Thesis advisor: Joseph Quinn / Thesis advisor: Christopher Berger / In Economics, the concept of welfare, and specifically maximizing welfare, has been an important area of study since the inception of the field. Historically economists have used single indicators, like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or Composite Indicators, like the Human Development Index (HDI), both to compare welfare across societies and understand the welfare level within one society. This paper presents a dashboard approach to welfare as an alternative and shows how a collection of indicators listed together gives the best picture of the welfare of a society. This project considers both the philosophical and theoretical background necessary for measuring welfare as well as the economic data to argue for this dashboard approach. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

The Objective of the Remote Measurements Calibration (RMC) method is to minimize systematic errors through an appropriate scaling procedure. A new method for RMC has been developed. This method solves the problems of observability, multiplicity of solutions, and ambiguity of reference points associated with the method proposed by Adibi et. al. [6-9]. The new algorithm uses the simulated annealing technique together with the matroid method to identify and minimize the number of RTUs (Remote Terminal Units) required to observe the system. After field calibration, these RTUs provide measurements that are used to estimate the whole state of the system. These estimates are then returned as a reference for remotely calibrating the remaining RTUs. The calibration coefficients are estimated by means of highly robust estimator, namely the Least Median of Squares (LMS) estimator. The calibration method is applicable to large systems by means of network tearing and dynamic programming. The number of field calibrations can be decreased further whenever multiple voltage measurements at the same buses are available. The procedure requires that the measurement biases are estimated from recorded metered values when buses, or lines, or transformers are disconnected. It also requires the application of a robust comparative voltage calibration method. To this end, a modified Friedman test has been developed and its robustness characteristics investigated. / Ph. D.

The purpose of the study was to determine the technical adequacy of the Core Skills Algebra curriculum-based measure for students enrolled in algebra I courses at the high school level. Due to the dearth of curriculum-based measures available to educators at the secondary school level, the Core Skills Algebra curriculum-based measure was developed to provide educators with a tool for monitoring student progress in algebra I courses. This study focused on the technical adequacy of the Core Skills Algebra curriculum-based measure examining reliability, validity and its sensitivity to student growth. Scores were collected from four forms of the Core Skills Algebra curriculum-based measure for a sample of 353 freshmen from two high schools enrolled in algebra I courses during the fall and spring semesters. Alternate-form and test-retest reliability were examined and strong correlations were found. To assess concurrent validity, data were collected from four criterion measures including scores from the EXPLORE achievement test, algebra course grades and overall grade point average (GPA). Concurrent validity was moderate for EXPLORE composite and math subtest scores and weak to moderate for algebra course grades and overall GPA. The extent to which the Core Skills Algebra measure reflects student growth was also examined. The results suggest that the measure is able to distinguish between student scores by classroom type (i.e., accelerated algebra, algebra I, low achieving, and special education). Weekly growth rates for each high school were lower than the desired .5 indicating a growth of one problem every two weeks. High School 1 had a weekly growth rate of .25 and High School 2 had a weekly growth rate of .19.

There exist numerous commercial six-degree-ofreedom inertial measurement units capable of measuring low-range accelerations and rotation rates. A commercially available multi-range IMU capable of measuring low and high-range motions does not exist. An IMU with this capability was developed for measuring trajectory data of projectiles such as high-powered rockets. This data can be used to provide performance feedback to projectile designers and users. A small footprint printed circuit board was designed to minimize the overall size of the unit, compared to “perf-board” prototypes. Several PCB design guidelines were closely followed to reduce electrical interference in digital/analog components and traces. Embedded C code was developed to control the IMU. The unit features a wireless user interface, providing several control options, including an option to download data sampled at 1KHz per sweep of all twelve sensor channels. Preliminary testing reveals good consistency among the high and low-range sensors and acceptably low noise levels.

Software maintainability is one of the most crucial quality attributes of a software product. Software engineering researchers and practitioners have devoted considerable effort to developing “good design” methods, rules and principles to improve software maintainability. But before we can validate the effectiveness of these methods, we first need an approach to measure software maintainability. The existing maintainability measures usually have limited scope and accuracy since they either isolate the software from its environment and focus only on the technical properties of the software, or measure a confounding effect of various factors involved in the maintenance process. Furthermore, these measures are often defined and collected on a coarse-grained level and provide no insight into what makes software difficult to change. This research addresses the problems associated with software maintainability measurement by adapting the concepts of task complexity from the human behavior domain to the software engineering domain. This dissertation involves developing and validating a measurement model for measuring the maintainability of software, to provide a better understanding of the difficulty in modifying software and the effect of software design methods on software maintainability. A measurement protocol and a tool have been developed to support the application of the measurement method.

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