Implementing the OPTIMAL model : the impact on students' motivation in an elementary school games environment

Optimal challenge occurs when an individual perceives the challenge of the task to be equaled or matched by his or her own skill level (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The purpose of this study was to test the impact of the OPTIMAL model on physical education students' motivation and perceptions of optimal challenge across four games categories (i. e. target, batting/fielding, net/wall, invasion). Enjoyment, competence, student goal orientation and activity level were examined in relation to the OPTIMAL model. A total of 22 (17 M; 5 F) students and their parents provided informed consent to take part in the study and were taught four OPTIMAL lessons and four non-OPTIMAL lessons ranging across the four different games categories by their own teacher. All students completed the Task and Ego in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ; Duda & Whitehead, 1998), the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI; McAuley, Duncan, & Tanmien, 1987) and the Children's Perception of Optimal Challenge Instrument (CPOCI; Mandigo, 2001). Sixteen students (two each lesson) were observed by using the System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time tool (SOFTT; McKenzie, 2002). As well, they participated in a structured interview which took place after each lesson was completed. Quantitative results concluded that no overall significant difference was found in motivational outcomes when comparing OPTIMAL and non-OPTIMAL lessons. However, when the lessons were broken down into games categories, significant differences emerged. Levels of perceived competence were found to be higher in non-OPTIMAL batting/fielding lessons compared to OPTIMAL lessons, whereas levels of enjoyment and perceived competence were found to be higher in OPTIMAL invasion lessons in comparison to non-OPTIMAL invasion lessons. Qualitative results revealed significance in feehngs of skill/challenge balance, enjoyment and competence in the OPTIMAL lessons. Moreover, a significance of practically twice the active movement time percentage was found in OPTIMAL lessons in comparison to non-OPTIMAL lessons.

Using genetic algorithms for the single allocation hub location problem

Hub location problem is an NP-hard problem that frequently arises in the design of transportation and distribution systems, postal delivery networks, and airline passenger flow. This work focuses on the Single Allocation Hub Location Problem (SAHLP). Genetic Algorithms (GAs) for the capacitated and uncapacitated variants of the SAHLP based on new chromosome representations and crossover operators are explored. The GAs is tested on two well-known sets of real-world problems with up to 200 nodes. The obtained results are very promising. For most of the test problems the GA obtains improved or best-known solutions and the computational time remains low. The proposed GAs can easily be extended to other variants of location problems arising in network design planning in transportation systems.

Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithms for the Single Allocation Hub Location Problem

Hub Location Problems play vital economic roles in transportation and telecommunication networks where goods or people must be efficiently transferred from an origin to a destination point whilst direct origin-destination links are impractical. This work investigates the single allocation hub location problem, and proposes a genetic algorithm (GA) approach for it. The effectiveness of using a single-objective criterion measure for the problem is first explored. Next, a multi-objective GA employing various fitness evaluation strategies such as Pareto ranking, sum of ranks, and weighted sum strategies is presented. The effectiveness of the multi-objective GA is shown by comparison with an Integer Programming strategy, the only other multi-objective approach found in the literature for this problem. Lastly, two new crossover operators are proposed and an empirical study is done using small to large problem instances of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and Australian Post (AP) data sets.

Optimal and Robust Designs of Step-stress Accelerated Life Testing Experiments for Proportional Hazards Models

Accelerated life testing (ALT) is widely used to obtain reliability information about a product within a limited time frame. The Cox s proportional hazards (PH) model is often utilized for reliability prediction. My master thesis research focuses on designing accelerated life testing experiments for reliability estimation. We consider multiple step-stress ALT plans with censoring. The optimal stress levels and times of changing the stress levels are investigated. We discuss the optimal designs under three optimality criteria. They are D-, A- and Q-optimal designs. We note that the classical designs are optimal only if the model assumed is correct. Due to the nature of prediction made from ALT experimental data, attained under the stress levels higher than the normal condition, extrapolation is encountered. In such case, the assumed model cannot be tested. Therefore, for possible imprecision in the assumed PH model, the method of construction for robust designs is also explored.

Le financement des municipalités par le gouvernement fédéral au Canada et aux États-Unis: transferts et facteurs d'allocation.

