Colour influences the human mind and body through physical as well as psychological reactions to specific colours. These reactions are conditioned by previous experiences leading to certain preferences, associations and perceptions regarding certain colours. There are various aspects within a firm where colour may be utilised to the benefit of its marketing efforts. Marketers must realise that colour may be very influential and it is important to pay close attention to the associations and preferences of the firm’s target market(s) the influence of colour on human perceptions has been widely studied in many research fields. Most marketers recognise the importance of colour within the marketing environment (Section 1.1). Colour has different meanings for different people and these differences need to be acknowledged to ensure success in marketing efforts. If colour is used strategically within the marketing mix (product, place and promotion) of a firm, it may influence consumers positively (Section 1.2). This study endeavoured to determine the colour preferences, associations and perceptions of Generation Y students in South Africa. The findings of this study will be of value to those marketers who target this cohort and may utilised by them to use colour more effectively within their marketing mix. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of colour on the consumer behaviour of Generation Y students in the South African market. The research study investigated the following aspects: • The colour preferences of Generation Y students. • Emotions Generation Y students associate with different colours. • How Generation Y students perceive various colours. • Product colour and product packaging colour preferences of Generation Y students. • Consumer behaviour patterns of Generation Y students regarding specified products. For this study, the target population comprised of Generation Y students registered at South Africa’s public higher education institutions (HEIs). The sampling frame consisted of a list of South Africa’s 23 public HEIs, as stipulated by the Department of Higher Education and Training (2011). This study made use of a non-probability convenience sample of two HEI campuses located in the Vaal Triangle region of South Africa’s Gauteng province that was drawn from the sampling frame. Thereafter, a convenience sample of 500 under-graduate students was drawn from these HEI campuses - 250 students per campus. A structure self-administered questionnaire was distributed to the respondents. The questionnaire requested respondents to rank colours according to preferences, on a four- and seven-point Likert scales were used respectively to determine colour associations and perceptions. The questionnaire also contained questions using a four-point Likert scale designed to determine product colour and product-package colour preferences as well as questions designed to determine consumer behaviour patterns of Generation Y students regarding certain products. In addition, the respondents were asked to provide certain demographic data. The findings indicate that Generation Y students have distinctive colour preferences, associations and perceptions. The respondents also indicated a number of notable product and product package preferences as well as particular consumer behaviour traits. When comparing male and female respondents as well as black and white respondents respectively, the results depicted various statistical significant differences (p < 0.05). Cohen’s D statistic was computed to determine the level of practical significance of these differences. From this, it is evident that colour do influence Generation Y students’ consumer behaviour and perceptions to some extent. Colour is present in every aspect of marketing. If used strategically, colour may be used by marketers to influence their target market’s perceptions and preferences. The findings emanating from this study should be used as a guideline to incorporate colour into the design of the marketing mix (colour) in such a way as to appeal to Generation Y students. / MCom, Marketing Management, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2012

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Two highly effective content-adaptive methods for generating Delaunay mesh models of images, known as IID1 and IID2, are proposed. The methods repeatedly alternate between mesh simplification and refinement, based on the incremental/decremental mesh-generation framework of Adams, which has several free parameters. The effect of different choices of the framework's free parameters is studied, and the results are used to derive two mesh-generation methods that differ in computational complexity. The higher complexity IID2 method generates mesh models of superior reconstruction quality, while the lower complexity IID1 method trades mesh quality in return for a decrease in computational cost. Some of the contributions of our work include the recommendation of a better choice for the growth-schedule parameter of the framework, as well as the use of Floyd-Steinberg error diffusion for the initial-mesh selection. As part of our work, we evaluated the performance of the proposed methods using a data set of 50 images varying in type (e.g., photographic, computer generated, and medical), size and bit depth with multiple target mesh densities ranging from 0.125% to 4%. The experimental results show that our proposed methods perform extremely well, yielding high-quality image approximations in terms of peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and subjective visual quality, at an equivalent or lower computational cost compared to other well known approaches such as the ID1, ID2, and IDDT methods of Adams, and the greedy point removal (GPR) scheme of Demaret and Iske. More specifically, the IID2 method outperforms the GPR scheme in terms of mesh quality by 0.2-1.0 dB with a 62-93% decrease in computational cost. Furthermore, the IID2 method yields meshes of similar quality to the ID2 method at a computational cost that is lower by 9-41%. The IID1 method provides improvements in mesh quality in 93% of the test cases by margins of 0.04-1.31 dB compared to the IDDT scheme, while having a similar complexity. Moreover, reductions in execution time of 4-59% are achieved compared to the ID1 method in 86% of the test cases. / Graduate / 0544, 0984, 0537 / marzouki@uvic.ca

Abstract This study investigates three primary school teachers’ experiences of working with formative assessment intended to develop pupils’ writing development. The study applies a sociocultural perspective to examine how teachers in grades 1–2 reason about their use of formative assessment to develop pupils’ writing. The study seeks to ascertain how the teachers reason about pupils’ texts in relation to the text triangle. The results of the study show that the teachers, in their work with formative assessment and writing development, proceed from set goals for the term which apply to all the pupils in that year. The teachers make the pupils aware of these goals by returning to them several times during the term. The intention is to remind the pupils of the goals. The three teachers also work with individual goals for the pupils via the pupils’ individual development plans. The informants all reason in much the same way about formative assessment in writing instruction in relation to the text triangle. The teachers consider that they work with the different qualities shown in the different levels of the text triangle, based on the pupils’ prior knowledge and experience of writing.

