A Preliminary Report of a New Departure in Mental Measurements and Some of its Practical Applications

The field of mental measurements has been dominated by a theory sterile in its contributions to systematized psychology. Moreover, most traditional types of objective examinations do not adequately test anything more than amount of discrete information compiled. This technique goes beyond mere information, getting into the subtler intricacies of human thought and the functional aspects of intelligence. A definite theoretical psychological basis underlies this approach, and it is believed that important contributions to general theory can result from this type of experimentation. Future use in the individualization of instruction at the rate and level of the student\u27s ability is described

A New Departure in Mental Measurements

At the 1933 meeting of this group we presented a brief discussion of a proposed new departure in the field of mental measurements. At that time we pointed out the rather widespread dissatisfaction with current types of mental and educational tests. The first criticism was based upon the lack of agreement of test theory with the best psychological knowledge. Another criticism dealt with the fact that tests (especially educational tests) tended to emphasize the measurement of mere possession of knowledge rather than the functional significance of such knowledge. Finally, it was noted that the primary concern of the psychologist in test building was to study the behavior of minds, and that to expect to study such behavior through an instrument not constructed in the light of our best knowledge of how the mind works was, in itself, an invalid procedure

A Study of Individualized Instruction at the College Level

With a philosophy that makes paramount the greatest possible growth for each individual student as the background, the Department of French at the University of Iowa has conceived and put into operation a plan of individualized instruction. This plan, in effect since September, 1933, marks the latest development of a comprehensive experimental program which has had continuous growth during the past ten years

The Stable Roommates problem with short lists

We consider two variants of the classical Stable Roommates problem with Incomplete (but strictly ordered) preference lists SRI that are degree constrained, i.e., preference lists are of bounded length. The first variant, EGAL d-SRI, involves finding an egalitarian stable matching in solvable instances of SRI with preference lists of length at most d. We show that this problem is NP-hard even if d=3. On the positive side we give a (2d+3)/7-approximation algorithm for d={3,4,5} which improves on the known bound of 2 for the unbounded preference list case. In the second variant of SRI, called d-SRTI, preference lists can include ties and are of length at most d. We show that the problem of deciding whether an instance of d-SRTI admits a stable matching is NP-complete even if d=3. We also consider the "most stable" version of this problem and prove a strong inapproximability bound for the d=3 case. However for d=2 we show that the latter problem can be solved in polynomial time.Comment: short version appeared at SAGT 201

Multiple Invaded Consolidating Materials

We study a multiple invasion model to simulate corrosion or intrusion processes. Estimated values for the fractal dimension of the invaded region reveal that the critical exponents vary as function of the generation number $G$, i.e., with the number of times the invasion process takes place. The averaged mass $M$ of the invaded region decreases with a power-law as a function of $G$, $M\sim G^{\beta}$, where the exponent $\beta\approx 0.6$. We also find that the fractal dimension of the invaded cluster changes from $d_{1}=1.887\pm0.002$ to $d_{s}=1.217\pm0.005$. This result confirms that the multiple invasion process follows a continuous transition from one universality class (NTIP) to another (optimal path). In addition, we report extensive numerical simulations that indicate that the mass distribution of avalanches $P(S,L)$ has a power-law behavior and we find that the exponent $\tau$ governing the power-law $P(S,L)\sim S^{-\tau}$ changes continuously as a function of the parameter $G$. We propose a scaling law for the mass distribution of avalanches for different number of generations $G$.Comment: 8 pages and 16 figure

Skeleton and fractal scaling in complex networks

We find that the fractal scaling in a class of scale-free networks originates from the underlying tree structure called skeleton, a special type of spanning tree based on the edge betweenness centrality. The fractal skeleton has the property of the critical branching tree. The original fractal networks are viewed as a fractal skeleton dressed with local shortcuts. An in-silico model with both the fractal scaling and the scale-invariance properties is also constructed. The framework of fractal networks is useful in understanding the utility and the redundancy in networked systems.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, final version published in PR

Analytical results for a trapped, weakly-interacting Bose-Einstein condensate under rotation

We examine the problem of a repulsive, weakly-interacting and harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate under rotation. We derive a simple analytic expression for the energy incorporating the interactions when the angular momentum per particle is between zero and one and find that the interaction energy decreases linearly as a function of the angular momentum in agreement with previous numerical and limiting analytical studies.Comment: 3 pages, RevTe