Using recursive regression to explore nonlinear relationships and interactions: A tutorial applied to a multicultural education study

This paper discusses how a seldom-used statistical procedure, recursive regression (RR), can numerically and graphically illustrate data-driven nonlinear relationships and interaction of variables. This routine falls into the family of exploratory techniques, yet a few interesting features make it a valuable compliment to factor analysis and multiple linear regression for method triangulation. By comparison, nonlinear cluster analysis also generates graphical dendrograms to visually depict relationships, but RR (as implemented here) uses multiple combinations of nominal and interval predictors regressed on a categorical or ratio dependent variable. In similar fashion, multidimensional scaling, multiple discriminant analysis and conjoint analysis are constrained at best to predicting an ordinal dependent variable (as currently implemented in popular software). A flexible capability of RR (again as implemented here) is the transformation of factor data (for substituting codes). One powerful RR feature is the ability to treat missing data as a theoretically important predictor value (useful for survey questions that respondents do not wish to answer). For practitioners, the paper summarizes how this technique fits within the generally-accepted statistical methods. Popular software such as SPSS, SAS or LISREL can be used, while sample data can be imported in common formats including ASCII text, comma delimited, Excel XLS, and SPSS SAV. A tutorial approach is applied here using RR in LISREL. The tutorial leverages a partial sample from a study that used recursive regression to predict grades from international student learning styles. Some tutorial portions are technical, to improve the ambiguous RR literature. Accessed 17,736 times on https://pareonline.net from March 16, 2009 to December 31, 2019. For downloads from January 1, 2020 forward, please click on the PlumX Metrics link to the right

Compressed School Week Cultural Bias against English Second Language Student Performance on Standardized Exams

Financial constraints have driven K-12 schools in the isolated mountain regions of USA to reduce costs by shortening the teaching week These regions have a high relative population of Hispanic Mexican immigrants who are English Language Learners ELL Hispanic immigrants come to USA to work but generally at low wages so it is a financial strain to pay childcare during the week to avoid losing a day of work At the same time teachers are under pressure from the No Child Left Behind national initiative to ensure all students pass standardized tests There is some evidence that shorter school weeks does not negatively impact student learning However we argue that a shorter school week negatively impacts ELL student performance on standardized exams and if this were true it would be unfair to immigrants so the practice should be changed We empirically tested the effectiveness of various school week formats using a large sample of rural schools in Oregon with a high concentration of ELL students from Hispanic Mexican cultures N 62

Contrasting styles in cognition and behaviour in bumblebees and honeybees.

Bumblebees and honeybees have been the subjects of a great deal of recent research in animal cognition. Many of the major topics in cognition, including memory, attention, concept learning, numerosity, spatial cognition, timing, social learning, and metacognition have been examined in bumblebees, honeybees, or both. Although bumblebees and honeybees are very closely related, they also differ in important ways, including social organization, development, and foraging behaviour. We examine whether differences between bumblebees and honeybees in cognitive processes are related to differences in their natural history and behaviour. There are differences in some cognitive traits, such as serial reversal learning and matching-to-sample, that appear related to differences between bumblebees and honeybees in foraging and social behaviour. Other cognitive processes, such as numerosity, appear to be very similar. Despite the wealth of information that is available on some aspects of bumblebee and honeybee cognition and behaviour, there are relatively few instances, however, in which adequate data exist to make direct comparisons. We highlight a number of phenomena, including concept learning, spatial cognition, timing, and metacognition, for which targeted comparative research may reveal unexpected adaptive variation in cognitive processes in these complex animals. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: In Honor of Jerry Hogan

