Given the increase in popularity of Lifetime Value (LTV), the argument is that the topic will assume an increasingly central role in research and marketing. As such, the decision to assess the state of the field in Lifetime Value Modelling, and outline challenges unique to choice researchers in customer relationship management (CRM). As the research has argued, there are an excess of issues and analytical challenges that remain unresolved. The researcher hopes that this thesis inspires new answers and new approaches to resolve LTV. The scope of this project covers the building of a LTV model through multiple regression. This thesis is exclusively focused on modelling tenure. In this regard, there are a variety of benchmark statistical techniques arising from survival analysis, which could be applied, to tenure modelling. Tenure prediction will be looked at using survival analysis and compared with "crossbreed" data mining techniques that use multiple regression in concurrence with statistical techniques. It will be demonstrated how data mining tools complement the statistical models, and show that their mutual usage overcomes many of the shortcomings of each singular tool set, resulting in LTV models that are both accurate and comprehensible. Bank XYZ is used as an example and is based on a real scenario of one of the Banks of South Africa. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

College students and emerging adults have been found to be at risk for smoking cigarettes, drinking to excess, using illicit drugs, driving dangerously, and engaging in risky sexual and delinquent behaviour. Psychosocial correlates (Sensation Seeking, peer behaviour, parent behaviour, and peer and parent anti-substance use messages) from three domains of influence (personality, parent, and peer) were examined together to provide a greater context for the occurrence of such health-risk behaviours. The strongest predictor(s) of each behaviour were identified to better inform intervention practices. Three groups were compared— 1) those who never tried substances, 2) those who tried substances in the past, and 3) those who continue to use substances at present, in a population of emerging adults. Self-report data was gathered from 203 Collèges d'Enseignement Général Et Professionnel (CEGEP) students in the Montreal region. Measures included: Reckless Behaviour Questionnaire, Reckless Driving Measure, Health Behaviour Survey, Sensation Seeking Scale—Form V, and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Results revealed that peer behaviour was the most significant predictor of substance use in emerging adults, whereas parent behaviour was only a significant predictor of reckless driving. Sensation Seeking, specifically Disinhibition, was found to predict more global reckless behaviours, including illegal activities, such as stealing or using marijuana (p < .01). Neither peer nor parent anti-substance messages were significantly related to any of the health-risk behaviours measured in this study. It would appear that health-risk behaviours tend to be related to the same underlying factors but to varying degrees. Intervention implications are discussed.

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Accurate water usage information is very important for municipalities in order to provide accurate billing information for high volume water users. Meter reading are currently obtained by sending a person out to every meter to obtain a manual reading. This is very costly with regards to time and money, and it is also very error prone. In order to improve on this system, an image based telemetry system was developed that can be retrofitted on currently installed bulk water meters. Images of the meter dials are captured and transmitted to a central server where they are further processed and enhanced. Character recognition is performed on the enhanced images in order to extract meter readings. Through tests it was found that characters can be recognised to 100% accuracy for cases which the character recognition software has been trained, and 70% accuracy for cases which is was not trained. Thus, an overall recognition accuracy of 85% was achieved. These results can be improved upon in future work by statistically analysing results and utilizing the inherent heuristic information from the meter dials. Overall the feasibility of the approach was demonstrated and a way forward was indicated. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Dit is belangrik vir munisipaliteite om akkurate water verbruikingssyfers te hê sodat hulle akkurate rekeninge aan hoë volume water gebruikers kan stuur. Tans besoek ’n persoon fisies elke meter om meterlesings te verkry. Dit is egter baie oneffektief ten opsigte van tyd en geld. Die metode is ook baie geneig tot foute. Ten einde te verbeter op hierdie stelsel was ’n beeld gebaseerde telemetrie stelsel ontwerp wat geïnstalleer word op huidig geïnstalleerde hoë volume water meters. Beelde van die meters word na ’n sentrale bediener gestuur waar dit verwerk word en die beeld kwaliteit verbeter word. Karakter herkenning sagteware word gebruik om die meter lesings te verkry vanuit die verbeterde beelde. Deur middel van toetse is gevind dat karakters herken kan word tot op 100% graad van akkuraatheid in gevalle waar die karakter herkenning sagteware opgelei is, en 70% akkuraatheid vir gevalle waarvoor dit nie opgelei was nie. Dus was ’n algehele herkennings akkuraatheid van 85% behaal. Hierdie resultate kan verbeter word in die toekoms deur die resultate statisties te analiseer en die inherente heuristieke inligting van die meter syfers te benutting. Ten slotte, in die tesis was die haalbaarheid van die benadering gedemonstreer en ’n weg vorentoe vir toekomstige werk aangedui.