Education for Operational Research. A Practitioner's Viewpoint

University education for operational research in Britain is making great and welcome strides forward, but there has been little open discussion of its aims in relation to the advance of the profession. Progress in operational research, and in its application to the really worth-while problems of industry in particular, depends primarily on strengthening the industrial operational research group in its “front line” role. We need a research study of the teaching and practice of industrial operational research, in relation to effectiveness. We need “collaborative” programmes of operational research education in which the university and the industrial operational research group each contribute, in a man's training over a period of years, in the ways in which each is most competent. We need emphasis on “breadth” as well as “depth” in operational research education, and greater attention to the mutual contributions of operational research, teaching and practice, and the teaching and development of management. An impressionist sketch of a programme which might meet these needs is put forward for discussion of principles and feasibility.     

Interpretations of National Curricula: the case of geometry in textbooks from England and Japan

This paper reports on how the geometry component of the National Curricula for mathematics in Japan and in one selected country of the UK, specifically England, is interpreted in school mathematics textbooks from major publishers sampled from each country. The findings we report identify features of geometry, and approaches to geometry teaching and learning, that are found in a sample of textbooks aimed at students in Grade 8 (aged 13–14). Our analysis raises two issues which are widely recognised as very important in mathematics education: the teaching of mathematical reasoning and proof, and the teaching of problem-solving. In terms of the teaching of mathematical reasoning and proof, our evidence indicates that this is dispersed in the textbook in England while it is concentrated in geometry in the textbook in Japan. In terms of the teaching of mathematical problem-solving and modeling, our analysis shows that it is more concentrated in the textbook from England, and rather more dispersed in the textbook from Japan. These findings indicate how important it is to consider ways in which these issues can be carefully designed in the geometry sections of future textbooks.     

成渝地区双城经济圈核心城市的博弈分析与对策研究——以交通物流基础设施建设为例

推进成渝地区双城经济圈建设已经上升为国家发展战略.以交通物流基础设施建设为例,从个体理性和团体理性两个方面,对竞争状态、合作状态和混合状态三种情况分别构建博弈关系模型并求解,得出结论:在成渝地区双城经济圈建设交通物流基础设施的过程中,核心城市的个体利益大于团体利益,表现为个体理性与团体理性之间的冲突,即两者存在非合作博弈关系.最后针对核心城市存在的非合作博弈关系,提出促进成渝地区双城经济圈核心城市协同发展的对策建议.     

火灾发生的周期性规律及其在火灾非线性组合预测模型中应用

研究火灾发生规律及发展趋势,具有实用价值.分析历年中国火灾统计数据,发现中国火灾的发生规律同时具有增长趋势性和周期波动性特征:①中国火灾从90年代开始大幅度增加,在2002年达到最大,然后逐年缓慢下降;②每年12个月呈正弦函数波动,周期为12,1、2月发生起数最大,8、9月最小.借助于M ATLAB软件,根据2000-2006年中国火灾统计数据,建立火灾的月发生起数的非线性周期性组合预测模型,预测值与实际值的平均相对误差小于0.07.研究结论为消防研究、消防部门决策提供科学依据.     

Conceptualizations of slope in Mexican intended curriculum

Slope is a fundamental mathematics concept in middle and high school that transcends to the university level. An understanding of slope is needed at the university level since slope plays an important role in understanding problems involving variation and change. In this study Mexican curricula documents were examined to determine which conceptualizations of slope are addressed in the intended mathematics curriculum. To explain the results, we use conceptualizations of slope identified in previous research. Our findings reveal that, to a certain extent, the conceptualizations proposed in the Mexican intended mathematics curriculum differ slightly in terms of the emphasis and timing of instruction from what others have identified in the U.S., with slope as a geometric ratio receiving less emphasis in the Mexican curriculum. There was also noted discontinuity within the Mexican curriculum in introducing slope in grade 9 and subsequently introducing of linear functions in grade 10 without explicit mention of slope. Suggestions are made for future studies, both to consider the conceptualizations of slope promoted in the Mexican textbooks and the impact they have in classroom instruction and student learning of slope.     

