5,537 research outputs found

    Guidelines For Pursuing and Revealing Data Abstractions

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    Many data abstraction types, such as networks or set relationships, remain unfamiliar to data workers beyond the visualization research community. We conduct a survey and series of interviews about how people describe their data, either directly or indirectly. We refer to the latter as latent data abstractions. We conduct a Grounded Theory analysis that (1) interprets the extent to which latent data abstractions exist, (2) reveals the far-reaching effects that the interventionist pursuit of such abstractions can have on data workers, (3) describes why and when data workers may resist such explorations, and (4) suggests how to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate risks through transparency about visualization research perspectives and agendas. We then use the themes and codes discovered in the Grounded Theory analysis to develop guidelines for data abstraction in visualization projects. To continue the discussion, we make our dataset open along with a visual interface for further exploration

    Modeling health inequities research in context and the minority researcher’s role

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    Current health inequities research templates are flawed and self-defeating because they do not include historical inequalities as the central context that points to the root causes of health inequities. The context includes structural malformations which are products of the history of colonization and slavery that created racial separation and hierarchies which established Whites as the dominant group and non-Whites (minorities) as the subordinate group. Consequently it is difficult for mainstream researchers to capture the minorities’ core knowledge necessary for the creation of relevant and effective interventions for fundamental and sustainable improvement of their health. This paper proposes a health inequities research model that captures the context of health inequities and the essential and unique role of minority researchers

    Mean Field Equilibrium in Dynamic Games with Complementarities

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    We study a class of stochastic dynamic games that exhibit strategic complementarities between players; formally, in the games we consider, the payoff of a player has increasing differences between her own state and the empirical distribution of the states of other players. Such games can be used to model a diverse set of applications, including network security models, recommender systems, and dynamic search in markets. Stochastic games are generally difficult to analyze, and these difficulties are only exacerbated when the number of players is large (as might be the case in the preceding examples). We consider an approximation methodology called mean field equilibrium to study these games. In such an equilibrium, each player reacts to only the long run average state of other players. We find necessary conditions for the existence of a mean field equilibrium in such games. Furthermore, as a simple consequence of this existence theorem, we obtain several natural monotonicity properties. We show that there exist a "largest" and a "smallest" equilibrium among all those where the equilibrium strategy used by a player is nondecreasing, and we also show that players converge to each of these equilibria via natural myopic learning dynamics; as we argue, these dynamics are more reasonable than the standard best response dynamics. We also provide sensitivity results, where we quantify how the equilibria of such games move in response to changes in parameters of the game (e.g., the introduction of incentives to players).Comment: 56 pages, 5 figure

    A resilience measure to guide system design and management

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    This paper presents a measure of resilience which can guide system design and management. Systems design must incorporate resilience to provide stakeholders with the most appropriate solution for their life-cycle needs. Design of resilient systems demands a measure of the resilience afforded by a system proposal which can be used to compare design proposals. The measurement method should balance the interest in resilience with all other proposal evaluation criteria, and incorporate the effect of the sequence of unknown future events affecting the system. Ideally, the resilience measure should also be useful to guide management decisions re maintenance or upgrade during the system life. This paper presents a method to measure system resilience which can be applied to engineered systems in general, not just a specific class of systems, is threat type agnostic, and does not presuppose any ‘desirable’ outcome allowing a system specific determination of ‘desirable’ outcomes

    NASTRAN interfacing modules within the Integrated Analysis Capability (IAC) Program

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    The IAC program provides the framework required for the development of an extensive multidisciplinary analysis capability. Several NASTRAN related capabilities were developed which can all be expanded in a routine manner to meet in-house unique needs. Plans are to complete the work discussed herein and to provide it to the engineering community through COSMIC. Release is to be after the current IAC Level 2 contract work on the IAC executive system is completed and meshed with the interfacing modules and analysis capabilities under development at the GSFC

    Usability Definitions in a Dynamically Changing Information Environment

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    The authors compared Web usability definitions, collected from library professionals at academic institutions of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) through online surveys in 2007 and 2012, to determine whether library practitioners’ perspectives had altered as information technologies evolved during this time. The authors applied three techniques of statistical data analysis— t-tests, cluster analyses, and the Mantel test—for comparisons. The results indicated significant increased emphases on the Interface/Design and Effectiveness attributes in the 2012 data set. This increase may be due to the rise in the use of mobile devices for information access, driving practitioners to place a stronger emphasis on these attributes
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