On Integrating Student Empirical Software Engineering Studies with Research and Teaching Goals

Background: Many empirical software engineering studies use students as subjects and are conducted as part of university courses. Aim: We aim at reporting our experiences with using guidelines for integrating empirical studies with our research and teaching goals. Method: We document our experience from conducting three studies with graduate students in two software architecture courses. Results: Our results show some problems that we faced when following the guidelines and deviations we made from the original guidelines. Conclusions: Based on our results we propose recommendations for empirical software engineering studies that are integrated in university courses.

Criminal neighbourhoods: does the density of prior offenders encourage others to commit crime?

Using crime data over a period of a decade for Glasgow, this paper explores whether the density of prior offenders in a neighbourhoods has an influence on the propensity of others to (re)commence offending. The study shows that the number of ‘newly active’ offenders in a neighbourhood in the current quarter is positively associated with the density of prior offenders for both violent and property crime from the previous two years. In the case of ‘newly active’ property offenders, the relationship with active prior offenders is only apparent when prior offender counts exceed the median. The paper postulates that intraneighbourhood social mechanisms may be at work to create these effects. The results suggest that policies which concentrate offenders in particular neighbourhoods may increase the number of ‘newly active’ offenders, and point to evidence of a threshold at which these effects take place

Poverty and Conflict: Can Economic Development Prevent Conflict?

War and widespread poverty plague the developing countries of the world in a devastatingly violent cycle. This paper illustrates a correlation between economics and the role it can play in violence. The author surveys three theoretical approaches to understanding conflict resolution and socioeconomic causal relationships of violence, summarizes empirical evidence of those causal relationships, ex-plores these relationships in terrorism and civil war, and utilizes those theories and empirical data in an analytical case study of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, including a correlation coefficient ma-trix and regression analysis with policy implications. The theoretical approaches surveyed include hu-man security and development, the horizontal inequalities theory, and structural demographic theory. The unique and peaceful approach of growing a developing nation’s economy could be key to break-ing the cycle of violent conflict in war-torn countries and avoiding such violence in countries on the verge of civil war

How good assisted housing policy can be good education policy.

Where people grow up can be very important to their educational and other life outcomes. Using evidence from a public housing program in Denver, Colorado, George Galster finds that low-income Latino and African American children who lived for sustained periods in better off neighborhoods were less likely to drop out of secondary school or to repeat a grade. With this in mind, he argues that in order to increase the educational outcomes of low-income minority groups, public housing program planners should locate more subsidized dwellings in neighborhoods with greater advantage

Equilibrium strategy and population-size effects in lowest unique bid auctions

In lowest unique bid auctions, $N$ players bid for an item. The winner is whoever places the \emph{lowest} bid, provided that it is also unique. We use a grand canonical approach to derive an analytical expression for the equilibrium distribution of strategies. We then study the properties of the solution as a function of the mean number of players, and compare them with a large dataset of internet auctions. The theory agrees with the data with striking accuracy for small population size $N$, while for larger $N$ a qualitatively different distribution is observed. We interpret this result as the emergence of two different regimes, one in which adaptation is feasible and one in which it is not. Our results question the actual possibility of a large population to adapt and find the optimal strategy when participating in a collective game.Comment: 6 pag. - 7 figs - added Supplementary Material. Changed affiliations. Published versio

A New Index for Comparing the Diversity of Population Inflows and Population Stocks

The paper introduces a new “diversification index” (DIV), which compares the composition of the current or recent population inflow and the composition of pre-existing population stock, with positive (negative) values signifying a process generating more (less) diversity in the stock. Higher absolute values for DIV signify larger differences in the composition of the inflows and the pre-existing stocks of population. DIV is easy to compute and interpret, adaptable to handle population inflows or outflows, and widely applicable to a variety of phenomena. The paper defines DIV, discusses its properties, and calculates it for several hypothetical cases as a way of showing its intuitive appeal, such as how it would reflect a neighborhood gentrification scenario. DIV indices for both race and income groupings are computed from 1992 to 2006 for three neighborhoods in Chicago to demonstrate how inter-temporal trends in DIV provide insights into neighborhood dynamics. Finally, the paper discusses extensions, potential weaknesses, and other caveats related to the use of DIV in future applied research

Identifying opinion leaders and their activity on a local apparel business Facebook fan-page

As technology continues to grow, new marketing opportunities arise. Facebook is an online social network that allows companies to understand their consumer base (Shih, 2011). Little research has been conducted to understand how Facebook is used as a marketing tool. Word of mouth advertising is created on Facebook fan-pages, business pages that allow consumers to interact with each other with User-Generated Content (UGC). Identifying opinion leaders on these fan-pages can help businesses understand their customers and help them build relationships with them on Facebook. The current research presents a qualitative approach to profiling users of a Facebook fan-page wall, identifying opinion leaders, and analyzing the documented messages on the wall. The Facebook fan-page used was from Tru Colors Apparel a local apparel business targeting college football fans in the South East region of the United States. The profile identified thirty-three opinion leaders, whose comments were analyzed for themes. Eighteen themes were identified from the fan comments and opinion leader comments. The themes identified were brand/line, styles, excitement, purchase intention, purchase, team spirit, suggestions, pricing, sizing, photos, store/location, website, gratitude, emails, blog referral, recommendations, winners, and articles. The comments were analyzed over a three season period. The three seasons are defined based on the football season from June to February. Each comment from all the fans and from the opinion leaders were compared to identify relationships between themes and to support the identification process of opinion leaders. Purchase intention, Team Spirit, and the Brand/Line were consistently more prevalent when comparing the opinion leader comments to the other fans comments. Implications are presented for small apparel companies with narrow niche markets