Detecting domestic violence.

Over 90% of the case data from police inquiries is stored as unstructured text in police databases. We use the combination of Formal Concept Analysis and Emergent Self Organizing Maps for exploring a dataset of unstructured police reports out of the Amsterdam-Amstelland police region in the Netherlands. In this paper, we specifically aim at making the reader familiar with how we used these two tools for browsing the dataset and how we discovered useful patterns for labelling cases as domestic or as non-domestic violence.Formal concept analysis (FCA); Emergent SOM; Domestic violence; Knowledge discovery in databases; Text mining; Exploratory data analysis;

Concept discovery innovations in law enforcement: a perspective.

In the past decades, the amount of information available to law enforcement agencies has increased significantly. Most of this information is in textual form, however analyses have mainly focused on the structured data. In this paper, we give an overview of the concept discovery projects at the Amsterdam-Amstelland police where Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is being used as text mining instrument. FCA is combined with statistical techniques such as Hidden Markov Models (HMM) and Emergent Self Organizing Maps (ESOM). The combination of this concept discovery and refinement technique with statistical techniques for analyzing high-dimensional data not only resulted in new insights but often in actual improvements of the investigation procedures.Formal concept analysis; Intelligence led policing; Knowledge discovery;

Strong 1-Boundedness of Unimodular Free Orthogonal Quantum Groups

Recently, Brannan and Vergnioux showed that the free orthogonal quantum group factors $\mathcal{L}\mathbb{F}O_M$ have Jung's strong 1-boundedness property, and hence are not isomorphic to free group factors. We prove an analogous result for the other unimodular case, where the parameter matrix is the standard symplectic matrix in 2N dimensions $J_{2N}$. We compute free derivatives of the defining relations by introducing self-adjoint generators through a decomposition of the fundamental representation in terms of Pauli matrices, resulting in 1-boundedness of these generators. Moreover, we prove that under certain conditions, one can add elements to a 1-bounded set without losing 1-boundedness. In particular this allows us to include the character of the fundamental representation, proving strong 1-boundedness.Comment: 15 pages, comments welcom

Formally analysing the concepts of domestic violence.

The types of police inquiries performed these days are incredibly diverse. Often data processing architectures are not suited to cope with this diversity since most of the case data is still stored as unstructured text. In this paper Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is showcased for its exploratory data analysis capabilities in discovering domestic violence intelligence from a dataset of unstructured police reports filed with the regional police Amsterdam-Amstelland in the Netherlands. From this data analysis it is shown that FCA can be a powerful instrument to operationally improve policing practice. For one, it is shown that the definition of domestic violence employed by the police is not always as clear as it should be, making it hard to use it effectively for classification purposes. In addition, this paper presents newly discovered knowledge for automatically classifying certain cases as either domestic or non-domestic violence is. Moreover, it provides practical advice for detecting incorrect classifications performed by police officers. A final aspect to be discussed is the problems encountered because of the sometimes unstructured way of working of police officers. The added value of this paper resides in both using FCA for exploratory data analysis, as well as with the application of FCA for the detection of domestic violence.Formal concept analysis (FCA); Domestic violence; Knowledge discovery in databases; Text mining; Exploratory data analysis; Knowledge enrichment; Concept discovery;

Curbing domestic violence: instantiating C-K theory with formal concept analysis and emergent self organizing maps.

In this paper we propose a human-centered process for knowledge discovery from unstructured text that makes use of Formal Concept Analysis and Emergent Self Organizing Maps. The knowledge discovery process is conceptualized and interpreted as successive iterations through the Concept-Knowledge (C-K) theory design square. To illustrate its effectiveness, we report on a real-life case study of using the process at the Amsterdam-Amstelland police in the Netherlands aimed at distilling concepts to identify domestic violence from the unstructured text in actual police reports. The case study allows us to show how the process was not only able to uncover the nature of a phenomenon such as domestic violence, but also enabled analysts to identify many types of anomalies in the practice of policing. We will illustrate how the insights obtained from this exercise resulted in major improvements in the management of domestic violence cases.Formal concept analysis; Emergent self organizing map; C-K theory; Text mining; Actionable knowledge discovery; Domestic violence;

Counting Cailloux, Multiplying Mambos: An Analysis of Mathematics Education in Cameroonian Primary Schools

This paper summarizes the results of a four-week study of mathematics education in Cameroonian primary schools. In order to fully understand the topic, the research included not only mathematics curriculum, but also methods of instruction, the system for teacher preparation, and an evaluation of community perceptions. Data collection integrated participant observations in two francophone primary schools in Dschang, interviews with primary school teachers, interviews with ministry of education officials, and survey data from teachers and community members in Yaoundé, Ngaoundéré and Dschang. Overall, three conclusions were drawn from the data collected. First, that mathematics is perceived as important by the community and the same sentiment exists within the school environment. Second, that primary level mathematics content and pedagogy is almost identical between public and private schools; the more important factor in the quality of instruction is the individual teacher. Finally, although the idea of in-service training is praised, actual opportunities for teacher education specifically in math are limited. Ce papier est un sommaire des résultats de quatre semaines de recherche sur l’enseignement des mathématiques dans les écoles primaires au Cameroun. Pour avoir une compréhension complète, la recherche comprend : le curriculum, les méthodes d’enseignement, le système de formation des enseignants, et une évaluation de la manière dont la communauté perçoit l’importance des mathématiques. La collection des données a intégré des observations participant dans deux écoles primaires à Dschang, des interviews avec les enseignants et avec les cadres du Ministère de l’Education de Base, et data des questionnaires remplis par les enseignants et les membres communautés à Yaoundé, à Ngaoundéré, et à Dschang. En tout, trois conclusions ressortent de ces données. Premièrement, les mathématiques sont perçues comme important par la communauté et le même sentiment existe dans l’environnement scolaire. Deuxièmement, le contenu et la pédagogie des mathématiques au primaire est très similaire entre les écoles qu’elles soient publique ou privée ; c’est l’enseignant qui a la plus grand influence sur la qualité d’instruction. Finalement, bien que l’idée de formation des enseignants soit importante, les opportunités réelles spécifiques des maths sont limitées