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:28:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2001-10Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:37:38Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 gabriel_msa_me_assis.pdf: 539685 bytes, checksum: 963616cd0420efe0bd4eecdb2e979ab8 (MD5) / Esta dissertação é resultado de pesquisa em que os instrumentos utilizados foram questionários e entrevistas.De tal modo, foi descrito como o método de trabalho corporal foi construído por Pethö Sándor, assim como também sua provável fundamentação teórica, composto da imbricação entre a neurologia, anatomia e psicologia profunda de C. G. Jung. Além disso, foi também constatado que tanto o método de trabalho corporal como a própria vivência do autor foram tangidas por ensinamentos da sabedoria perene. Para que esse método pudesse ser inserido num contexto histórico, partimos da descrição das trajetórias históricas da filosofia, da medicina, da psicologia e do desenvolvimento dos métodos e técnicas corporais, passando pela descrição de cada um deles até chegarmos à atualidade, no afã de cumprirmos nosso objetivo. / This dissertation is the result of a research which was carried out based on questionaires and interviews. This is mainly at the record of the way followed by Pethö Sándor over his life to draw up the method of body therapy. This method works the imbrication of Neurology, Anatomy and the deep Psycology by C. G. Jung. The available elements used to record the building-up of this method are presented in the proof that both, the body therapy and Sándorþs own life experience were touched by the teaching of ageless wisdom. For this method could be included in a historical context, this work was started by the description of the historic ways of Phylosophy, Medicine, Psychology and also the historical development of both, physical methods and technics. Then, each one was described from the beginning to the present time, with the strong will to reach the purpose of this work.

The purpose of this empirical study is to examine the usage of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERPS) in Higher Education Institutes (HEIs). Recently, rapid growth in information technology services compels developing countries to emerge as an information-based society. This emergence corresponds with the calls of researchers to address ERPS (Abbas, 2011). However, there is a scarcity of efforts by researchers to identify the factors contributing to the usage of ERPS at the organisational, departmental and end-user layer in HEIs. To fill this gap, this research develops a Multi-Layer Usage Model (MLUM) to determine the factors of ERPS usage across the organisational, departmental and individual levels of HEIs. The theoretical foundation of this study is adapted from unified theory of acceptance and use of technology developed by Venkatesh et al (2003). The study is unique in many respects. Firstly, it offers a newly developed multi-level conceptual model that is tested empirically using three distinct questionnaires; one for each layer. A large primary dataset, 1317 responses, is collected through three questionnaire from 18 higher education institutions in Pakistan; 86 responses from the organisational layer, 143 from the departmental layer and 1088 from the end-user layer. Structural equation modelling is used to analyse the effect of factors at three layers contributing to the usage of ERPS. Furthermore, the models are refined by applying extensions of structural equation modelling. Results suggest that at the organisational layer human resource availability, tolerance for risks and conflicts, collegial support and collaboration and decision making and control are significant and contributed towards ERPS usage while at the end-user layer behavioural intentions and motivation were insignificant and were therefore, removed from the model. This study contributes to theory development regarding usage of innovations in the under-researched context of HEIs. It also provides indigenous manifestations of ERPS usage that may be used by policy-makers.

The main motivation for the study described in this dissertation is to benefit from the development in technology and the huge amount of available data which can be easily captured, stored and maintained electronically. We concentrate on Web usage (i.e., log) mining and Web structure mining. Analysing Web log data will reveal valuable feedback reflecting how effective the current structure of a web site is and to help the owner of a web site in understanding the behaviour of the web site visitors. We developed a framework that integrates statistical analysis, frequent pattern mining, clustering, classification and network construction and analysis. We concentrated on the statistical data related to the visitors and how they surf and pass through the various pages of a given web site to land at some target pages. Further, the frequent pattern mining technique was used to study the relationship between the various pages constituting a given web site. Clustering is used to study the similarity of users and pages. Classification suggests a target class for a given new entity by comparing the characteristics of the new entity to those of the known classes. Network construction and analysis is also employed to identify and investigate the links between the various pages constituting a Web site by constructing a network based on the frequency of access to the Web pages such that pages get linked in the network if they are identified in the result of the frequent pattern mining process as frequently accessed together. The knowledge discovered by analysing a web site and its related data should be considered valuable for online shoppers and commercial web site owners. Benefitting from the outcome of the study, a recommendation system was developed to suggest pages to visitors based on their profiles as compared to similar profiles of other visitors. The conducted experiments using popular datasets demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed framework for Web mining and recommendation. As a by product of the proposed method, we demonstrate how it is effective in another domain for feature reduction by concentrating on gene expression data analysis as an application with some interesting results reported in Chapter 5.

