Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation will be to identify a conceptual model to describe the stress and coping process among a group of elite female tennis players during a high stakes performance situation. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TA model) served as the theoretical basis for this dissertation. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the indirect effect of social support, dispositional coping, coping strategies, tennis ability and cognitive appraisal upon competitive state anxiety. Significance of the investigation: The WTA Tour, the governing body of professional tennis, has identified the priorities of promoting career longevity, development of a balanced athlete, the attainment of a profitable career for its athletes and protecting the TOUR's most valuable commodity, athlete health (AEC Report, 1995). The findings of this investigation serve to guide future interventions for managing stress and coping among elite athletes. This is one of the first investigations with this under-studied population and therefore, contributes to the available body of knowledge in stress and coping among elite athletes. Methods: Ninety-four female tennis players responded to the Competition Questionnaire during a high stakes athletic competition. Questions addressed dispositional coping strategies, current coping strategies as well as perceived competitive state anxiety and perceived sense of social support. Measurement models were used prior to construction of sub-models based upon TA model theory. Goodness of fit was assessed with significant path scores retained to construct a final conceptual model. Findings: The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 was supported as a measure of competitive state anxiety. A parsimonious measure of primary appraisal and secondary appraisal was found for this elite group of athletes. Results yielded support for the strong effect of primary appraisal upon increased competitive state anxiety. In addition, both social support and secondary appraisal demonstrated a significant effect with lower competitive state anxiety. Tennis ability as measured by current rank did not have a significant effect upon appraisal, coping strategies nor competitive state anxiety. Conclusions: Based upon these results, a variation of the TA model as constructed within this investigation was found to be relevant for this elite group. The constructed conceptual model can be used to guide current and future interventions by health care practitioners that interact closely with these athletes during high stress competitive events. Implications for future interventions with this population include the need for enhancement of challenging appraisals and the need for restructuring of threatening appraisals. Though caution must be used when generalizing results, findings add to the body of knowledge regarding this under-investigated population. Future investigations could focus upon replication of results, investigation regarding the function of social support and the comparison of specific coping strategies used by subsets of athletes within this population. / text

We examine three topics related to experimental design in this dissertation. Two are related to the analysis of experimental data and the other focuses on the design of paired comparison experiments, in this case knockout tournaments. The two analysis topics are motivated by how to estimate and test causal effects when the assignment mechanism fails to create balanced treatment groups. In Chapter 2, we apply conditional randomization tests to experiments where, through random chance, the treatment groups differ in their covariate distributions. In Chapter 4, we apply principal stratification to factorial experiments where the subjects fail to comply with their assigned treatment. The sources of imbalance differ, but, in both cases, ignoring the imbalance can lead to incorrect conclusions. In Chapter 3, we consider designing knockout tournaments to maximize different objectives given a prior distribution on the strengths of the players. These objectives include maximizing the probability the best player wins the tournament. Our emphasis on balance in the other two chapters comes from a desire to create a fair comparison between treatments. However, in this case, the design uses the prior information to intentionally bias the tournament in favor of the better players. / Statistics

<p>Denna rapport är av en reflekterande karaktär. Den förmedlar arbetsprocessen och resultatet av ett projekt som gjorts i kursen examensarbete i medier: Dataspelsutveckling vt 2008. Verket som rapporten grundar sig på är en bana gjord för Unreal Tournament 3 (Epic Games, 2007). Banan skall uppnå mina egenstipulerade krav för att en bana skall vara välbalanserad. Texten inleds med en beskrivning av arbetsprocessen och de olika stegen som genomgicks. Den börjar med idén och går vidare i flertalet olika steg till det färdiga resultatet. Därefter visas den färdiga banan upp i form av bilder. Sedan följer en diskussion om resultatet och de problem som uppstod i arbetsprocessen. Slutsatsen är att förutom några få undantag så har min arbetsprocess fungerat bra. Jag anser mig ha skapat en multiplayer-bana som lever upp till mina egenstipulerade krav för en välbalanserad bana.</p>

