A survey of educational acceleration practices in Canada

A nationwide survey of Canadian school districts was undertaken to determine the extent to which 18 forms of acceleration were permitted and practiced. Of the high enrollment provinces, BC school districts’ participation rates were highest in the most types of acceleration. A surprising number of districts did not allow some forms of acceleration. In most provinces and territories, options that emphasize engaging quick learners in advanced content were more often permitted than those that involved placing accelerants with older students, but the forms most often implemented included both content- and grade-based options. Québec was the exception where school districts preferred grade-based options.Key words: Acceleration, gifted, grade skipping, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, early entrance, correspondence courses, curriculum compactingUne enquête nationale sur les districts scolaires canadiens a été menée pour déterminer dans quelle mesure les 18 formes d'accélération de l'apprentissage étaient autorisées et pratiquées. Parmi les provinces où les inscriptions étaient les plus nombreuses, les taux de participation dans les districts scolaires en Colombie-Britannique étaient les plus élevés pour la plupart des types d'accélération. Un nombre surprenant de districts ne permettaient pas certaines formes d'accélération. Dans la plupart des provinces et des territoires, les options permettant à ceux qui apprennent le plus vite de prendre part à des matières plus avancées, étaient plus souvent autorisées que celles consistant à placer ces mêmes élèves avec des élèves plus âgés ; mais les formes d'accélération les plus souvent mises en œuvre comprenaient à la fois ces deux types d'options. À l'exception du Québec, où les districts scolaires favorisaient le passage des élèves dans des niveaux supérieurs.Mots-clés : accélération, surdoué, sauter une classe, placement avancé, baccalauréat international, admission précoce, cours par correspondance, compréssion des programmes d'étude

System For Detecting End Of Speech Utterance For Safe Interruption

A system and method for detecting end of speech utterance for safe interruption using audio and video processing software or application is disclosed. The system includes hardware that determines the speaker’s intonation in real time or with minimal delay and displays this visually on a screen along with a transcript of the speech delivered by the speaker. The speaker’s intonation and end of speech could be identified in the system display in real-time as rising and falling of pitch at the end of speech. The system and method could be implemented as a module of any video call or conference facility. The system will provide significant help to people with hearing difficulties so that they participate efficiently in meetings. The method could be implemented in real time without any delays since it could be located in a user\u27s device

Semistochastic Quadratic Bound Methods

Partition functions arise in a variety of settings, including conditional random fields, logistic regression, and latent gaussian models. In this paper, we consider semistochastic quadratic bound (SQB) methods for maximum likelihood inference based on partition function optimization. Batch methods based on the quadratic bound were recently proposed for this class of problems, and performed favorably in comparison to state-of-the-art techniques. Semistochastic methods fall in between batch algorithms, which use all the data, and stochastic gradient type methods, which use small random selections at each iteration. We build semistochastic quadratic bound-based methods, and prove both global convergence (to a stationary point) under very weak assumptions, and linear convergence rate under stronger assumptions on the objective. To make the proposed methods faster and more stable, we consider inexact subproblem minimization and batch-size selection schemes. The efficacy of SQB methods is demonstrated via comparison with several state-of-the-art techniques on commonly used datasets.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur

An example of a non-associative Moufang loop of point classes on a cubic surface

Let $k=\mathbb{Q}_3(\theta)$, $\theta^3=1$ be a quadratic extension of 3-adic numbers. Let $V$ be a cubic surface defined over a field $k$ by the equation $T_0^3+T_1^3+T_2^3+\theta T_0^3=0$ and let $V(k)$ be a set of rational points on $V$ defined over $k$. We show that a relation on $V(k)$ modulo a prime $(1-\theta)^3$ (in a ring of integers of $k$) defines an admissible relation on a set of rational points of $V$ over $k$ and a commutative Moufang loop associated with classes of this admissible equivalence on $V(k)$ is non-associative. This answers a long standing problem that was formulated by Yu. I. Manin more than 50 years ago about existence of non-abelian quasi-groups associated with some cubic surface over some field

