78,174 research outputs found
Relations between Scientific Reasoning and Culture of Problem Solving
The article reports the results of a study, the main aim of which was to find out correlations among the three components of the Culture of problem solving (reading comprehension, creativity and ability to use the existing knowledge) and six dimensions of Scientific reasoning (conservation of matter and volume, proportional reasoning, control of variables, probability reasoning, correlation reasoning and hypothetical-deductive reasoning). Further, we present the correlations among individual components of the Culture of problem-solving and individual dimensions of Scientific reasoning with pupilsâ school performance in mathematics and physics. We conducted our survey among 23 pupils aged between 14â15 years in the ĂstĂ nad Labem Region. The results have shown that one component of the Culture of problem-solving â the ability to use the existing knowledge â strongly correlates with three dimensions of the Scientific reasoning structure: proportional reasoning, control of variables and probability reasoning. However, no correlation was proved between the creativity and the dimensions of Scientific reasoning. We have found out also that the indicators of the Culture of problem-solving and the Scientific reasoning largely do not correlate with school performance either in mathematics or in physics
PVEX: An expert system for producibility/value engineering
PVEX is described as an expert system that solves the problem of selection of the material and process in missile manufacturing. The producibility and the value problem has been deeply studied in the past years, and was written in dBase III and PROLOG before. A new approach is presented in that the solution is achieved by introducing hypothetical reasoning, heuristic criteria integrated with a simple hypertext system and shell programming. PVEX combines KMS with Unix scripts which graphically depicts decision trees. The decision trees convey high level qualitative problem solving knowledge to users, and a stand-alone help facility and technical documentation is available through KMS. The system developed is considerably less development costly than any other comparable expert system
Distributed Abductive Reasoning: Theory, Implementation and Application
Abductive reasoning is a powerful logic inference mechanism that allows assumptions to be
made during answer computation for a query, and thus is suitable for reasoning over incomplete
knowledge. Multi-agent hypothetical reasoning is the application of abduction in a distributed
setting, where each computational agent has its local knowledge representing partial world and
the union of all agents' knowledge is still incomplete. It is different from simple distributed
query processing because the assumptions made by the agents must also be consistent with
global constraints.
Multi-agent hypothetical reasoning has many potential applications, such as collaborative planning
and scheduling, distributed diagnosis and cognitive perception. Many of these applications
require the representation of arithmetic constraints in their problem specifications as well as
constraint satisfaction support during the computation. In addition, some applications may
have confidentiality concerns as restrictions on the information that can be exchanged between
the agents during their collaboration. Although a limited number of distributed abductive systems
have been developed, none of them is generic enough to support the above requirements.
In this thesis we develop, in the spirit of Logic Programming, a generic and extensible distributed
abductive system that has the potential to target a wide range of distributed problem
solving applications. The underlying distributed inference algorithm incorporates constraint
satisfaction and allows non-ground conditional answers to be computed. Its soundness and
completeness have been proved. The algorithm is customisable in that different inference and
coordination strategies (such as goal selection and agent selection strategies) can be adopted
while maintaining correctness. A customisation that supports confidentiality during problem
solving has been developed, and is used in application domains such as distributed security
policy analysis. Finally, for evaluation purposes, a
flexible experimental environment has been
built for automatically generating different classes of distributed abductive constraint logic programs.