I Sverige ställs allt högre krav på nya byggnader genom bestämmelser och lagar som påverkar energianvändningen. Byggnader kan värmas upp med hjälp av olika typer av distributionssystem såsom radiatorer och golvvärme. Värmebehovet hos byggnaden baseras på hur mycket värmeenergi som behövs för att uppnå termisk komfort. För att begränsa energianvändningen används isolering i syfte att minimera värmeförlusterna genom byggnadens klimatskärm. Denna undersökning syftar till att undersöka förluster som sker genom kantbalken vid användning av vattenburet golvvärmesystem och hur dessa förluster påverkas då grundkonstruktionen tilläggsisoleras på olika sätt. Kantbalken är den förstärkta del som finns under markplattan/platta på mark, tar upp krafter från bärande väggar och finns efter sidorna på byggnaden. Golvvärme är en uppvärmningsteknik där slingor placeras i grundkonstruktionen och förser byggnader med dess värmebehov. Golvvärmesystem installeras på olika sätt beroende på byggnaders förutsättningar och är ett energieffektivt uppvärmningssätt i kombination med värmepump. Undersökningen påbörjades genom att skapa en förenklad modell som behandlar en 2-dimensionell kantbalksutformning i COMSOL Multiphysics, som är ett program för modellering där statiska och dynamiska simuleringar genomförs i modeller med hjälp av finita-elementmetoden. Fyra modeller skapades med två olika CC-mått (centrumavstånd) och två olika golvmaterial. Därefter skapades tre fall med förbättrande åtgärder för att öka kantbalkens isolerförmåga. Dynamiska simuleringar genomfördes och hade tidsintervallet 365 dagar med varierande utetemperatur. När utetemperaturen varierade var effektbehovet hos golvvärmen olika vilket ledde till att golvvärmetemperaturen justerades efter utetemperaturen för att upprätthålla samma temperatur på golvytan. Resultaten visar att kantbalken står för cirka 50 % av markkonstruktionsförlusterna med installerat L-element. Vid komplettering av konstruktionen med två fall av tillläggsisolering framkom inga större förändringar i resultaten. Genom att byta ut L-elementet till ett U-element minskar dock värmeförlusterna genom kantbalken till ca 30 %. Markkonstruktionsförluster är de förluster som överförs från byggnaden till närliggande mark. / Through laws and regulations in Sweden, increasing demands regarding energy use are affecting new buildings. A building achieving thermal comfort is attaining its thermal needs and can be done so through several types of distribution systems such as radiators and underfloor heating. Insulation is used to limit the amount of energy lost through the building’s envelope whilst keeping up with the thermal needs. This study is meant to examine the thermal leakage around the edge beam installa-tion when using a waterborne underfloor heating system and different sets of insulation are installed in the ground-related construction. The edge beam is the reinforced part located around the perimeter of the building absorbing forces from supporting walls. The study started with creating and using a simplified model in COMSOL Multiphysics to look at a two-dimensional edge beam formation. COMSOL Multiphysics is a software used for modeling different static and dynamic simulations via the finite element method. Four models were created using two different CC-dimensions (center to center distance) and two different floor materials. After this, three cases were created with improved circumstances regarding the ability to isolate heat around the edge beam. Dynamic simulations were made and calculated a year’s worth of varying outdoor temperatures. When the outdoor temperature changes, the requirements of the underfloor heating output also change which leads to its temperature adapting due to the outdoor temperature. The results indicate the edge beam related heat losses make up of about 50 % of the ground-related construction losses in the model. When completing the design with two instances of additional insulation, no major changes were found in the results. However, replacing the L-shaped insulation around the edge beam with a U-shaped insulation reduces heat losses through the edge beam to about 30 %. Ground-related construction losses are the losses transferred from the building to adjacent ground.