Today, organisations are increasingly using project-based activities, as projects can aid organisations to deal with unique and complicated assignments, as well as achieving strategic and operational goals. Two extensive project management methodologies exist, those being Traditional Project Management and Agile Project Management. Agile methods trademark change, adaptability, and flexibility, and are today used across industries and business, as the characteristics of the methodology make it suitable in today’s dynamic business environment. Even though projects are increasingly being used, it is inconsistent with the remarkably low project success rates found. It has been found that only 30 per cent of projects are successful within the technology field. Consequently, this stress the need to understand the inconsistencies found as well as generating suggestions for how to improve them. It is arguable that the inconsistencies may be caused by the difficulty to define project success. Researchers argue that the definition of project success is difficult to pinpoint as it varies depending on both individual perspectives and situational factors such as the organisation and the project type. It is also questionable whether or not appropriate methods have been used to evaluate the success of a project, and that the use of inappropriate methods may have contributed to the low success rates. Researchers argue that the traditional way of evaluating project success, by adhering to schedule, cost, and scope, is outdated and incomplete, and some have therefore developed new models that they consider more accurate for evaluating project success. One of these researchers is Highsmith, one of the founders of the Agile Manifesto. Highsmith has developed the Agile Triangle to better correspond to the agile trademarks of change, adaptability, and flexibility when evaluating success on agile projects. This study aimed to contribute with new insights into theoretical and practical aspects of agile project success by studying agile project success from a project manager perspective. This thesis also aimed to generate an understanding of project managers’ perception of the Agile Triangle as a success criterion. We interviewed seven Swedish project managers who have all worked with agile projects. After thoroughly analysing the results we could create a definition of agile project success as well as develop an Agile Project Success Criteria Model, representing the view of Swedish project managers. Agile project success was defined as a project that generates value in a sustainable manner. The agile project success criteria found important within this study are: Value, Team Success, Quality, Business Benefits, and Constraints. It was also found that Flexibility, even though it should not be included as a success criterion itself, is still a key ingredient when using Agile Project Management methodologies, as it affects all important success criteria. These findings highlight the insufficiency of the Agile Triangle as a success criterion, as Team Success and Business Benefits, criteria additional to those within the Agile Triangle, were found important. It was also found that the project managers question the practical applicability of the Agile Triangle and consider it to be similar to the Iron Triangle.

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / Douglas Goodin / In this thesis, I proposed a new surface dryness index based on the slope of soil moisture isolines in the Land Surface Temperature/Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (LST/NDVI) feature space. This index, referred to here as Dryness Slope Index (DSI), overcomes the problem of Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) having different basis when calculating TVDI values across different images. This problem is rooted in the definition of TVDI whose calculation depends on the position of the “dry edge” and “wet edge” of pixels’ values in the LST/NDVI space of a specific image. The “wet edge” has a fairly stable physical meaning, which represents soil at field capacity or above, and it remains stable across a time series of images. However, the position of “dry edge” represents the driest condition in the image, which does not necessarily mean that the soil is completely dry. Therefore, the value of TVDI calculated from different images is not based on an invariant dry edge value as its baseline, and it is therefore likely to lead to incorrect conclusion if used without extra examination. This problem manifests itself when comparing TVDI values from different images with meteorological data. Results from similar analyses done with DSI showed more reasonable match with the validation data, indicating DSI is a more robust surface dryness index than TVDI. Having verified DSI can be effectively used in estimating soil moisture, I applied DSI on Landsat5 TM to study the relationship between soil moisture and land cover, slope, aspect, and relative elevation. Results showed that land cover accounts the most for variations of estimated soil moisture. I also applied DSI on a long time-series (2000 to 2014) of MODIS data trying to explore the temporal evolution of soil moisture in the entire Flint Hills ecoregion. Results showed little correlation between time and estimated soil moisture, indicating that no noticeable changes in soil moisture has been found through all these years.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Title of work: Modern training equipmens for ice hockey Goal of work: Using standardized interviews to determine the frequency of use of modern hockey equipment abroad, then through a questionnaire survey, the frequency and the current status of the use of modern hockey equipment for ice hockey players aged 12-13 years in the Czech Republic. According to the findings recommend examples of training exercises that are suitable for the development of skills for players to prepare for the ice and off the ice. Method: Observation, indirect observation, document analysis, questionnaire survey, data analysis, standardized interview. Results: The results of the thesis we have shown that the frequency and condition using modern training aids for ice hockey in the Czech Republic compared to other countries at a low level. Some tools are used by us all. 40% of those surveyed teams in our equipment in use. On this basis, I recommend examples of training exercises with the use of modern equipment for ice hockey, and I brought a few suggestions on how to properly work with modern tools. Keywords: Ice Hockey, Skating, Stickhandling, Equipmens, Slide Board, Passmaster, Attack triangle, SweetHands

Denote by gdist(p) the least number of cells that have to be changed to get a latin square from the table of addition modulo prime p. A conjecture of Drápal, Cavenagh and Wanless states that there exists c > 0 such that gdist(p) ≤ c log(p). In this work we prove the conjecture for c ≈ 7.21, and the proof is done by constructing a dissection of an equilateral triangle of side n into O(log(n)) equilateral triangles. We also show a proof of the lower bound c log(p) ≤ gdist(p) with improved constant c ≈ 2.73. At the end of the work we present computational data which suggest that gdist(p)/ log(p) ≈ 3.56 for large values of p.