Proceedings of Mathsport international 2017 conference

Proceedings of MathSport International 2017 Conference, held in the Botanical Garden of the University of Padua, June 26-28, 2017. MathSport International organizes biennial conferences dedicated to all topics where mathematics and sport meet. Topics include: performance measures, optimization of sports performance, statistics and probability models, mathematical and physical models in sports, competitive strategies, statistics and probability match outcome models, optimal tournament design and scheduling, decision support systems, analysis of rules and adjudication, econometrics in sport, analysis of sporting technologies, financial valuation in sport, e-sports (gaming), betting and sports

A framework for operative and social sustainability functionalities in Human- Centric Cyber-Physical Production Systems

In a near future where manufacturing companies are faced with the rapid technological developments of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Industry 4.0, a need arises to consider how this will affect human operators remaining as a vital and important resource in modern production systems. What will the implications of these orchestrated and ubiquitous technologies in production – a concept we call Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) – be on the health, learning and operative performance of human workers? This paper makes three main contributions to address the question. First, it synthesizes the diverse literature regarding CPS and social sustainability in production systems. Second, it conceptualizes a holistic framework, the CyFL Matrix, and outlines a guideline to analyze how the functionalities of a CPPS relate to operational and social sustainability-related performance impacts at different levels of analysis. Finally, it presents an industrial use case, which the CyFL Matrix and the related guidelines are applied to. In doing so, the study offers first support to researchers and managers of manufacturing companies willing to define suitable operational and social sustainability-related performances for Human-centric Cyber-Physical Production Systems of the future

Theoretical and Practical Advances in Computer-based Educational Measurement

This open access book presents a large number of innovations in the world of operational testing. It brings together different but related areas and provides insight in their possibilities, their advantages and drawbacks. The book not only addresses improvements in the quality of educational measurement, innovations in (inter)national large scale assessments, but also several advances in psychometrics and improvements in computerized adaptive testing, and it also offers examples on the impact of new technology in assessment. Due to its nature, the book will appeal to a broad audience within the educational measurement community. It contributes to both theoretical knowledge and also pays attention to practical implementation of innovations in testing technology

No Press Diplomacy

Ce mémoire présente un article sur un agent pouvant jouer à la version "No-Press" (sans messages) du jeu de société Diplomacy. Diplomacy est un jeu de négociation à 7 joueurs où chacun des joueurs essaie de conquérir la majorité des centres d’approvisionnement d’Europe au début du 20e siècle. L’article présente, en premier lieu, un ensemble de données contenant plus de 150 000 jeux joués par des humains. Cet ensemble de données a été compilé suite à la signature d’un partenariat avec un site externe. Les jeux, qui ont été joués sur cette plateforme, ont tous été convertis dans un nouveau format standardizé et ont ensuite été rejoués pour s’assurer de leur qualité. L’article présente aussi un engin de jeu, avec une interface web, permettant à des humains de jouer contre les modèles qui ont été développés. De plus, l’article présente un modèle d’apprentissage supervisé où l’agent apprend à reproduire le comportement de tous les joueurs dans l’ensemble de données par maximum de vraisemblance. Un agent qui apprend à jouer par renforcement (en jouant contre lui-même) a aussi été entraîné. L’article se conclut en faisant une analyse de ces modèles et en comparant la performance des agents contre des agents utilisant des règles complexes.This thesis presents an article on an agent which can play the "No-Press" version (without messages) of the Diplomacy board game. Diplomacy is a 7-player negotiation game where each player tries to conquer the majority of the supply centers in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. The article first presents a novel dataset of more than 150 000 human games. This dataset was compiled following the signing of a partnership with an external site. The games, which were played on this platform, were all converted into a new standardized format and then replayed to ensure their quality. The article also presents a game engine, with a web interface, allowing humans to play against the models that have been trained. Moreover, the article presents a supervised learning model where an agent learns to reproduce the behavior of all players in the dataset by maximum likelihood. An agent that learns by reinforcement (by playing games against itself) has also been trained. The article concludes by doing an analysis of these models and comparing their performance against complex rule-based agents

