Why did Nobody Reply to Me? A Keyword Analysis of Initiating Posts and Lone Posts in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Discussions

It is a common phenomenon that online discussion spaces are overabundant with lone posts; in other words, few posts receive replies from others. Admittedly, circumstantial factors and content affect whether a post receives replies. Yet, linguistic features within a post might also play a role in inviting replies. To investigate this hypothesis, a keyword analysis comparing initiating posts, which receive replies, to lone posts, which do not receive replies, was conducted. The posts were from the discussion in massive open online courses (MOOCs). MOOC discussion is one type of computer-mediated communication (CMC), with an emphasis on learning and is typically monitored by course facilitators. The keyword analysis revealed that initiating posts were often constructed in a question format, with hedges and indefinite pronouns to open up a dialogue and invite others to pitch in, whereas lone posts tended to be reflective and monoglossic in nature, yet with positive sentiments

Political Budget Cycles: A Review of Recent Developments

This paper provides a review of recent developments in the theory and evidence of political budget cycles. Specifically, we discuss three areas where significant progress has been made. First, new theoretical explanations (models) have been proposed where political budget cycles arise as the result of a moral hazard problem between the government and the electorate. Second, more sophisticated empirical methods, in particular, time series methods appropriate for dynamic panel data regressions, have been adopted in cross-country analyses. Last but not least, the focus of recent studies has shifted from industrialized countries to all (including developing) countries, and from the existence of political budget cycles to the magnitude and composition (revenue vs. spending) of these cycles.Political budget cycles, dynamic panel estimation, developing countries

Computing the Ball Size of Frequency Permutations under Chebyshev Distance

Let $S_n^\lambda$ be the set of all permutations over the multiset $\{\overbrace{1,...,1}^{\lambda},...,\overbrace{m,...,m}^\lambda\}$ where $n=m\lambda$. A frequency permutation array (FPA) of minimum distance $d$ is a subset of $S_n^\lambda$ in which every two elements have distance at least $d$. FPAs have many applications related to error correcting codes. In coding theory, the Gilbert-Varshamov bound and the sphere-packing bound are derived from the size of balls of certain radii. We propose two efficient algorithms that compute the ball size of frequency permutations under Chebyshev distance. Both methods extend previous known results. The first one runs in $O({2d\lambda \choose d\lambda}^{2.376}\log n)$ time and $O({2d\lambda \choose d\lambda}^{2})$ space. The second one runs in $O({2d\lambda \choose d\lambda}{d\lambda+\lambda\choose \lambda}\frac{n}{\lambda})$ time and $O({2d\lambda \choose d\lambda})$ space. For small constants $\lambda$ and $d$, both are efficient in time and use constant storage space.Comment: Submitted to ISIT 201

Spherical Tiling by 12 Congruent Pentagons

The tilings of the 2-dimensional sphere by congruent triangles have been extensively studied, and the edge-to-edge tilings have been completely classified. However, not much is known about the tilings by other congruent polygons. In this paper, we classify the simplest case, which is the edge-to-edge tilings of the 2-dimensional sphere by 12 congruent pentagons. We find one major class allowing two independent continuous parameters and four classes of isolated examples. The classification is done by first separately classifying the combinatorial, edge length, and angle aspects, and then combining the respective classifications together.Comment: 53 pages, 40 figures, spherical geometr

Accounting decoupled : A case study of accounting regime change in a Malaysian company

Peer reviewedPreprin