The effectiveness of selected computer-generated graphics display variables was examined in a mixed-factors factorial experiment using thirty-two subjects. All subjects performed four different graph reading tasks consisting of point-reading, point-comparison, trendreading, and trend-comparison. In each task, line, point, bar, and three-dimensional bar graphs were investigated under two levels of task complexity, and two levels of coding (color and black-and-white). The effects of these independent variables on measures of task performance errors, time to complete the task, subjective mental workload, and preference ratings were obtained in real-time by a microcomputer control program. Separate MANOVA analyses of these measures for each task indicated significant effects of graph-type for the point—reading task, main effects of complexity and coding for all tasks, and a graph-by—coding interaction for the point-reading, point-comparison, and trend-reading tasks. Subsequent ANOVA analyses showed significance for these effects across several of the dependent measures which are specified in the thesis. Recommendations are made for selecting the most effective graph and coding combinations for the particular types of graph-interpretation tasks and complexity levels encountered. / Master of Science

The goal of this research was to examine the commonality of abstract diagram use in landscape architectural design by meeting the objectives of: (1) developing a use-pattern profile of abstract diagrams for design communication in the programming process, i.e., determine which diagram type is used for the communication of which programmatic design issues by private-practice firms, and (2) determining the perceptions of landscape architects in regard to clarity of understanding, ease of preparation, and frequency of use of these diagrams, also identifying any association between these perceptions. / Master of Landscape Architecture

The dissertation will outline an object-oriented model from which a next-generation GIS can be derived. The requirements for a spatial information analysis and modeling system can be broken into three primary functional classes: data management (data classification and access), analysis (modeling, optimization, and simulation) and visualization (display of data). These three functional classes can be considered as the primary colors of the spectrum from which the different shades of spatial analysis are composed. Object classes will be developed which will be designed to manipulate the three primary functions as required by the user and the data.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of carefully designed teacher training in the use of the computer to teach graphing skills associated with Algebra II conic sections. Three areas were studied: the teachers' attitude toward mathematics, and the effect on students' achievement in the area of graphing skills.

For a graph G = (V (G), E (G)), a set S ~ V (G) dominates G if each vertex in V (G) \S is adjacent to a vertex in S. The domination number I (G) (independent domination number i (G)) of G is the minimum cardinality amongst its dominating sets (independent dominating sets). G is k-edge-domination-critical, abbreviated k-1- critical, if the domination number k decreases whenever an edge is added. Further, G is hamiltonian if it has a cycle that passes through each of its vertices. This dissertation assimilates research generated by two conjectures: Conjecture I. Every 3-1-critical graph with minimum degree at least two is hamiltonian. Conjecture 2. If G is k-1-critical, then I ( G) = i ( G). The recent proof of Conjecture I is consolidated and presented accessibly. Conjecture 2 remains open for k = 3 and has been disproved for k :::>: 4. The progress is detailed and proofs of new results are presented. / Mathematical Science / M. Sc. (Mathematics)

Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2004. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigated the impact that use of a microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL), in this case the TRAC PAC and associated software, had on student understanding in relation to common 'alternative learner ideas' and difficulties related to kinematics and kinematic graphs. It was carried out in the South African context, and focussed on subject matter that learners are expected to work with in preparation for the Senior Certificate South African examination. Twenty Grade 12 learners from four different schools participated in the study. Three key questions were investigated: 1. What conceptual difficulties do learners in this context experience in relation to kinematics and kinematic graphs? 2. Does use of the TRAC PAC as a microcomputer-based laboratory contribute to learner understanding of graphs of motion and related concepts? 3. If learning is enhanced using the TRAC PAC, what are some of the 'ways of learning' evident as learners participated in the MBL programme? To answer these questions, the study employed both an empirical quantitative dimension and an ethnographic qualitative dimension. The empirical study involved the use of pre- and post-questionnaires which were administered before and after learners participated in a TRAC PACbased learning programme comprising of six 3-hour learning activities conducted over three days. Overall learner performance on the questionnaires, as well as responses to individual questions, were analysed statistically, as well as through use of an 'item and matrix' analysis technique described by Svec (1999). Chapter 8 of this document reports on this component of the study. The ethnographic component of the study made use of observational data, and transcripts of video and audio recordings of learners as they participated in the learning activities. The data gathered using these techniques was analysed largely through use of a 'verbal analysis' technique described by Chi (1997). Chapter 9 of this document reports on this component of the study. In relation to Research Question 1, the main findings of the study were: • A literature review highlighted common 'alternative learner ideas' identified by other researchers, and these allowed me to group them into four main areas. These are described in Chapter 4 of this report. • The analysis of the questionnaires highlighted 'alternative learner ideas' that the group of learners who participated in this project held. These are described in Chapter 8 of this report. • The analysis of the video and audio transcripts also allowed for the identification of 'alternative learner ideas' held by this group of learners. These are described in Chapter 9 of this report. There was a high degree of commonality between the 'alternative learner ideas' identified through use of these three different sources. Research Question 2 was answered mainly through the empirical study described in Chapter 8 of this report. It was found that the MBL experience generally resulted in an improvement in learner understanding in this area of kinematics and kinematic graphs. More detailed statistical and 'item and matrix' analyses showed that the impact on learner understanding was better in certain areas than in others. The ethnographic study described in Chapter 9 contributed to answeri The degree of learner involvement in learning activities seemed to impact on the effectiveness of the programme. Possible factors impacting on involvement were identified . • 'Alternative learner ideas' were made visible in the context of 'argumentation episodes' and 'discussion and explanation episodes'. Consequently, these formed the contexts in which shifts in understanding were most likely to take place. Key learner behaviours and skills necessary for participation in these episodes are identified, and linked to success and non-success on the programme. Recommendations arrsmg from findings m the study are described m Chapters 8, 9 and 10of this report. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie ondersoek bestudeer gebaseerde laboratorium, III gepaardgaande sagteware, op kinematikagrafieke het. die uitwerking wat 'n hierdie geval die TRAC studente se begrip van mikro-rekenaar PAC en die kinematika en Die ondersoek is III 'n Suid-Afrikaanse konteks uitgevoer en is toegespits op die vakmateriaal wat leerders behoort te beheers ter voorbereiding vir die Suid-Afrikaanse Senior Sertifikaat. Twintig Graad 12' s van vier verskillende skole het aan die ondersoek deelgeneem. Drie sleutelvrae is ondersoek: 1. Watter begripsprobleme ondervind leerders in hierdie verband met betrekking tot kinematika en kinematikagrafieke? 2. Dra die gebruik van die TRAC PAC as 'n mikro-rekenaar gebaseerde laboratorium by tot die leerder se begrip van kinematikagrafieke en verwante begrippe? 3. Indien "leer" deur die gebruik van die TRAC PAC bevorder word, watter "vorme van leer" is waarneembaar as leerders deelneem aan die MBL-program? Beide 'n empiries-kwantitatiewe dimensie en 'n etnografiese kwalitatiewe dimensie is in die navorsing gebruik. Die empiriese ondersoek maak van beide 'n voortoets en 'n na-toets gebruik. Hierdie vrae is aan die leerders voorsien voordat asook nadat hulle aan die TRAC PAC gebaseerde leerprogram deelgeneem het. Die leerprogram het bestaan uit ses leeraktiwiteite, elk drie uur lank, wat oor 'n tydperk van drie dae gedoen is. Die leerders se prestasie/uitslae met betrekking tot die vrae asook hul reaksie op individuele vrae is statisties ontleed, asook met behulp van die 'item en matriks' analitiese tegniek soos deur Svec (1999) beskryf. Hoofstuk 8 van hierdie verslag verwys na hierdie deel van die ondersoek. Die etnografiese komponent van die die ondersoek maak gebruik van waarnemingsdata en transkripsies van band- en video-opnames van leerders verkry tydens hul deelname aan die leeraktiwiteite. Die data so verkry, IS hoofsaaklik geanaliseer deur van die 'n verbale analise-tegniek gebruik te maak soos deur Chi (1999) voorgestel. Hoofstuk 9 van hierdie dokument doen verslag oor hierdie komponent van die ondersoek. Wat Navorsingsvraag 1 betref, IS die hoofbevindings van die studie die volgende: • 'n literatuur-oorsig beklemtoon die algemene alternatiewe leerderopvattings wat deur ander navorsers geidentifiseer is. Dit het my in staat gestelom hulle in 4 hoofareas te groepeer wat ek in hoofstuk 4 van die verslag bespreek. • Die analise van die vraelyste beklemtoon die alternatiewe leerderopvattings van die groep leerders wat aan hierdie proj ek deelgeneem het. Dit word in hoofstuk 8 van hierdie verslag bespreek. • Die analise van die band- en video-opnames het ook bygedra tot die identifikasie van' alternatiewe leerder-idees' wat by hierdie groep leerders voorkom. Dit word in hoofstuk 9 van hierdie verslag bespreek. Daar is 'n groot mate van ooreenkoms ten opsigte van die alternatiewe leerderopvattings wat by hierdie drie verskillende groepe voorkom. Navorsingsvraag 2 is hoofsaaklik beantwoord deur die emprrrese studie wat in hoofstuk 8 van hierdie verslag bespreek word. Daar is bevind dat die MBLondervinding oor die algemeen 'n vebetering in die leerders se begrip ten opsigte van kinematika en kinematikagrafieke tot gevolg gehad het. 'n Meer gedetailleerde statistiese 'item en matriks' -analise het getoon dat die uitwerking op die leerders se begrip in sommige areas beter was as in ander. Die etnografiese studie wat in hoofstuk 9 van hierdie verslag beskryf word, dra by tot die beantwoording van Navorsingsvraag 3. Sleutelbevindings met betrekking tot hierdie vraag sluit onder andere in: • Leerderdeelname aan leeraktiwiteite hou skynbaar verband met die sukses wat hulle in die program behaal. Moontlike faktore wat 'n invloed op deelname kon hê, is geidentifiseer. • Alternatiewe leerderopvattings is In die konteks van 'beredeneringsepisodes ' en 'besprekings- en verduidelikings-episodes' uitgelig. Hierdie "episodes" het die waarskynlikste verband uitgewys waarbinne veranderings van insig/begrip kan plaasvind. Kernleerdergedrag en vaardighede wat noodsaaklik IS vir die deelname aan hierdie episodes is geidentifiseer, en is gekoppel aan 'n leerder se sukses en mislukking tydens deelname aan die program. Aanbevelings wat voortspruit uit die bevindings van die ondersoek word In hoofstukke 8, 9 en 10 van hierdie verslag, bespreek.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the graphing calculator on the achievement, attitude toward mathematics, and confidence in learning mathematics of Algebra II students.

