Two models for aggregating subjective probabilities are presented. One employs a multiplicative rule and the other a weighted average. The choice of a model is based on the type of evidence upon which the subjective probabilities were estimated. An experiment was developed to determine if people are sensitive to this difference in the type of evidence when combining subjective probabilities. Two other variables tested were the tense of the event and the experience of the subject with the use of probabilities. The type of evidence presented had an effect on the combination rule employed, whereas tense of the event did not. The naive and expert subjects approached the problems differently. An order effect due to the presentation order of the evidence within a problem was found. A momentum tendency, which may explain the order effect, was present in the expert subjects. Further research on combining subjective probabilities is indicated.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Mechanical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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While there is much data in the experimental cognitive psychology literature reporting that subjects working on science-like tasks ignore findings inconsistent with their hypotheses, much cognitive science research has found that reasoners focus on unexpected findings. To study how real-world scientists deal with unexpected findings, data was collected from a prominent immunology laboratory. Four lab meetings were analyzed using a standardized coding procedure. The amount of reasoning, interactions, and new hypotheses about unexpected versus expected findings was analyzed. Presenters at the meetings reasoned more about unexpected than expected findings, and group members reasoned and interacted extensively about unexpected findings. Both presenter and group members formed more new hypotheses about unexpected than about expected findings. These results are consistent with the finding in cognitive science research that reasoners focus on unexpected data. It is proposed that several heuristics influence which unexpected findings scientists pay attention to.

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in the wind clothes dance on a line is the conceptualization and articulation of performative inquiry as a research methodology within the field of education. Performative inquiry invites innovative and non-linear investigations, playing upon the multiple realities and interpretations of co-evolving worlds realized and recognized through creative action and interaction between researcher/teacher and participants/students within individual and shared, existing and imagined environments through motivating (im)pulse(s) of inquiry. Performative inquiry is elusively and momentarily balanced on the "edge of chaos" within the interstices of enactivism, complexity, interpretation, and performance. In articulating an ecological-cognitive reading of performance, I am in company with curricular theorists who envision curriculum as a journey and expression of students' and teachers' shared investigations within co-evolving landscapes of action and interaction., in the wind clothes dance on a line is a playfull response to current conversations among researchers seeking recognition and articulation of arts-based processes as legitimate site(s) and praxis of research. Performative inquiry offers researchers —- in drama education, in particular, and in education, in general, — a theoretical and practical venue to investigate their fields of inquiry through an integrated vehicle of body, mind and imagination. This dissertation is informed by a three year science education research project (1995- 1997) conducted with science educator, Karen Meyer. Our research investigated the teaching and learning of science education through drama and storytelling, culminating in a performance piece, Light Sound Movin' Around: What Are Monsters Made Of? Follow-up interviews with pre-service teachers speak eloquently to the possibility and power of performative inquiry as a research tool and learning vehicle in science education, in the wind clothes dance on a line has been imagined "in the air" through moments realized and recognized during the science education research project and through my work as a performing arts educator. And it is these moments that set the clothes dancing in the wind. in the wind clothes dance on a line is a conceptual piece, a performative work through which the reader will hopefully realize and recognize his or her own imaginings and interstandings of possible universes within education.

Even though Scrum is nowadays widely known in the Software Industry field and its theoretical frame extensively described in the literature, its implementation is far from being straightforward. As a matter of fact, the literature describes a meta-process that new practitioners must adapt to their project specific constraints. However, this practical aspect is crucial and very scarcely tackled. To that extend, this thesis work describes the difficulties we faced while putting Scrum into practice and how, through the study of the project contextual factors, the insight of a Proof Of Concept and the support of a couple of agile practices, we worked it out.