Submitted by Eliene Cristine Izu Nakamura Lisi (eliene82@gmail.com) on 2018-09-03T23:18:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_ElieneLisi_final_alt_v6.pdf: 3059082 bytes, checksum: 70a2fedc2ca099f59d5e4d66d54bb196 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Elza Mitiko Sato null (elzasato@ibilce.unesp.br) on 2018-09-04T14:16:16Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 lisi_ecin_me_sjrp.pdf: 3059082 bytes, checksum: 70a2fedc2ca099f59d5e4d66d54bb196 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-04T14:16:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 lisi_ecin_me_sjrp.pdf: 3059082 bytes, checksum: 70a2fedc2ca099f59d5e4d66d54bb196 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-03 / As Olimpíadas de Matemática, nos moldes atuais, são disputadas desde 1894. A primeira olimpíada ocorreu na Romênia. Com o passar dos anos, competições semelhantes se espalharam pelo mundo. Em 1959 foi realizada a primeira Olimpíada Internacional de Matemática, esta competição se expandiu gradualmente para mais de 100 países. Em 1979, a Sociedade Brasileira de Matemática (SBM) organizou a 1ª Olimpíada Brasileira de Matemática (OBM), que durante esses anos passou por diversas mudanças. Este trabalho tem o objetivo de mostrar como as olimpíadas de matemática podem ser utilizadas como fonte de divulgação e estímulo para o ensino e a aprendizagem da matemática, além de desenvolver e aperfeiçoar a capacitação de professores e também como fonte de dados para a melhoria do ensino e aprendizado. Foi realizada uma descrição das principais competições de matemática que tiveram como participantes alunos de uma escola da cidade de Bauru-SP, com destaque para o HMMT (The Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament), bem como quais foram as ferramentas utilizadas na preparação desses alunos, além de uma análise de dados visando uma intervenção didático pedagógica. Por fim são apresentadas questões de olimpíadas de matemática que têm em suas soluções a utilização de conteúdos abordados nas diversas disciplinas do PROFMAT. / The Mathematical Olympiads of the present day have been disputed since 1894. The first Olympiad was played in Romania. Over the years, similar competitions have spread throughout the world. In 1959, the first International Mathematical Olympiad was held, this competition gradually expanded to more than 100 countries. In 1979, the Brazilian Mathematical Society (SBM) organized the 1st Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad (OBM), which during these years underwent several changes. This paper aims to show how mathematical olympiads can be used as a stimulus for teaching and learning mathematics, as well as to develop and improve teacher training and also as a data source for improving teaching and learning. A description of the main math competitions was carried out, which included students from a school in the city of Bauru, SP, highlighting the HMMT (The Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament) and which tools were used to prepare the students as well as the analysis of data for pedagogical didactic intervention. Finally, questions are dealt with in Mathematical Olympiads, with resolution through contents of the PROFMAT disciplines.

This thesis investigates the short and long-term effects of pay dispersion on firm performance in publicly listed Swedish firms. Pay dispersion refers to the difference in compensation between or within organizational levels. There are two contradicting theoretical views of pay dispersions effect on firm performance. While tournament theory suggests that high pay dispersion increase employees’ incentives to exert higher effort, thus increasing firm performance, fairness approaches predicts that high pay dispersion creates feelings of unfairness, thus negatively affecting firm performance. Based on these theories and previous research, Hypothesis 1 predicts a positive short-term effect of pay dispersion on firm performance, and Hypothesis 2 predicts a negative long-term effect of pay dispersion on firm performance. Using a first differences fixed-effects regression including controls for firm characteristics and corporate governance indicators, three measures of pay dispersion are tested on two proxies for firm performance (price to book and return on assets). We conclude after extensive robustness tests that pay dispersion has no effect on firm performance, neither on short nor on long-term. Therefore, both hypotheses are rejected.

