Existence, continuity and utility representation of strictly monotonic preferences on continuum of goods commodity spaces

It is an easy task for most commodity spaces, to find examples of strictly monotonic preference relations. For example, in the space of bounded sequences of real numbers.. However, it is not easy for spaces like the space of bounded functions defined in the real interval [0, 1]. In this note we investigate the roots of this difficulty. We show that strictly monotonic preferences on the space of bounded function on any set K always exist. However, if K is uncountable no such preference is continuous and none of them have a utility representation.utility representation/ strictly monotonic preferences

An Application of Clustering Analysis to International Private Indebtedness

This paper presents a procedure for clustering analysis that combines Kohone’s Self organizing Feature Map (SOFM) and statistical schemes. The idea is to cluster the data in two stages: run SOFM and then minimize the segmentation dispersion. The advantages of proposed procedure will be illustrated through a synthetic experiment and a real macroeconomic problem. The procedure is then used to explore the relationship between private indebtedness and some macroeconomic variables commonly used to measure macroeconomic performance. The experiences of thirty-nine countries in the early nineties are analyzed. The procedure outperformed others clustering techniques in the job of identifying consistent groups of countries from the economic and statistical viewpoints. It found out similarities in different countries concerning their respective levels of private indebtedness when added to well accepted parameters to measure macroeconomic performance.Vector quantization, Clustering, Self-Organizing Feature Map,Macroeconomic Performance, Private Indebtedness.

HandSpy - a system to manage experiments on cognitive processes in writing

Experiments on cognitive processes require a detailed analysis of the contribution of many participants. In the case of cognitive processes in writing these experiments require special software tools to collect gestures performed with a pen or a stylus, and recorded with special hardware. These tools produce different kinds of data files in binary and proprietary formats that need to be managed on a workstation file system for further processing with generic tools, such as spreadsheets and statistical analysis software. The lack of common formats and open repositories hinders the possibility of distributing the work load among researchers within the research group, of re-processing the collected data with software developed by other research groups, and of sharing results with the rest of the cognitive process research community. This paper presents HandSpy, a collaborative environment for managing experiments in cognitive processes in writing. This environment was designed to cover all the stages of the experiment, from the definition of tasks to be performed by participants, to the synthesis of results. Collaboration in HandSpy is enabled by a rich web interface developed with the Google Web Toolkit. To decouple the environment from existing hardware devices for collecting written production, namely digitizing tablets and smart pens, HandSpy is based on the InkML standard, an XML data format for representing digital ink. This design choice shaped many of the features in HandSpy, such as the use of an XML database for managing application data and the use of XML transformations. XML transformations convert between persistent data representations used for storage and transient data representations required by the widgets on the user interface. This paper presents also an ongoing use case of HandSpy where this environment is being used to manage an experiment involving hundreds of primary schools participants that performed different tasks

Compreender a formação contínua. Uma análise a partir dos técnicos de radiologia

Analisa-se neste capítulo os conceitos de formação contínua e a necessidade de reorientação das competências dos Técnicos de Diagnóstico e Terapêutica – àrea da radiologia – para que estes possam acompanhar as mudanças resultantes dos novos modelos de prestação de cuidados de saúde, tomando como pano de fundo a “consciencialização” e a “reflexão dos profissionais” acerca dessas mudanças que se operam