On slice hyperholomorphic fractional Hardy spaces

In this paper we introduce and study the fractional Hardy spaces of the half space and of the unit ball in the quaternionic setting. In particular, we discuss their properties of invariance and of factorization in terms of functions in the Hardy space of the half space in the first case, and in terms of a suitable reproducing kernel Hilbert space in the case of the unit ball.     

“Do we teach subjects or students?” Analyzing science and mathematics teacher conversations about issues of equity in the classroom

Teachers involved in a Master's level course in diversity participated in virtual, synchronous, anonymized discussions around issues of ethnic and racial diversity, gender, and stereotypes that could impact their students’ participation in fields related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Guided by theoretical frameworks from Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), a convenience sample of 14 science and mathematics teachers participated in a series of virtual chats using open‐ended questioning and facilitated by two university instructors. Using conversation and critical discourse analyses, three primary themes emerged: understanding of issues related to stereotypes, encouragement of females and minorities to pursue careers in STEM, and the place for diversity discussions in science and mathematics classrooms. The teachers felt burdened by curricular and administrative constraints that inhibit their ability to participate in thought‐provoking critical conversations. The paper concludes with a discussion of ways teachers can assist in the STEM career identity development of their underrepresented females and students of color and calls for research that combines the key findings in SCCT and CRT to build confidence and capacity for teachers to effectively confront issues of racism, sexism, and stereotyping in science and mathematics classrooms.     

Scan Statistics on Enron Graphs

We introduce a theory of scan statistics on graphs and apply the ideas to the problem of anomaly detection in a time series of Enron email graphs. Previous presentation: Workshop on Link Analysis, Counterterrorism and Security at the SIAM International Conference on Data Mining, Newport Beach, CA, April 23, 2005. Carey E. Priebe received the B.S. degree in mathematics from Purdue University in 1984, the M.S. degree in computer science from San Diego State University in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree in information technology (computational statistics) from George Mason University in 1993. From 1985 to 1994 he worked as a mathematician and scientist in the US Navy research and development laboratory system. Since 1994 he has been a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. At Johns Hopkins, he holds joint appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Imaging Science. He is a past President of the Interface Foundation of North America—Computing Science & Statistics, a past Chair of the Section on Statistical Computing of the American Statistical Association, and on the editorial boards of Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, and Computational Statistics. His research interests are in computational statistics, kernel and mixture estimates, statistical pattern recognition, statistical image analysis, and statistical inference for high-dimensional and graph data. He was elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2002. John M. Conroy received a B.S. in Mathematics from Saint Joseph's University in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland in 1986. Since then he has been a research staff member for the IDA Center for Computing Sciences in Bowie, MD. His research interest is applications of numerical linear algebra. He is a member of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Association for Computational Linguistics. David J. Marchette received a B.A. in 1980, and an M.A. in mathematics in 1982, from the University of California at San Diego. He received a Ph.D. in Computational Sciences and Informatics in 1996 from George Mason University under the direction of Ed Wegman. From 1985–1994 he worked at the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego doing research on pattern recognition and computational statistics. In 1994 he moved to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren Virginia where he does research in computational statistics and pattern recognition, primarily applied to image processing, text processing, automatic target recognition and computer security. Dr. Marchette is a Fellow of the American Statistical Society. Youngser Park received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Inha University in Korea in 1985, the M.S. degree in computer science from The George Washington University in 1991, and had pursued a doctoral degree there. From 1998 to 2000 he worked at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes as a senior research engineer. Since 2003 he is working as a research analyst in the Center for Imaging Science at the Johns Hopkins University. His research interests are clustering algorithm, pattern classification, and data mining.     