Principal Trade-off Analysis

How are the advantage relations between a set of agents playing a game organized and how do they reflect the structure of the game? In this paper, we illustrate "Principal Trade-off Analysis" (PTA), a decomposition method that embeds games into a low-dimensional feature space. We argue that the embeddings are more revealing than previously demonstrated by developing an analogy to Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PTA represents an arbitrary two-player zero-sum game as the weighted sum of pairs of orthogonal 2D feature planes. We show that the feature planes represent unique strategic trade-offs and truncation of the sequence provides insightful model reduction. We demonstrate the validity of PTA on a quartet of games (Kuhn poker, RPS+2, Blotto, and Pokemon). In Kuhn poker, PTA clearly identifies the trade-off between bluffing and calling. In Blotto, PTA identifies game symmetries, and specifies strategic trade-offs associated with distinct win conditions. These symmetries reveal limitations of PTA unaddressed in previous work. For Pokemon, PTA recovers clusters that naturally correspond to Pokemon types, correctly identifies the designed trade-off between those types, and discovers a rock-paper-scissor (RPS) cycle in the Pokemon generation type - all absent any specific information except game outcomes.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Reducing Repeat Offending Through Less Prosecution in Victoria, Australia: Opportunities for Increased Diversion of Offenders

Funder: University of CambridgeAbstract: Research Question: How did the use of diversion from prosecution and criminal sentencing change in Victoria, Australia, in the 10 years to 2016/2017, with what estimated effects on repeat offending? Data: We tracked 1,163,113 criminal cases brought against both juveniles and adults by police in the state of Victoria, Australia, including 181,836 diversions, during the 10-year time period from the fiscal year of 2007/2008 through 2016/2017. Methods: Taking the percentage of all cases diverted in the first year (25.6%), we calculated for each of the study years how many more cases would have been diverted from prosecution across the subsequent 9 years if the diversion rate had stayed the same (“missed opportunities”). We multiplied the estimated number of these “missed opportunities” by the reduced frequency of repeat offences that the prosecuted offenders were likely to have committed, after adjusting for the time at risk by the number of years left in the study period. Then, based on a systematic review of diversion experiments (Petrosino et al. 2010), we applied the standardised effect size of diversion in those studies to Farrington’s (1992) annualised crime frequency per 100 offenders aged 25, multiplying that effect across all of the person-years after a case was prosecuted rather than diverted, using both population-based rates and rates based only on detected offenders at that age. Findings: The diversion rate in Victoria dropped in half over 10 years, from 25.6% to 12.5%. The total missed opportunities for diversion, compared to the counterfactual of applying diversion at a constant rate of 25% over that time period, totalled 115,885 cases over the 10 years. Taking an average effect size (d = − 0.232) across seven experiments with a mean follow-up time of 12–13 months, as derived from a systematic review of diversion experiment outcomes, our illustrative estimate is that at least 8 crimes per year per 100 offenders could have been prevented among the missed opportunity cases. Using a population rate of offending, the estimate equals 1474 crimes that could have been prevented. Using the offending population rate, we estimate that 37,050 offences could have been prevented. Conclusions: While the exact amount of crime prevented remains speculative, the application of best evidence to the missed opportunity cases suggests that more diversion could have resulted in substantially less repeat offending, and hence less total crime

Reducing Repeat Offending Through Less Prosecution in Victoria.

Research Question How did the use of diversion from prosecution and criminal sentencing change in Victoria, Australia in the ten years to 2016/17, with what estimated effects on repeat offending? Data We tracked 1,163,113 criminal cases brought against both juveniles and adults by police in the state of Victoria, Australia, including 181,836 diversions, during the ten-year time period from the fiscal year of 2007/8 through 2016/17. Methods Taking the percentage of all cases diverted in the first year (25.6%), we calculated for each of the study years how many more cases would have been diverted from prosecution across the subsequent nine years if the diversion rate had stayed the same (“missed opportunities”). We multiplied the estimated number of these “missed opportunities” by the reduced frequency of repeat offences that the prosecuted offenders were likely to have committed, after adjusting for the time at risk by the number of years left in the study period. Then, based on a systematic review of diversion experiments (Petrosino et al 2010), we applied the standardized effect size of diversion in those studies to Farrington’s (1992) annualized crime frequency per 100 offenders aged 25, multiplying that effect across all of the person-years after a case was prosecuted rather than diverted, using both population-based rates and rates based only on detected offenders at that age. Findings The diversion rate in Victoria dropped in half over ten years, from 25.6% to 12.5%. The total missed opportunities for diversion, compared to the counterfactual of applying diversion at a constant rate of 25% over that time period, totalled 115,885 cases over the ten years. Taking an average effect size (d = -0.232) across seven experiments with a mean followup time of 12-13 months, as derived from a systematic review of diversion experiment outcomes, our illustrative estimate is that at least 8 fewer crimes per year per 100 offenders could have been prevented among the missed opportunity cases. Using a population rate of offending, the estimate equals 1,474 crimes that could have been prevented. Using the offending population rate, we estimate that 37,050 offences could have been prevented. Conclusions While the exact amount of crime prevented remains speculative, the application of best evidence to the missed opportunity cases suggests that more diversion could have resulted in substantially less repeat offending, and hence less total crime