Overcoming Geometry-Induced Stiffness with IMplicit-Explicit (IMEX) Runge-Kutta Algorithms on Unstructured Grids with Applications to CEM, CFD, and CAA

My goal is to develop and implement efficient, accurate, and robust Implicit-Explicit Runge-Kutta (IMEX RK) methods [9] for overcoming geometry-induced stiffness with applications to computational electromagnetics (CEM), computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational aeroacoustics (CAA). IMEX algorithms solve the non-stiff portions of the domain using explicit methods, and isolate and solve the more expensive stiff portions using implicit methods. Current algorithms in CEM can only simulate purely harmonic (up to lOGHz plane wave) EM scattering by fighter aircraft, which are assumed to be pure metallic shells, and cannot handle the inclusion of coatings, penetration into and radiation out of the aircraft. Efficient MEX RK methods could potentially increase current CEM capabilities by 1-2 orders of magnitude, allowing scientists and engineers to attack more challenging and realistic problems

EXTENDED BAUM TRANSFORMATIONS FOR GENERAL FUNCTIONS, II

The discrimination technique for estimating the parameters of Gaussian mixtures that is based on the Extended Baum transformations (EB) has had significant impact on the speech recognition community. The proof that definitively shows that these transformations increase the value of an objective function with iteration (i.e., so-called "growth transformations") was presented by the author two years ago for a diagonal Gaussian mixture densities. In this paper this proof is extended to a multidimensional multivariate Gaussian mixtures. The proof presented in the current paper is based on the linearization process and the explicit growth estimate for linear forms of Gaussian mixtures

SYSTEM FOR DETECTING END OF SPEECH UTTERANCE FOR SAFE INTERRUPTION

A system and method for detecting end of speech utterance for safe interruption using audio and video processing software or application is disclosed. The system includes hardware that determines the speaker’s intonation in real time or with minimal delay and displays this visually on a screen along with a transcript of the speech delivered by the speaker. The speaker’s intonation and end of speech could be identified in the system display in realtime as rising and falling of pitch at the end of speech. The system and method could be implemented as a module of any video call or conference facility. The system will provide significant help to people with hearing difficulties so that they participate efficiently in meetings. The method could be implemented in real time without any delays since it could be located in a user\u27s device

COLLABORATIVE DISTRIBUTED SPEECH RECOGNITION

The disclosure includes a captioning system configured to caption a video. A video may be identified for captioning. The video may be submitted to automated speech recognition engines. A transcription of audio from the video may be received from the automated speech recognition engines. It may be determined whether to accept or create a final transcription. If not, the video may be submitted to one or more manual speech recognition engines. If the final transcription is accepted or created, at least one of the automated speech recognition engines or one of the manual speech recognition engines may be rewarded based on the transcriptions. The video may be captioned with the final transcription

Method For Providing Metrics To Determine Transcription/Translation Quality

A system and method are disclosed for determining the transcription/translation quality of web video content based on metrics derived from indirect feedback of users on existing captioning. The method may take into account how often the closed caption (CC) option was activated by a user on videos and the number of times users stayed through the whole video content using the closed captions. The system can also be used in assessing quality of manual transcription for languages that do not have automated speech recognition and to validate acoustic and language models in machine translation/transcription

Emotional Assistants for Applications

This disclosure describes techniques that provide appropriate emotional responses to users of computing devices, irrespective of the specific interaction context. The techniques can be implemented as an emotional module that is called by an application. In response, the emotional module provides an appropriate response that the application renders. The techniques can learn from various sources of interaction data, such as books, movies, chats etc. and from user behavior after an emotional response is rendered. The techniques generate a database of emotions and appropriate computer responses. The techniques enable computers to provide effective emotional responses and improve human-computer interaction. The techniques can also be used to train certain users, such as autistic children, to understand human emotions