La plupart des experts s’accordent à dire que le big data marque une rupture. Peut-être ont-ils raison. Mais cette rupture n’est pas vraiment matérielle, ni même organisationnelle. Cela fait déjà longtemps que les grands acteurs du web explorent et exploitent quotidiennement de grandes masses de données. Si révolution il y a, elle se joue ailleurs, à la périphérie de la grande disruption que mettent en scène la plupart des promoteurs du big data. Pour s’en rendre compte, il suffit de se poser la question qui suit : en pointant le caractère révolutionnaire des mégadonnées et des dispositifs permettant de les traiter, que font ces acteurs ? Ils préparent une intégration massive des intelligences artificielles au sein des différentes sphères de la société. S’il existe une rupture, elle se trouve donc plutôt ici : dans ce mouvement que nous connaissons aujourd’hui et qui consiste, pour une grande diversité d’acteurs socioéconomiques, à s’approprier des agents de calcul qui sont toujours plus autonomes et puissants. Aussi, afin de mieux saisir les enjeux de cette démocratisation, nous proposons dans cette thèse d’étudier le cas des machines à produire des futurs économiques : quel est leur rôle au sein de ces collectifs sociotechniques que composent les marchés ? Pour répondre à cette question, nous nous appuierons sur une ethnographie multi-située que nous avons conduite de 2012 à 2015 selon une posture se trouvant à la croisée des sociologies des marchés, des sciences et des techniques. Plus précisément, nous mobiliserons un corpus d’archives ainsi qu’un important matériau d’enquête recueilli auprès de plusieurs professionnels, entreprises et salons afin d’examiner la fabrication et le fonctionnement de ces machines à prédire les avenirs marchands. Nous verrons ainsi qu’au niveau de l’environnement de conception, ces dernières sont intéressantes dans la mesure où elles sont généralement dotées d’une intelligence locale qui doit faire advenir, dans le présent, des futurs permettant d’optimiser les intérêts économiques de ceux qui les implémentent. À partir d’une série d’études et d’expérimentations portant sur les usages d’un agent de recommandation, nous montrerons que cette forme d’intelligence est toutefois discutable puisqu’elle peut comporter d’importantes ambivalences du point de vue des utilisateurs. Ceci nous permettra de souligner qu’aux niveaux cognitif et relationnel, la pertinence des machines à produire des futurs économiques doit faire l’objet d’une mise en question systématique. Les enjeux sont importants puisqu’il n’est pas impossible que leur avènement massif au sein des organisations instaure de nouvelles asymétries sur les marchés qui ne sont pas un bien pour la communauté. / The majority of experts agree to say that the big data is a rupture. Maybe are they right. But this rupture is not really material, nor even organizational. It has already been a long time that the big web actors daily exploring and exploiting the big data. If revolution there is, it is happening elsewhere, at the periphery of the great disruption that depict most of big data promoters. To being aware of, simply ask the following question: pointing the revolutionary nature of big data and devices are provided to treat, what these actors are they doing? They are preparing a massive integration of artificial intelligences within the various spheres of society. If there is a rupture, it is therefore rather here: in this movement that we know today and which consists, for a great diversity of socioeconomic actors, to appropriate of the calculation agents that are increasingly autonomous and powerful. So in order to better understand the issues of this democratization, we propose in this thesis to study the case of machines to produce of the economic futures: what is their role within the socio-technical collectives that compose the markets? To answer this question, we will draw on a multi-situated ethnography we conducted from 2012 to 2015 according to a posture situated at the intersection of market, science and technology sociologies. Specifically, we will be mobilizing a corpus of archives and an important investigative material collected from several professionals, companies and salons to discuss the design and operation of these machines to predict merchant futures. We will see at the level of design environment, these machines are interesting in so far as they generally have a local intelligence that has to happen, in the present, of futures allowing to optimize the economic interests of those that implement. Starting from a series of studies and experimentations dealing with the use of a recommendation agent, we will show that this intelligence is debatable because it may entail of considerable ambivalences from the users point of view. This will allow us to emphasize that cognitive and relational levels, the relevance of the machines to produce of the economic futures must be the subject to a systematic questioning. The stakes are high because it is not impossible that the massive advent of these machines within the organizations introduces new asymmetries in markets that are not a good for the community.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between selected basic library skills and the use of the library by freshman community college students, and to determine or evaluate the extent to which the use of the library by such students is related to or influenced by the level of their library skills. The population utilized in this study was the total enrollment of freshman students beginning their second semester of study at two typical Texas rural community colleges, namely Cooke County College at Gainesville, Texas, and Grayson County College at Sherman, Texas. Data regarding library skills were obtained through the use of a standardized test instrument, A Library Orientation Test for College Freshmen. Data regarding library use, relevant demographic traits, and selected control variables (age, sex, hours worked, self-perceived library skills, school attended, a measure of intelligence, marital status, and major course of study) were obtained through the use of a specially prepared questionnaire instrument. Through the use of generalized scattergrams with both present study and pilot study data a possible simple linear relationship was found to obtain between library skills and library use in both instances. Bivariate Spearman correlations were then computed for all variables considered in the present study. Those variables showing a strength greater than 0.10 were "promoted" to Pearson correlation values and utilized as input for a multiple linear regression analysis. A conjectural model was constructed from the output of the multiple linear regression analysis which suggested that, if the direction of influence is ignored, the relative importance of the variables utilized in this procedure would be, from most important to least important, tested library skills, hours worked other than attending school, age, and self-perceived library skills.

