Intuition as it relates to curriculum, instruction, and resulting academic success in elementary school

Regardless of the fact that children learn in significantly different ways, most curriculum and instruction are guided by the idea that sequential organization of the material to be learned is the best and most efficient way of presenting information to children. Children who learn and think intuitively are denied their preference, forced to conform to the sequential nature of the curriculum and instruction. Based on the theory of psychological type, this study sought to identify any relationship between a student's cognitive style of learning, either Sensing or Intuitive, and his/her academic success in elementary school. The Murphy-Meisgeier Type Indicator for Children was used to identify the cognitive style of students in grades two through eight in a small, private, parochial school. Scores on a standardized achievement test and grades were then analyzed to see if there was a relationship of cognitive style to grades and achievement test scores. Also, the researcher investigated whether or not the teacher's cognitive style had any relationship to students' cognitive style and academic achievement. Although none of the results was statistically significant, the achievement test scores indicated that Sensing students score higher in reading, mathematics concepts, and mathematics computation. However, Intuitive students had higher mean grades in reading and language arts, and virtually equal means mathematics concepts and computation. It was also found that all students, both Sensing and Intuitive, had higher mean grades in the classes of Intuitive teachers. ^

Modeling security and cooperation in wireless networks using game theory

This research involves the design, development, and theoretical demonstration of models resulting in integrated misbehavior resolution protocols for ad hoc networked devices. Game theory was used to analyze strategic interaction among independent devices with conflicting interests. Packet forwarding at the routing layer of autonomous ad hoc networks was investigated. Unlike existing reputation based or payment schemes, this model is based on repeated interactions. To enforce cooperation, a community enforcement mechanism was used, whereby selfish nodes that drop packets were punished not only by the victim, but also by all nodes in the network. Then, a stochastic packet forwarding game strategy was introduced. Our solution relaxed the uniform traffic demand that was pervasive in other works. To address the concerns of imperfect private monitoring in resource aware ad hoc networks, a belief-free equilibrium scheme was developed that reduces the impact of noise in cooperation. This scheme also eliminated the need to infer the private history of other nodes. Moreover, it simplified the computation of an optimal strategy. The belief-free approach reduced the node overhead and was easily tractable. Hence it made the system operation feasible. Motivated by the versatile nature of evolutionary game theory, the assumption of a rational node is relaxed, leading to the development of a framework for mitigating routing selfishness and misbehavior in Multi hop networks. This is accomplished by setting nodes to play a fixed strategy rather than independently choosing a rational strategy. A range of simulations was carried out that showed improved cooperation between selfish nodes when compared to older results. Cooperation among ad hoc nodes can also protect a network from malicious attacks. In the absence of a central trusted entity, many security mechanisms and privacy protections require cooperation among ad hoc nodes to protect a network from malicious attacks. Therefore, using game theory and evolutionary game theory, a mathematical framework has been developed that explores trust mechanisms to achieve security in the network. This framework is one of the first steps towards the synthesis of an integrated solution that demonstrates that security solely depends on the initial trust level that nodes have for each other.^