The Enhancement of Mathematical Problem Solving Ability of Senior High School Students Through Quantum Learning

This study is aimed to examine the quality of quantum learning imfluence toward the enhancement of mathematical problem solving ability of Senior High School students, both viewed entirely and based on mathematical initial ability (MIA) category. In particular, this study is aimed to examine enhancement difference of students' mathematical problem solving ability in a whole and in each level of mathematical initial ability (high, medium and low) between students who receive quantum learning and students who receive conventional learning. This study use experimental quasi with pretests-posttest control group design. Population of this study are Senior High School students in Bogor City. Data is obtained through problem solving ability test and mathematical initial ability data. The result of study showed that students who receive quantum learning have enhancement of mathematical problem solving ability which is higher than students who receive conventional learning. There is no difference enhancement of mathematical problem solving ability both entirely and in each level of mathematical initial ability, except for students with high level of initial mathematical abilit

Optimizing Memory-Bounded Controllers for Decentralized POMDPs

We present a memory-bounded optimization approach for solving infinite-horizon decentralized POMDPs. Policies for each agent are represented by stochastic finite state controllers. We formulate the problem of optimizing these policies as a nonlinear program, leveraging powerful existing nonlinear optimization techniques for solving the problem. While existing solvers only guarantee locally optimal solutions, we show that our formulation produces higher quality controllers than the state-of-the-art approach. We also incorporate a shared source of randomness in the form of a correlation device to further increase solution quality with only a limited increase in space and time. Our experimental results show that nonlinear optimization can be used to provide high quality, concise solutions to decentralized decision problems under uncertainty.Comment: Appears in Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2007

Happy software developers solve problems better: psychological measurements in empirical software engineering

For more than 30 years, it has been claimed that a way to improve software developers' productivity and software quality is to focus on people and to provide incentives to make developers satisfied and happy. This claim has rarely been verified in software engineering research, which faces an additional challenge in comparison to more traditional engineering fields: software development is an intellectual activity and is dominated by often-neglected human aspects. Among the skills required for software development, developers must possess high analytical problem-solving skills and creativity for the software construction process. According to psychology research, affects-emotions and moods-deeply influence the cognitive processing abilities and performance of workers, including creativity and analytical problem solving. Nonetheless, little research has investigated the correlation between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving performance of programmers. This article echoes the call to employ psychological measurements in software engineering research. We report a study with 42 participants to investigate the relationship between the affective states, creativity, and analytical problem-solving skills of software developers. The results offer support for the claim that happy developers are indeed better problem solvers in terms of their analytical abilities. The following contributions are made by this study: (1) providing a better understanding of the impact of affective states on the creativity and analytical problem-solving capacities of developers, (2) introducing and validating psychological measurements, theories, and concepts of affective states, creativity, and analytical-problem-solving skills in empirical software engineering, and (3) raising the need for studying the human factors of software engineering by employing a multidisciplinary viewpoint.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, published at Peer

Daily functioning, problem solving and satisfaction for quality of life in visually impaired old persons

Aim: The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of several dimensions of functioning on satisfaction for quality of life (QoL) experienced by visually impaired older adults. Participants: A sample of 58 older adults (37 women and 21 men) was involved in the study. Their age ranged from 50 to 88 years (M=68.95, SD=1.51). They were characterized by visual impairment of different origin and visual acuity (VA) ranging from 4/10 to total blindness. The QoL questionnaire was used along with short form-12 health Survey, the National Eye Institute visual function questionnaire-25 and problem solving inventory (PSI) which analyzes problem solving appraisal. Results: A stepwise regression analysis was conducted in order to find predictors of satisfaction for QoL. A contribution of mental and physical health, more specifically, of problem solving appraisal was found. Conclusion: Results support the notion that the functional relationship between visual impairment and satisfaction for QoL must be understood in terms of approaches that incorporate psychological and socio-cognitive elements. Problem solving appraisal, in fact, makes a substantial contribution to the prediction of variance in life satisfaction and it may play an important role for intervention strategies

Solving DCOPs with Distributed Large Neighborhood Search

The field of Distributed Constraint Optimization has gained momentum in recent years, thanks to its ability to address various applications related to multi-agent cooperation. Nevertheless, solving Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOPs) optimally is NP-hard. Therefore, in large-scale, complex applications, incomplete DCOP algorithms are necessary. Current incomplete DCOP algorithms suffer of one or more of the following limitations: they (a) find local minima without providing quality guarantees; (b) provide loose quality assessment; or (c) are unable to benefit from the structure of the problem, such as domain-dependent knowledge and hard constraints. Therefore, capitalizing on strategies from the centralized constraint solving community, we propose a Distributed Large Neighborhood Search (D-LNS) framework to solve DCOPs. The proposed framework (with its novel repair phase) provides guarantees on solution quality, refining upper and lower bounds during the iterative process, and can exploit domain-dependent structures. Our experimental results show that D-LNS outperforms other incomplete DCOP algorithms on both structured and unstructured problem instances

The conflict resolution styles and relationship satisfaction of couples living in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University

Communication forms an integral part of couple interactions and managing conflictual communications competently greatly contributes to the quality of a relationship. This study was a partial replication of Vito's Canadian study (1998) and was designed to investigate self-reported levels of relationship satisfaction and life satisfaction, conflict resolution styles and perceived effectiveness of problem solving in individuals in cohabiting or marital relationships. These variables were examined with self-report data from 75 participants (61 women and 14 men) who participated in a mail survey. The measures used to examine these variables of interest included the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale, Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory, Life-as-a-whole Index and a subscale of the Couple Problem-Solving Scale which measured the perceived effectiveness of personal and partner problem solving. Correlational calculations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated that conflict resolution styles accounted for a significant amount of variance in relationship satisfaction. In particular it was found that the conflict resolution style of positive problem solving was positively related to relationship satisfaction. Individuals who, however, reported higher levels of the so-called "negative" conflict resolution styles of conflict engagement, withdrawal and compliance obtained concurrent lower scores on relationship satisfaction. Further data analyses indicated that self-reported levels of relationship satisfaction were positively related to life-as-a-whole satisfaction. Self-reported levels of perceived effectiveness of personal and partner problem solving ability were also found to be positively related to relationship satisfaction. These preceding relationships were maintained once additional factors such as duration of relationship and other demographic variables were controlled for