Socio-economic and cultural mediators of mathematics achievement and between-school equity in mathematics education at the global level

This paper aims at identifying and understanding how and to what extent socioeconomic and cultural factors mediate mathematics achievement and between-school equity in mathematics education among countries. First, under the assumption that equity and quality of education are independent constructs, the construct of equity-in-quality in mathematics education is developed. Second, the 18 countries that were identified in the previous work of the author Jurdak in (Toward equity in quality in mathematics education. Springer, New York, 2009) as being diverse in mathematics education will serve as study cases to illustrate, compare, and contrast the mediatory role of socio-economic and cultural factors in mathematics achievement and between-school equity in mathematics education. The results show that the differences in mathematics achievement and between-school equity in mathematics education at the country level are associated with, and can be accounted for in some cases, by socioeconomic and cultural factors.     

Metaphoric and metonymic signification in mathematics

This paper explores the roles of metaphor and metonymy in making sense of the ambiguities inherent in representation of mathematical constructs. Using the metaphors of “chains of signification” and “descent into meaning” for metonymies and metaphors respectively, these literary figures are discussed with regard to their use in mathematics. Synonymy, homonymy and polysemy are viewed as explanatory constructs in an analysis of ways in which metaphor and metonymy aid learners and mathematicians alike in making sense of mathematical ideas and resolving ambiguities.     

Mathematics textbooks and their use in English, French and German classrooms:

After a through review of the relevant literature in terms of textbook analysis and mathematics teachers' user of textbooks in school contexts, this paper reports on selected and early findings from a study of mathematics textbooks and their use in English, French and German mathematics classrooms at lower secondary level. The research reviewed in the literature section raises important questions about textbooks as representations of the curriculum and about their role as a link between curriculum and pedagogy. Teachers, in tunr, appear to exercise control over the curriculum as it is enacted by using texts in the service of their own perceptions of teaching and learning. The second and main part of the paper analyses the ways in which textbooks vary and are used by teachers in classroom contexts and how this influences the culture of the mathematics classroom. The findings of the research demonstrate that classroom cultures are shaped by at least two factors: teachers' pedagogic principles in their immediate school and classroom context; and a system's educational and cultural traditions as they develop over time. It is argued that mathematics classroom cultures need to be understood in terms of a wider cultural and systemic context, in order for shared understandings, principles and meanings to be established, whether for promotion of classroom reform or simply for developing a better understanding of this vital component of the mathematics education process.     

The Development of Comprehension of Chance Language: Evaluation and Interpretation

Comprehension of chance language, such as is found in newspapers, is a fundamental aspect of statistical literacy. In this study, students' understandings of chance language were explored through responses to two items in surveys administered to 2,726 students from grades 5 to 11. One item involved evaluating the chance expressed in phrases from newspaper headlines using a number line, and responses were described in four levels of chance language evaluation. The other item involved interpreting, in context, an expression of percent chance, and responses were described in four levels of chance language interpretation. Students in higher grades were more likely to demonstrate higher levels of both evaluation and interpretation. The association between levels of evaluation and interpretation was further explored generally and in relation to one of the headlines involving percent. Implications for mathematics educators in relation to chance language in the curriculum across the years of schooling are discussed.     

Multiple structural changes in the tail behavior: Evidence from stock index futures returns

The study provides an approach of nonlinear analysis for detecting multiple structural changes in the tails of financial returns distributions. The proposed approach can simultaneously determine the number of structural breaks in a series of tail-indexes and estimate the mean tail-index levels in distinct regimes. The method is applied to the tail behavior of DJIA futures returns. The sample period covered various recent financial crises, and ran from October 1999 to December 2003, enabling assessment of the relationships between changes in the tail shape of returns distribution and known extreme events in financial markets. The empirical results demonstrate the existence of at least one break point in the left and common tails of the DJIA futures returns distribution during the sample period, and the mean tail-index levels in different regimes classified by estimated break points display an increase in the left and common tails that coincides the phenomenon of gradually decreasing financial turbulence in DJIA futures contracts. The empirical evidence indicates that the structural changes in the tail behavior of the distribution of DJIA futures returns are associated more with negative shocks than positive ones, creating differences in risk management between long and short investors in futures markets.     