Differentiating Literacy Instruction for Digital Learners: The Effect of Multimedia Think-Aloud Worked Examples on Adolescent Analytical Reading Comprehension

Learning by example is nothing new to the education landscape. Research into think-aloud protocols, though often used as a form of assessment rather than instruction, provided practical, content-specific literacy strategies for crafting the instructional intervention in this study. Additionally, research into worked examples—from the earliest pen-and-paper studies of algebra and statistics, to more recent multimedia studies of legal reasoning and writing—shaped the conceptual framework for the present study by detailing a series of design principles for effective multimedia worked examples. This study aimed to reimagine the face-to-face, teacher-facilitated think-aloud as a multimedia worked example, which could be leveraged for differentiated, blended instruction to support adolescent readers. The purpose of this study was to investigate how multimedia worked examples that explicitly model the reading habits of successful readers through teacher think-alouds could facilitate effective differentiated analytical reading instruction for high school English language arts students who have access to 1:1 technology. The study tested the worked examples principle on the ill-defined problem of analytical reading comprehension in the naturalistic setting of a high school English language arts classroom using the practitioner model of the think-aloud as guidance. The study considered the effect of multimedia think-aloud worked examples on analytical reading comprehension and mental effort, as well as on the student experience of studying complex passages from literary texts. In this experiment, an explanatory sequential mixed-methodology study, 34 sophomore English students were randomly assigned to either the worked examples treatment condition or the traditional instruction comparison condition. Using a classic treatment-comparison repeat measures pretest-posttest design, students’ analytical reading comprehension and perceived mental effort was assessed. Later, in the qualitative phase of the study, the participant experience was described through interviews and annotations in order to more deeply understand the quantitative data collected. Quantitative data were analyzed using a series of t tests between treatment and comparison groups for each phase of the study, as well as for gain scores from the baseline assessment to each of the intervention phases and to the posttest. Statistically significant differences were found between the treatment and comparison conditions for the analytical reading comprehension dependent variable at the first phase of the intervention and at the delayed posttest. No statistically significant results were found for the mental effort dependent variable. Qualitative data were coded and analyzed for emerging themes and patterns. These data revealed that students in the treatment group included higher quantity and quality annotations on their passages than did students in the comparison condition. Moreover, interviews revealed that students perceived the think-aloud process as distinct from their own analytical reading process, and they expressed that the think-aloud worked example videos increased their attention to detail, depth of analysis, ease of study, level of focus, and willingness to persist in a challenging task

The neglected contexts and outcomes of evidence-based management:A systematic scoping review in hospital settings

PURPOSE: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted the necessity of practicing Evidence-based Management (EBMgt) as an approach to decision-making in hospital settings. The literature, however, provides limited insight into the process of EBMgt and its contextual nuances. Such insight is critical for better leveraging EBMgt in practice. Therefore, the authors' aim was to integrate the literature on the process of EBMgt in hospital settings, identify the gaps in knowledge and delineate areas for future research. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The authors conducted a systematic scoping review using an innovative methodology that involved two systematic searches. First using EBMgt terminology and second using terminology associated with the EBMgt concept, which the authors derived from the first search. FINDINGS: The authors identified 218 relevant articles, which using content analysis, they mapped onto the grounded model of the EBMgt process; a novel model of the EBMgt process developed by Sahakian and colleagues. The authors found that the English language literature provides limited insight into the role of managers' perceptions and motives in EBMgt, the practice of EBMgt in Global South countries, and the outcomes of EBMgt. Overall, this study’s findings indicated that aspects of the decision-maker, context and outcomes have been neglected in EBMgt. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The authors contributed to the EBMgt literature by identifying these gaps and proposing future research areas and to the systematic review literature by developing a novel scoping review method