Rapport de recherche

Fair Production and Allocation of an Excludable Nonrival Good

We study fairness in economies with one private good and one partially excludable nonrival good. A social ordering function determines for each profile of preferences an ordering of all conceivable allocations. We propose the following Free Lunch Aversion condition: if the private good contributions of two agents consuming the same quantity of the nonrival good have opposite signs, reducing that gap improves social welfare. This condition, combined with the more standard requirements of Unanimous Indifference and Responsiveness, delivers a form of welfare egalitarianism in which an agent's welfare at an allocation is measured by the quantity of the nonrival good that, consumed at no cost, would leave her indifferent to the bundle she is assigned.

Efficient Strategy-Proof Allocation Functions in Linear Production Economies

In a linear production model, we characterize the class of efficient and strategy-proof allocation functions, and the class of efficient and coalition strategy-proof allocation functions. In the former class, requiring equal treatment of equals allows us to identify a unique allocation function. This function is also the unique member of the latter class which satisfies uniform treatment of uniforms.

Distortionary Taxation and Labor Supply: Evidence from Canada.

This paper examines empirically the effects of distortionary taxation on labor supply using a general equilibrium framework. The long-term relations predicted by the model are derived and tested using Canadian data between 1966 and 1993. While the cointegrating predictions of the model without taxation are rejected, the ones of the model with labor taxation are not. Persistent labor tax rate increases appear to play an important role in the observed downward trend in hours worked.

Resource-Monotonicity for House Allocation Problems

We study a simple model of assigning indivisible objects (e.g., houses, jobs, offices, etc.) to agents. Each agent receives at most one object and monetary compensations are not possible. We completely describe all rules satisfying efficiency and resource-monotonicity. The characterized rules assign the objects in a sequence of steps such that at each step there is either a dictator or two agents who “trade” objects from their hierarchically specified “endowments.”

Consistent House Allocation

In practice we often face the problem of assigning indivisible objects (e.g., schools, housing, jobs, offices) to agents (e.g., students, homeless, workers, professors) when monetary compensations are not possible. We show that a rule that satisfies consistency, strategy-proofness, and efficiency must be an efficient generalized priority rule; i.e. it must adapt to an acyclic priority structure, except -maybe- for up to three agents in each object's priority ordering.

The Alberta Dilemma: Optimal Sharing of a Water Resource by an Agricultural and an Oil Sector

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the optimal time paths of production and water usage by an agricultural and an oil sector that have to share a limited water resource. We show that for any given water stock, if the oil stock is sufficiently large, it will become optimal to have a phase during which the agricultural sector is inactive. This may mean having an initial phase during which the two sectors are active, then a phase during which the water is reserved for the oil sector and the agricultural sector is inactive, followed by a phase during which both sectors are active again. The agricultural sector will always be active in the end as the oil stock is depleted and the demand for water from the oil sector decreases. In the case where agriculture is not constrained by the given natural inflow of water once there is no more oil, we show that oil extraction will always end with a phase during which oil production follows a pure Hotelling path, with the implicit price of oil net of extraction cost growing at the rate of interest. If the natural inflow of water does constitute a constraint for agriculture, then oil production never follows a pure Hotelling path, because its full marginal cost must always reflect not only the imputed rent on the finite oil stock, but also the positive opportunity cost of water.

Fair Allocation of Production Externalities: Recent Results

We survey recent axiomatic results in the theory of cost-sharing. In this litterature, a method computes the individual cost shares assigned to the users of a facility for any profile of demands and any monotonic cost function. We discuss two theories taking radically different views of the asymmetries of the cost function. In the full responsibility theory, each agent is accountable for the part of the costs that can be unambiguously separated and attributed to her own demand. In the partial responsibility theory, the asymmetries of the cost function have no bearing on individual cost shares, only the differences in demand levels matter. We describe several invariance and monotonicity properties that reflect both normative and strategic concerns. We uncover a number of logical trade-offs between our axioms, and derive axiomatic characterizations of a handful of intuitive methods: in the full responsibility approach, the Shapley-Shubik, Aumann-Shapley, and subsidyfree serial methods, and in the partial responsibility approach, the cross-subsidizing serial method and the family of quasi-proportional methods.