Versão eletrônica de questionário e o controle de erros de resposta

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Answer set programs with optional rules: a possibilistic approach

Many problems in artificial intelligence can be encoded as answer set programs (ASP) in which some rules are uncertain. ASP programs with incorrect rules may have erroneous conclusions, but due to the non-monotonic nature of ASP, omitting a correct rule may also lead to errors. To derive the most certain conclusions from an uncertain ASP program, we thus need to consider all situations in which some, none, or all of the least certain rules are omitted. This corresponds to treating some rules as optional and reasoning about which conclusions remain valid regardless of the inclusion of these optional rules. While a version of possibilistic ASP (PASP) based on this view has recently been introduced, no implementation is currently available. In this paper we propose a simulation of the main reasoning tasks in PASP using (disjunctive) ASP programs, allowing us to take advantage of state-of-the-art ASP solvers. Furthermore, we identify how several interesting AI problems can be naturally seen as special cases of the considered reasoning tasks, including cautious abductive reasoning and conformant planning. As such, the proposed simulation enables us to solve instances of the latter problem types that are more general than what current solvers can handle.

Characterization of human and instrument related measurement errors

Measurement is the act or the result of a quantitative comparison between a given quantity and a quantity of the same kind chosen as a unit. It is generally agreed that all measurements contain errors. In a measuring system where both a measuring instrument and a human being taking the measurement using a preset process, the measurement error could be due to the instrument, the process or the human being involved. The first part of the study is devoted to understanding the human errors in measurement. For that, selected person related and selected work related factors that could affect measurement errors have been identified. Though these are well known, the exact extent of the error and the extent of effect of different factors on human errors in measurement are less reported. Characterization of human errors in measurement is done by conducting an experimental study using different subjects, where the factors were changed one at a time and the measurements made by them recorded. From the pre‐experiment survey research studies, it is observed that the respondents could not give the correct answers to questions related to the correct values [extent] of human related measurement errors. This confirmed the fears expressed regarding lack of knowledge about the extent of human related measurement errors among professionals associated with quality. But in postexperiment phase of survey study, it is observed that the answers regarding the extent of human related measurement errors has improved significantly since the answer choices were provided based on the experimental study. It is hoped that this work will help users of measurement in practice to better understand and manage the phenomena of human related errors in measurement.

Year 6 students' idiosyncratic notions of unitising, reunitising and regrouping decimal number places

Having flexible notions of the unit (e.g., 26 ones can be thought of as 2.6 tens, 1 ten 16 ones, 260 tenths, etc.) should be a major focus of elementary mathematics education. However, often these powerful notions are relegated to computations where the major emphasis is on "getting the right answer" thus procedural knowledge rather than conceptual knowledge becomes the primary focus. This paper reports on 22 high-performing students' reunitising processes ascertained from individual interviews on tasks requiring unitising, reunitising and regrouping; errors were categorised to depict particular thinking strategies. The results show that, even for high-performing students, regrouping is a cognitively complex task. This paper analyses this complexity and draws inferences for teaching.

The studio sans frontières : the open-studio as an answer to the challenges of teaching contemporary art

Since at least the 1960s, art has assumed a breadth of form and medium as diverse as social reality itself. Where once it was marginal and transgressive for artists to work across a spectrum of media, today it is common practice. In this ‘post-medium’ age, fidelity to a specific branch of media is a matter of preference, rather than a code of practice policed by gallerists, curators and critics. Despite the openness of contemporary art practice, the teaching of art at most universities remains steadfastly discipline-based. Discipline-based art teaching, while offering the promise of focussed ‘mastery’ of a particular set of technical skills and theoretical concerns, does so at the expense of a deeper and more complex understanding of the possibilities of creative experimentation in the artist’s studio. By maintaining an hermetic approach to medium, it does not prepare students sufficiently for the reality of art making in the twenty-first century. In fact, by pretending that there is a select range of techniques fundamental to the artist’s trade, discipline-based teaching can often appear to be more engaged with the notion of skills preservation than purposeful art training. If art schools are to survive and prosper in an increasingly vocationally-oriented university environment, they need to fully synthesise the professional reality of contemporary art practice into their approach to teaching and learning. This paper discusses the way in which the ‘open’ studio approach to visual art study at QUT endeavours to incorporate the diversity and complexity of contemporary art while preserving the sense of collective purpose that discipline-based teaching fosters. By allowing students to independently develop their own art practices while also applying collaborative models of learning and assessment, the QUT studio program aims to equip students with a strong sense of self-reliance, a broad awareness and appreciation of contemporary art, and a deep understanding of studio-based experimentation unfettered by the boundaries of traditional media: all skills fundamental to the practice of contemporary art.