This research examines how incorporating interactivity into online video advertisements effects the following key marketing dependent variables: a) Involvement with the Advertisement, b) Ad Recall, c) Attitude towards the website, d) Attitude towards the Advertisement, e) Attitude towards the Brand, and f) Purchase Intention. Deriving from past Interactivity research, three important facets of interactivity are identified; User Control, Two-way Communication and Synchronicity. In order to test an Internet based 2 (User Control: high or low) X 2 (two-way communication: high or low) X 2 (synchronicity: high or low) between subjects experimental design, 8 different online video platforms were created. The online video experiment was administered to approximately 400 students in a large South-Eastern school. Overall the findings regarding interactivity in online video advertising found no significant effect of synchronicity on the dependent variables. There was however a significant interaction effect of user control and two-way communication on the dependent variables. These interaction effects were examined further with a cell means multiple comparison analysis. User control and two-way communication were found to have a significant interaction effect on ad recall, purchase intention and attitude towards the brand. User control had a significant effect on involvement and two-way communication had a significant effect on attitude towards the website. There was no effect of UC or TWC on attitude towards the ad. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis will explore the vital importance of empathy on the part of graphic designers when creating information graphics. Today’s over-mediated public expects a rich user experience that is emotionally engaging, and multi-sensory by nature. To meet the public’s need, graphic designers must accept the cognitive responsibility to be empathetic to the viewers’ relationship to the information, and not just the surface issues of form, media, and content. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Besides finding changing areas based on the number of node and edge evolutions, a more interesting problem is to analyze the impact of these evolutions to graphs and find the regions that exhibit significant changes when these evolutions happen. The more different the relationship between nodes in a certain region is, the more significant this region is. This problem is challenging since it is hard to define the range of changing regions that is closely related to actual evolutions. We formalize the problem by using a similarity measure based on neighborhood random walks, and design an efficient algorithm which is able to identify the significant changing regions without recomputing all similarities. Meaningful examples in experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms. / Graph patterns are able to represent the complex structural relations among objects in many applications in various domains. Managing and mining graph data, on which we study in this thesis, are no doubt among the most important tasks. We focus on two challenging problems, namely, graph summarization and graph change detection. / In the area of summarizing a collection of graphs, we study the problem of summarizing frequent subgraphs, since it is not much necessary to summarize a collection of random graphs. The bottleneck for exploring and understanding frequent subgraphs is that they are numerous. A summary can be a solution to this issue, so the goal of frequent subgraph summarization is to minimize the restoration errors of the structure and the frequency information. The unique challenge in frequent subgraph summarization comes from the fact that a subgraph can have multiple embeddings in a summarization template graph. We handle this issue by introducing a partial order between edges to allow accurate structure and frequency estimation based on an independence probabilistic model. The proposed algorithm discovers k summarization templates in a top-down fashion to control the restoration error of frequencies within sigma. There is no restoration error of structures. Experiments on both real and synthetic graph datasets show that our framework can control the frequency restoration error within 10% by a compact summarization model. / The objective of graph change detection is to discover the changing areas on graphs when they evolves at a high speed. The most changing areas are those areas having the highest number of evolutions (additions/deletions) of nodes and edges, which is called burst areas. We study on finding the most burst areas in a stream of fast graph evolutions. We propose to use Haar wavelet tree to monitor the upper bound of the number of evolutions. Our approach monitors all potential changing areas of different sizes and computes incrementally the number of evolutions in those areas. The top-k burst areas are returned as soon as they are detected. Our solution is capable of handling a large amount of evolutions in a short time, which is consistent to the experimental results. / The objective of graph summarization is to obtain a concise representation of a single large graph or a collection of graphs, which is interpretable and suitable for analysis. A good summary can reveal the hidden relationships between nodes in a graph. The key issue of summarizing a single graph is how to construct a high-quality and representative summary, which is in the form of a super-graph. We propose an entropy-based unified model for measuring the homogeneity of the super-graph. The best summary in terms of homogeneity could be too large to explore. By using the unified model, we relax three summarization criteria to obtain an approximate homogeneous summary of appropriate size. We propose both agglomerative and divisive algorithms for approximate summarization, as well as pruning techniques and heuristics for both algorithms to save computation cost. Experimental results confirm that our approaches can efficiently generate high-quality summaries. / Liu, Zheng. / Advisers: Wai Lam; Jeffrey Xu Yu. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-141). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.