Les systèmes Spatial On-Line Analytical Processing (SOLAP) permettent de prendre en charge l’analyse multidimensionnelle en ligne d’un très grand volume de données ayant une référence spatiale. Dans ces systèmes, le vague spatial n’est généralement pas pris en compte, ce qui peut être source d’erreurs dans les analyses et les interprétations des cubes de données SOLAP, effectuées par les utilisateurs finaux. Bien qu’il existe des modèles d’objets ad-hoc pour gérer le vague spatial, l’implantation de ces modèles dans les systèmes SOLAP est encore à l’état embryonnaire. En outre, l’introduction de tels modèles dans les systèmes SOLAP accroit la complexité de l’analyse au détriment de l’utilisabilité dans bon nombre de contextes applicatifs. Dans cette thèse nous nous proposons d’investiguer la piste d’une nouvelle approche visant un compromis approprié entre l’exactitude théorique de la réponse au vague spatial, la facilité d’implantation dans les systèmes SOLAP existants et l’utilisabilité des cubes de données fournis aux utilisateurs finaux.Les objectifs de cette thèse sont donc de jeter les bases d’une approche de conception de cube SOLAP où la gestion du vague est remplacée par la gestion des risques de mauvaises interprétations induits, d’en définir les principes d’une implantation pratique et d’en démontrer les avantages.En résultats aux travaux menés, une approche de conception de cubes SOLAP où le risque de mauvaise interprétation est considéré et géré de manière itérative et en adéquation avec les sensibilités des utilisateurs finaux quant aux risques potentiels identifiés a été proposée; des outils formels à savoir un profil UML adapté, des fonctions de modification de schémas multidimensionnels pour construire les cubes souhaités, et un processus formel guidant de telles transformations de schémas ont été présentés; la vérification de la faisabilité de notre approche dans un cadre purement informatique avec la mise en oeuvre de l’approche dans un outil CASE (Computed Aided Software Engineering) a aussi été présentée. Pour finir, nous avons pu valider le fait que l’approche fournisse non seulement des cubes aussi compréhensibles et donc utilisables que les cubes classiques, mais aussi des cubes où le vague n’est plus laissé de côté, sans aucun effort pour atténuer ses impacts sur les analyses et les prises de décision des utilisateurs finaux. / SOLAP (Spatial On-Line Analytical Processing) systems support the online multi-dimensional analysis of a very large volume of data with a spatial reference. In these systems, the spatial vagueness is usually not taken into account, which can lead to errors in the SOLAP datacubes analyzes and interpretations end-users make. Although there are ad-hoc models of vague objects to manage the spatial vagueness, the implementation of these models in SOLAP systems is still in an embryonal state. In addition, the introduction of such models in SOLAP systems increases the complexity of the analysis at the expense of usability in many application contexts. In this thesis we propose to investigate the trail of a new approach that makes an appropriate compromise between the theoretical accuracy of the response to the spatial vagueness, the ease of implementation in existing SOLAP systems and the usability of datacubes provided to end users.The objectives of this thesis are to lay the foundations of a SOLAP datacube design approach where spatial vagueness management in itself is replaced by the management of risks of misinterpretations induced by the vagueness, to define the principles of a practical implementation of the approach and to demonstrate its benefits.The results of this thesis consist of a SOLAP datacube design approach where the risks of misinterpretation are considered and managed in an iterative manner and in line with the end users tolerance levels regarding those risks; formal tools namely a suitable UML (Unified Modeling Language) profile, multidimensional schemas transformation functions to help tailored the datacubes to end-users tolerance levels, and a formal process guiding such schemas transformation; verifying the feasibility of our approach in a computing context with the implementation of the approach in a CASE (Computed Aided Software Engineering) tool. Finally, we were able to validate that the approach provides SOLAP datacubes that are not only as comprehensible and thus usable as conventional datacubes but also datacubes where the spatial vagueness is not left out, with no effort to mitigate its impacts on analysis and decision making for end users.