Recommending best answer in a collaborative question answering system

The World Wide Web has become a medium for people to share information. People use Web-based collaborative tools such as question answering (QA) portals, blogs/forums, email and instant messaging to acquire information and to form online-based communities. In an online QA portal, a user asks a question and other users can provide answers based on their knowledge, with the question usually being answered by many users. It can become overwhelming and/or time/resource consuming for a user to read all of the answers provided for a given question. Thus, there exists a need for a mechanism to rank the provided answers so users can focus on only reading good quality answers. The majority of online QA systems use user feedback to rank users’ answers and the user who asked the question can decide on the best answer. Other users who didn’t participate in answering the question can also vote to determine the best answer. However, ranking the best answer via this collaborative method is time consuming and requires an ongoing continuous involvement of users to provide the needed feedback. The objective of this research is to discover a way to recommend the best answer as part of a ranked list of answers for a posted question automatically, without the need for user feedback. The proposed approach combines both a non-content-based reputation method and a content-based method to solve the problem of recommending the best answer to the user who posted the question. The non-content method assigns a score to each user which reflects the users’ reputation level in using the QA portal system. Each user is assigned two types of non-content-based reputations cores: a local reputation score and a global reputation score. The local reputation score plays an important role in deciding the reputation level of a user for the category in which the question is asked. The global reputation score indicates the prestige of a user across all of the categories in the QA system. Due to the possibility of user cheating, such as awarding the best answer to a friend regardless of the answer quality, a content-based method for determining the quality of a given answer is proposed, alongside the non-content-based reputation method. Answers for a question from different users are compared with an ideal (or expert) answer using traditional Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing techniques. Each answer provided for a question is assigned a content score according to how well it matched the ideal answer. To evaluate the performance of the proposed methods, each recommended best answer is compared with the best answer determined by one of the most popular link analysis methods, Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search (HITS). The proposed methods are able to yield high accuracy, as shown by correlation scores: Kendall correlation and Spearman correlation. The reputation method outperforms the HITS method in terms of recommending the best answer. The inclusion of the reputation score with the content score improves the overall performance, which is measured through the use of Top-n match scores.

Sequential decision fusion for controlled detection errors

Information fusion in biometrics has received considerable attention. The architecture proposed here is based on the sequential integration of multi-instance and multi-sample fusion schemes. This method is analytically shown to improve the performance and allow a controlled trade-off between false alarms and false rejects when the classifier decisions are statistically independent. Equations developed for detection error rates are experimentally evaluated by considering the proposed architecture for text dependent speaker verification using HMM based digit dependent speaker models. The tuning of parameters, n classifiers and m attempts/samples, is investigated and the resultant detection error trade-off performance is evaluated on individual digits. Results show that performance improvement can be achieved even for weaker classifiers (FRR-19.6%, FAR-16.7%). The architectures investigated apply to speaker verification from spoken digit strings such as credit card numbers in telephone or VOIP or internet based applications.

To err (on the road) is human? An on-road study of driver errors

Human error, its causes and consequences, and the ways in which it can be prevented, remain of great interest to road safety practitioners. This paper presents the findings derived from an on-road study of driver errors in which 25 participants drove a pre-determined route using MUARC's On-Road Test Vehicle (ORTeV). In-vehicle observers recorded the different errors made, and a range of other data was collected, including driver verbal protocols, forward, cockpit and driver video, and vehicle data (speed, braking, steering wheel angle, lane tracking etc). Participants also completed a post trial cognitive task analysis interview. The drivers tested made a range of different errors, with speeding violations, both intentional and unintentional, being the most common. Further more detailed analysis of a sub-set of specific error types indicates that driver errors have various causes, including failures in the wider road 'system' such as poor roadway design, infrastructure failures and unclear road rules. In closing, a range of potential error prevention strategies, including intelligent speed adaptation and road infrastructure design, are discussed.

