding into new counties in Mississippi. Data analysis revealed that there are many unique motivational factors that influence participants. Among these factors, (1) the desire to build and construct a robot, (2) competition and recognition, (3) desire for future success and security, (4) safe place to participate and build relationships, (5) teamwork, (6) positive role models, and (7) encouragement

Java Challenge Software Project

Programming contests are a means of exploiting the problem solving capabilities of developers and they provide a forum for display of extraordinary programming skills. The Java Challenge (JC) Software Project is the saga of creating an automated, secure and responsive programming contest system for deployment on the Internet and to collect information about programming practices, habits, and trends in coding in such restricted environment. The methodology followed to design, implement, and evaluate such a system uses new technologies such as the WWW, mail filtering and sandboxing techniques. The current Java Challenge implementation runs the Java Challenge on a Solaris 2.6 platform under specified regulations. The scripts are developed in Perl. The security features of jdkl.2 have been researched and successfully implemented. The mode of entry acceptance is electronic mail in a specified format. Standard Unix features have been used for data archiving and information redirection. The JC software is an application package that conducts programming contests in an automated manner, provides a secure environment for evaluation and does web listing updates automatically

‘Engage the World’: examining conflicts of engagement in public museums

Public engagement has become a central theme in the mission statements of many cultural institutions, and in scholarly research into museums and heritage. Engagement has emerged as the go-to-it-word for generating, improving or repairing relations between museums and society at large. But engagement is frequently an unexamined term that might embed assumptions and ignore power relationships. This article describes and examines the implications of conflicting and misleading uses of ‘engagement’ in relation to institutional dealings with contested questions about culture and heritage. It considers the development of an exhibition on the Dead Sea Scrolls by the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto in 2009 within the new institutional goal to ‘Engage the World’. The chapter analyses the motivations, processes and decisions deployed by management and staff to ‘Engage the World’, and the degree to which the museum was able to re-think its strategies of public engagement, especially in relation to subjects,issues and publics that were more controversial in nature