Statistically robust representation and comparison of mortality profiles in archaeozoology

Archaeozoological mortality profiles have been used to infer site-specific subsistence strategies. There is however no common agreement on the best way to present these profiles and confidence intervals around age class proportions. In order to deal with these issues, we propose the use of the Dirichlet distribution and present a new approach to perform age-at-death multivariate graphical comparisons. We demonstrate the efficiency of this approach using domestic sheep/goat dental remains from 10 Cardial sites (Early Neolithic) located in South France and the Iberian Peninsula. We show that the Dirichlet distribution in age-at-death analysis can be used: (i) to generate Bayesian credible intervals around each age class of a mortality profile, even when not all age classes are observed; and (ii) to create 95% kernel density contours around each age-at-death frequency distribution when multiple sites are compared using correspondence analysis. The statistical procedure we present is applicable to the analysis of any categorical count data and particularly well-suited to archaeological data (e.g. potsherds, arrow heads) where sample sizes are typically small.

Digital anthropology and educational eGames: learning through behavioural patterns in digital, game-based contexts

The selected publications are focused on the relations between users, eGames and the educational context, and how they interact together, so that both learning and user performance are improved through feedback provision. A key part of this analysis is the identification of behavioural, anthropological patterns, so that users can be clustered based on their actions, and the steps taken in the system (e.g. social network, online community, or virtual campus). In doing so, we can analyse large data sets of information made by a broad user sample,which will provide more accurate statistical reports and readings. Furthermore, this research is focused on how users can be clustered based on individual and group behaviour, so that a personalized support through feedback is provided, and the personal learning process is improved as well as the group interaction. We take inputs from every person and from the group they belong to, cluster the contributions, find behavioural patterns and provide personalized feedback to the individual and the group, based on personal and group findings. And we do all this in the context of educational games integrated in learning communities and learning management systems. To carry out this research we design a set of research questions along the 10-year published work presented in this thesis. We ask if the users can be clustered together based on the inputs provided by them and their groups; if and how these data are useful to improve the learner performance and the group interaction; if and how feedback becomes a useful tool for such pedagogical goal; if and how eGames become a powerful context to deploy the pedagogical methodology and the various research methods and activities that make use of that feedback to encourage learning and interaction; if and how a game design and a learning design must be defined and implemented to achieve these objectives, and to facilitate the productive authoring and integration of eGames in pedagogical contexts and frameworks. We conclude that educational games are a resourceful tool to provide a user experience towards a better personalized learning performance and an enhance group interaction along the way. To do so, eGames, while integrated in an educational context, must follow a specific set of user and technical requirements, so that the playful context supports the pedagogical model underneath. We also conclude that, while playing, users can be clustered based on their personal behaviour and interaction with others, thanks to the pattern identification. Based on this information, a set of recommendations are provided Digital Anthropology and educational eGames 6 /216 to the user and the group in the form of personalized feedback, timely managed for an optimum impact on learning performance and group interaction level. In this research, Digital Anthropology is introduced as a concept at a late stage to provide a backbone across various academic fields including: Social Science, Cognitive Science, Behavioural Science, Educational games and, of course, Technology-enhance learning. Although just recently described as an evolution of traditional anthropology, this approach to digital behaviour and social structure facilitates the understanding amongst fields and a comprehensive view towards a combined approach. This research takes forward the already existing work and published research onusers and eGames for learning, and turns the focus onto the next step — the clustering of users based on their behaviour and offering proper, personalized feedback to the user based on that clustering, rather than just on isolated inputs from every user. Indeed, this pattern recognition in the described context of eGames in educational contexts, and towards the presented aim of personalized counselling to the user and the group through feedback, is something that has not been accomplished before.

Equitable representation in councils: theory and an application to the United Nations Security Council

We analyze democratic equity in council voting games (CVGs). In a CVG, a voting body containing all members delegates decision-making to a (time-varying) subset of its members, as describes, e.g., the relationship between the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). We develop a theoretical framework for analyzing democratic equitability in CVGs at both the country and region levels, and for different assumptions regarding preference correlation. We apply the framework to evaluate the equitability of the UNSC, and the claims of those who seek to reform it. We find that the individual permanent members are overrepresented by between 21.3 times (United Kingdom) and 3.8 times (China) from a country-level perspective, while from a region perspective Eastern Europe is the most heavily overrepresented region with more than twice its equitable representation, and Africa the most heavily underrepresented. Our equity measures do not preclude some UNSC members from exercising veto rights, however.

‘Learning to be Zen’: Women travellers and the imperative to happy

This paper follows the emotional management of lone, independent women travellers as they move through tourist spaces, based on my doctoral research Embodiment and Emotion in the experiences of independent women tourists (2012). Specifically, this paper will focus on ‘gendering happiness’ by arguing that women travellers are significantly compelled to feel and display characteristics of happiness, humour and ‘learning to be Zen’ in order to be successful travellers. The imperative to become, and remain, happy and humorous in the face of embodied, emotional and gendered constraints is a key feature of women’s reflections of their travelling experiences, mirroring the recent emergence of literature into happiness and positive thinking within feminist theory (Ehrenreich 2010, Ahmed 2010). Negotiating ‘bad’ emotions provides a powerful insight into the perceptions of women travellers; to remain happy can mask problematic power relations and other forms of resistance. This is not to say that emotional negotiation is not partly a form of effective resistance, rather, I wish to make room for the freedom to be unhappy and angry in travelling space without feeling failure for not achieving a successful travelling identity.