What do IPAQ questions mean to older adults? Lessons from cognitive interviews

Background Most questionnaires used for physical activity (PA) surveillance have been developed for adults aged ≤65 years. Given the health benefits of PA for older adults and the aging of the population, it is important to include adults aged 65+ years in PA surveillance. However, few studies have examined how well older adults understand PA surveillance questionnaires. This study aimed to document older adults’ understanding of questions from the International PA Questionnaire (IPAQ), which is used worldwide for PA surveillance. Methods Participants were 41 community-dwelling adults aged 65-89 years. They each completed IPAQ in a face-to-face semi-structured interview, using the “think-aloud” method, in which they expressed their thoughts out loud as they answered IPAQ questions. Interviews were transcribed and coded according to a three-stage model: understanding the intent of the question; performing the primary task (conducting the mental operations required to formulate a response); and response formatting (mapping the response into pre-specified response options). Results Most difficulties occurred during the understanding and performing the primary task stages. Errors included recalling PA in an “average” week, not in the previous 7 days; including PA lasting ≤10 minutes/session; reporting the same PA twice or thrice; and including the total time of an activity for which only a part of that time was at the intensity specified in the question. Participants were unclear what activities fitted within a question’s scope and used a variety of strategies for determining the frequency and duration of their activities. Participants experienced more difficulties with the moderate-intensity PA and walking questions than with the vigorous-intensity PA questions. The sitting time question, particularly difficult for many participants, required the use of an answer strategy different from that used to answer questions about PA. Conclusions These findings indicate a need for caution in administering IPAQ to adults aged ≥65 years. Most errors resulted in over-reporting, although errors resulting in under-reporting were also noted. Given the nature of the errors made by participants, it is possible that similar errors occur when IPAQ is used in younger populations and that the errors identified could be minimized with small modifications to IPAQ.

Modeling object identification and tracking errors on image-based safety assessment of earthmoving operations

Object identification and tracking have become critical for automated on-site construction safety assessment. The primary objective of this paper is to present the development of a testbed to analyze the impact of object identification and tracking errors caused by data collection devices and algorithms used for safety assessment. The testbed models workspaces for earthmoving operations and simulates safety-related violations, including speed limit violations, access violations to dangerous areas, and close proximity violations between heavy machinery. Three different cases were analyzed based on actual earthmoving operations conducted at a limestone quarry. Using the testbed, the impacts of device and algorithm errors were investigated for safety planning purposes.

Influencing pre-service teachers, skills and attitudes towards diversity. Is DOL the Answer?

Abstract: This paper reports on a preliminary investigation into the success of an undergraduate course, in helping preservice teachers at a regional university develop the skills and attitudes necessary to design inclusive learning environments that cater for, and celebrate, difference. The study is particularly relevant given recommendations by the Education Queensland Ministerial Taskforce (Queensland Government, 2004) that all pre-service teacher education programs must ensure that inclusive education is a pervasive theme. The paper starts by providing an overview of inclusive contexts and a rationale for inclusive education including critical elements. This leads into an overview of the undergraduate course EDED11400 Managing Diversity and discussion, based on feedback from the teaching team, on the capacity for the course to help pre-service teachers develop inclusive curriculum and pedagogical practices. The pedagogical framework Dimensions of Learning* is then discussed, with consideration given to whether this framework with its focus on critical thinking and habits of mind, might improve future learning outcomes in the course EDED11400 Managing Diversity. (*Dimensions of Learning is a pedagogical framework designed to teach thinking skills (Marzano et al., 1988). It explores five types of thinking represented in the framework by five dimensions of learning.)

Chronological age and age-related cognitive deficits are associated with an increase in multiple types of driving errors in late life

Objective: Older driver research has mostly focused on identifying that small proportion of older drivers who are unsafe. Little is known about how normal cognitive changes in aging affect driving in the wider population of adults who drive regularly. We evaluated the association of cognitive function and age, with driving errors. Method: A sample of 266 drivers aged 70 to 88 years were assessed on abilities that decline in normal aging (visual attention, processing speed, inhibition, reaction time, task switching) and the UFOV® which is a validated screening instrument for older drivers. Participants completed an on-road driving test. Generalized linear models were used to estimate the associations of cognitive factor with specific driving errors and number of errors in self-directed and instructor navigated conditions. Results: All errors types increased with chronological age. Reaction time was not associated with driving errors in multivariate analyses. A cognitive factor measuring Speeded Selective Attention and Switching was uniquely associated with the most errors types. The UFOV predicted blindspot errors and errors on dual carriageways. After adjusting for age, education and gender the cognitive factors explained 7% of variance in the total number of errors in the instructor navigated condition and 4% of variance in the self-navigated condition. Conclusion: We conclude that among older drivers errors increase with age and are associated with speeded selective attention particularly when that requires attending to the stimuli in the periphery of the visual field, task switching, errors inhibiting responses and visual discrimination. These abilities should be the target of cognitive training.