Exploring Socio-Cultural Factors Impacting Agriculture in Information System Acceptance

Agricultural Information Systems (AIS) can provide several advantages for farmers in taking informed decisions regarding land, labour, livestock, and crop planning. However, there are not many empirical studies in examining the adoption of these AIS by farmers, especially in developing countries in Africa. This study adopts an unconventional socio-cultural approach in examining if the farmers think the use of AIS improves economic production, at the individual level of analysis. The purpose of this qualitative ethnographic study is to explore the socio-cultural success factors that improve employee acceptance of agriculture information system at some rural Nigerian farms. The results of this study could be disseminated to all rural Nigerian farm owners so they will know the critical success factors that improve employee acceptance of agriculture information system thereby increasing wheat production to reduce their national agricultural crisis. Another positive social change implication of the results of this on-going research would be to inspire researchers to replicate and extend this study in regions experiencing agricultural crises

B2C Decisions in Multi-Dialect Markets: Proposed Sequential Mixed-Method Multiple Case Grounded-Theory Study

This paper is a conceptual proposal for conducting a mixed-method multiple case study on a consumer behaviour topic in an emerging nation. Government administrators and marketing managers need current, reliable consumer behaviour models to serve the public and to achieve a profitable return on investment in Nigeria. There is a shortage of online consumer behaviour research in some highly populated emerging economies in Africa, such as in Nigeria, especially concerning the influence of demographic and socio-cultural factors. The purpose of this study will be to produce a visual, conceptual model of consumer decision making factors for the unique socio-cultural population. The purpose of this study is to scientifically explore the ground truth of Nigerian consumer online purchasing decisions to build a practical model for e-commerce stakeholders. The results of this study should be interesting for other researchers due to the novel sequential mixed-method grounded theory and multiple case study literal replication design. Nigerian e-commerce marketing managers and policymakers in the population could benefit financially from this extension to the body of knowledge

Rainwater harvesting and social networks: Visualising interactions for niche governance, resilience and sustainability

© 2016 by the authors. Visualising interactions across urban water systems to explore transition and change processes requires the development of methods and models at different scales. This paper contributes a model representing the network interactions of rainwater harvesting (RWH) infrastructure innovators and other organisations in the UK RWH niche to identify how resilience and sustainability feature within niche governance in practice. The RWH network interaction model was constructed using a modified participatory social network analysis (SNA). The SNA was further analysed through the application of a two-part analytical framework based on niche management and the safe, resilient and sustainable ('Safe and SuRe') framework. Weak interactions between some RWH infrastructure innovators and other organisations highlighted reliance on a limited number of persuaders to influence the regime and landscape, which were underrepresented. Features from niche creation and management were exhibited by the RWH network interaction model, though some observed characteristics were not represented. Additional Safe and SuRe features were identified covering diverse innovation, responsivity, no protection, unconverged expectations, primary influencers, polycentric or adaptive governance and multiple learning-types. These features enable RWH infrastructure innovators and other organisations to reflect on improving resilience and sustainability, though further research in other sectors would be useful to verify and validate observation of the seven features

Optimal Point Placement for Mesh Smoothing

We study the problem of moving a vertex in an unstructured mesh of triangular, quadrilateral, or tetrahedral elements to optimize the shapes of adjacent elements. We show that many such problems can be solved in linear time using generalized linear programming. We also give efficient algorithms for some mesh smoothing problems that do not fit into the generalized linear programming paradigm.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 8th ACM/SIAM Symp. on Discrete Algorithms (SODA '97). This is the final version, and will appear in a special issue of J. Algorithms for papers from SODA '9