Reasoning about variation in the intensity of change in covarying quantities involved in rate of change

This paper extends work in the area of quantitative reasoning related to rate of change by investigating numerical and nonnumerical reasoning about covarying quantities involved in rate of change via tasks involving multiple representations of covarying quantities. The findings suggest that by systematically varying one quantity, an individual could simultaneously attend to variation in the intensity of change in a quantity indicating a relationship between covarying quantities. The results document how a secondary student, prior to formal instruction in calculus, reasoned numerically and nonnumerically about covarying quantities involved in rate of change in a way that was mathematically powerful and yet not ratio-based. I discuss how coordinating covariational and transformational reasoning supports attending to variation in the intensity of change in quantities involved in rate of change.     

An overview of the gender factor in mathematics in TIMSS-2003 for the Asia-Pacific region

This paper highlights the gender factor in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study in 2003 (TIMSS-2003) of eight participating countries from the Asia-Pacific region: Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong-SAR, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines (Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong-SAR will be referred to as countries in this paper.) in mathematics. The focus is on gender-related data encompassing the overall performance of students from the participating countries and their performance in the content and cognitive domains. At grade 8 level, the gender difference in the overall performance of students mirrored the international average and favored girls in all countries of the Asia-Pacific region (except in Japan and the Republic of Korea). The regional data also showed that, in general, the Philippines and Singapore can be considered to be at one extreme with gender differences favoring girls in both content and cognitive domains, and the Republic of Korea and to some extent Japan are at the other extreme with the gender differences favoring boys. At grade 4 level, girls from the Philippines and Singapore also performed better than the boys whereas the boys from Japan and Chinese Taipei did slightly better than the girls.     

基于改进DEA——以复相关系数为基准的滞后期的我国产业结构演化效率评价

为了评价我国的产业结构演化效率,本文构建了我国产业结构演化评价指标体系。针对传统DEA方法的局限性,文中引入以复相关系数为基准的滞后期,解决了产业结构演化评价中投入和产出之间的滞后性问题,建立更加有效的DEA改进模型,对我国产业结构演化效率进行评价。结论表明,各产业技术效率大部分时间大于规模效率,而且投入要素出现不同程度的冗余情况,近年来,第一、二产业固定资产投资和就业人员冗余程度有减轻的趋势,第二产业能源和水资源消耗较大,同时第三产业各要素冗余程度均有所加深。针对这一现象,本文提出了相关对策建议。     

浅析数学建模

数学建模在数学和其他学科的发展过程中具有重要的意义.数学建模有助于学生感受数学在解决实际问题中的价值和作用,体验综合运用知识和方法解决实际问题的过程;有助于激发学生学习数学的兴趣,培养学生的创新意识和实践能力.数学建模竞赛的开展有力地推动了高等院校数学教学体系、教学内容和教学方式的改革.     

商科型高校理工类研究生创新能力的培养

目前,研究生教育处于我国高等教育的最高层次,肩负着为国家发展培养高技术专业型人才的重要任务.尤其是在各国竞争愈发激烈的今天,理工类研究生更是在未来国家现代化建设、科技创新中发挥着重要作用.但是,由于近几年研究生招生规模的逐渐扩大,研究生的培养模式、培养质量等方面出现了许多亟待解决的问题.从商科型高校理工类研究生的培养现状出发,通过运用文献法和归纳法,本文对当前研究生培养过程中存在的问题进行分析,并针对学生创新能力的培养,从学校、导师和学生自身三方面给出了相应的解决措施,着重强调了数学建模在理工类研究生创新能力培养过程中所发挥的重要作用.最后,以湖南工商大学近几年在理工类研究生创新能力培养实践中所采取的主要举措以及取得的成效来进一步论证本文所提出措施的有效性.