This environment has been used to conduct empirical investigation of the performance
of the customised system
Visualizing Probabilistic Proof
The author revisits the Blue Bus Problem, a famous thought-experiment in law involving probabilistic proof, and presents simple Bayesian solutions to different versions of the blue bus problem. In addition, the author expresses his solutions in standard and visual formats, i.e. in terms of probabilities and natural frequencies
Scientific reasoning abilities of non-science majors in physics-based courses
We have found that non-STEM majors taking either a conceptual physics or
astronomy course at two regional comprehensive institutions score significantly
lower pre-instruction on the Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning
(LCTSR) in comparison to national average STEM majors. The majority of non-STEM
students can be classified as either concrete operational or transitional
reasoners in Piaget's theory of cognitive development, whereas in the STEM
population formal operational reasoners are far more prevalent. In particular,
non-STEM students demonstrate significant difficulty with proportional and
hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Pre-scores on the LCTSR are correlated with
normalized learning gains on various concept inventories. The correlation is
strongest for content that can be categorized as mostly theoretical, meaning a
lack of directly observable exemplars, and weakest for content categorized as
mostly descriptive, where directly observable exemplars are abundant. Although
the implementation of research-verified, interactive engagement pedagogy can
lead to gains in content knowledge, significant gains in theoretical content
(such as force and energy) are more difficult with non-STEM students. We also
observe no significant gains on the LCTSR without explicit instruction in
scientific reasoning patterns. These results further demonstrate that
differences in student populations are important when comparing normalized
gains on concept inventories, and the achievement of significant gains in
scientific reasoning requires a re-evaluation of the traditional approach to
physics for non-STEM students.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, 3 table
Flexibly Instructable Agents
This paper presents an approach to learning from situated, interactive
tutorial instruction within an ongoing agent. Tutorial instruction is a
flexible (and thus powerful) paradigm for teaching tasks because it allows an
instructor to communicate whatever types of knowledge an agent might need in
whatever situations might arise. To support this flexibility, however, the
agent must be able to learn multiple kinds of knowledge from a broad range of
instructional interactions. Our approach, called situated explanation, achieves
such learning through a combination of analytic and inductive techniques. It
combines a form of explanation-based learning that is situated for each
instruction with a full suite of contextually guided responses to incomplete
explanations. The approach is implemented in an agent called Instructo-Soar
that learns hierarchies of new tasks and other domain knowledge from
interactive natural language instructions. Instructo-Soar meets three key
requirements of flexible instructability that distinguish it from previous
systems: (1) it can take known or unknown commands at any instruction point;
(2) it can handle instructions that apply to either its current situation or to
a hypothetical situation specified in language (as in, for instance,
conditional instructions); and (3) it can learn, from instructions, each class
of knowledge it uses to perform tasks.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file
The Noetic Account of Scientific Progress and the Factivity of Understanding
There are three main accounts of scientific progress: 1) the epistemic account, according to which an episode in science constitutes progress when there is an increase in knowledge; 2) the semantic account, according to which progress is made when the number of truths increases; 3) the problem-solving account, according to which progress is made when the number of problems that we are able to solve increases. Each of these accounts has received several criticisms in the last decades. Nevertheless, some authors think that the epistemic account is to be preferred if one takes a realist stance. Recently, Dellsén proposed the noetic account, according to which an episode in science constitutes progress when scientists achieve increased understanding of a phenomenon. Dellsén claims that the noetic account is a more adequate realist account of scientific progress than the epistemic account. This paper aims precisely at assessing whether the noetic account is a more adequate realist account of progress than the epistemic account
Assessments as Teaching and Research Tools in an Environmental Problem-Solving Program for In-Service Teachers
This article discusses the use of a scenario-based assessment tool in two environmental geoscience in-service programs for middle school and high school teachers. This tool served both to guide instructional techniques and as a method to evaluate the success of the instructional approach. In each case, participants were assessed before the workshops to reveal misconceptions that could be addressed in program activities and afterwards to reveal shifts in their understanding of concepts and approaches. The researchers noted that this scenario-based assessment was effective in providing guidance in refining instructional techniques and as a method to evaluate the effectiveness of an instructional program. In addition, participating teachers reported significant changes in their teaching as a result of the program. Educational levels: Graduate or professional, Graduate or professional
Supporting Studentâs Thinking In Addition Of Fraction From Informal To More Formal Using Measuring Context
One of reasons why fractions are a topic which many students find difficult to learn is that there exist many rules calculating with fractions. In addition, students have been trained for the skills and should have mastered such procedures even they do not âunderstandâ. Some previous researcher confirmed that the problem which students encounter in learning fraction operations is not firmly connected to concrete experiences. For this reason, a set of measuring context was designed to provide concrete experiences in supporting studentsâ reasoning in addition of fractions, because the concept of fractional number was derived from measuring. In the present study we used design research as a reference research to investigate studentsâ mathematical progress in addition of fractions. In particular, using retrospective analysis to analyze data of fourth gradersâ performance on addition of fractions, we implemented some instructional activities by using measuring activities and contexts to provide opportunities students use studentsâ own strategies and models. The emergent modeling (i.e. a bar model) played an important role in the shift of students reasoning from concrete experiences (informal) in the situational level towards more formal mathematical concept of addition of fractions. We discuss these findings taking into consideration the context in which the study was conducted and we provide implications for the teaching of fractions and suggestions for further research.
Key word: measuring context, addition of fractions, design research, emergent modelin
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