Dans un contexte où la recherche de l’excellence universitaire est au coeur des préoccupations des institutions académiques et des pouvoirs publics, cette thèse a pour objectif de contribuer à l’étude des déterminants de la production scientifique des enseignants-chercheurs français en économie. En mobilisant les données originales issues des candidatures des enseignants-chercheurs à la ‘’Prime d’Excellence Scientifique’’, les quatre contributions proposées s’attachent à articuler deux importantes dimensions, jusqu’ici rarement traitées conjointement par la littérature : les effets d’externalités collectives dans la production scientifique, et le caractère multitâche de l’activité des enseignants-chercheurs. Le premier chapitre de la thèse analyse les déterminants de l’obtention de la Prime d’Excellence Scientifique des enseignants-chercheurs français en économie. Nous nous intéressons au caractère multitâche de la production individuelle et à la dimension dynamique de cette forme particulière de compétition académique mise en place depuis 2009. Les résultats économétriques obtenus à partir d’un modèle séquentiel montrent que les publications scientifiques constituent le facteur le plus déterminant dans les chances de succès à la PES. Nous identifions les facteurs de découragement au cours de ce tournoi dynamique. Les résultats montrent également que la promotion passée au titre du précédent dispositif PEDR augmente les chances de promotion des enseignants-chercheurs. Le second chapitre se penche sur le facteur déterminant de l’attribution de la PES et de la promotion des enseignants-chercheurs : la production scientifique. Ce chapitre met en évidence que les effets d’externalités associés à l’environnement de recherche des enseignants-chercheurs sont susceptibles d’expliquer à la fois la dynamique individuelle de la production scientifique et la concentration de celle-ci entre un petit nombre d’enseignants-chercheurs. Nos résultats économétriques par quantiles concluent à l’existence de deux régimes de production scientifiques extrêmes : les polyvalents et les spécialistes. Toutefois, nos résultats ne réfutent pas l’existence d’un cycle de production scientifique qui serait sensible au stock de compétences accumulées dans l’environnement de travail des enseignants-chercheurs. Tenant compte des interactions potentielles entre les tâches d’enseignement et de recherche mises en évidence dans le second chapitre, le troisième chapitre propose d’analyser à partir d’un modèle théorique et économétrique, les effets de l’environnement de recherche sur le choix d’activités des enseignants-chercheurs. En contrôlant la simultanéité et l’endogénéité du choix des tâches de l’enseignement et de la recherche, les résultats économétriques sur nos données confortent largement les prédictions théoriques : les effets d’externalités issus de la concentration spatiale des compétences en recherche et/ou en formation à un moment donné, conduit à des profils « typés » de spécialistes (en recherche ou en formation) ou à l’opposé de « généralistes » associant production scientifique, implications pédagogiques et responsabilités collectives. Prenant en compte l’hétérogénéité des publications scientifiques en économie, le quatrième chapitre analyse des déterminants de l’arbitrage « quantité-qualité » dans la production scientifique. Nous étudions en particulier les déterminants du choix de deux types publications définies dans le classement CNRS des revues d’économie: les publications de premier rang et les publications de second rang. Les résultats économétriques de l’estimation jointe de ces deux types de publications concluent à un arbitrage entre les publications de bonne qualité et les publications dans les revues moins bien classées, arbitrage sensible aux effets d’externalité de l’environnement de recherche des enseignants-chercheurs. / In a context where both academic institutions and government consider academic excellence as crucial, this thesis aims at contributing to the study of the determinants of scientific productivity of professors. Using an original database of French academic economists involved in the “Prime d’Excellence Scientifique” tournament, the four proposed contributions show the importance of considering two dimensions often ignored so far: first, collective externalities, and the multidimensional nature of professors’ activities.The first chapter investigates the determinants of success in a large competition among French academic economists, the “Prime d’Excellence Scientifique (PES)”. We are particularly interested in the dynamic aspects of this repeated tournament initiated by the French academic system in 2009 to select the best productive researchers for promotion. The econometric estimation of the transition probabilities using sequential-response models allows for identification of changes in weightings assigned to each criterion. Our results confirm the importance of peer-reviewed publications and identify discouraging factors in this dynamic tournament. We also find that past success influences the promotion of professors.The second chapter focuses on the most decisive factor in the award of the “Prime d’Excellence Scientifique”: the scientific production. It shows that the scientific environment can explain both the path dependency in individual scientific productivity and the high inequality and skewness of individual productivity distributions. The results of quantile regressions show the existence of two separated regimes of scientific production, namely the regime of specialists and the regime of generalists. Our results also show that life-cycle effects are not only significant for the evaluation of individual productivity scores but also for the stock of knowledge accumulated in economics departments.Taking into account the potential interactions between teaching and research activities highlighted in the second chapter, the third chapter investigates the determinants of scientific production, including collective determinants related to the research environment, in the context of multitasking teachers. The chapter develops a principal-agent model to understand how university professors allocate their time between two substitutable tasks: publishing and teaching. The theoretical model predicts that professors devote more time to the tasks for which they have a marginal advantage. Controling for endogeneity activity choices, the econometric analysis confirm the key predictions ofthe model: these tasks are conflicting and the institutional context affects the activity choices of professors.Based on the heterogeneity of publication outlets, the fourth chapter analyzes the determinants of the quantity-quality tradeoff in scientific production. The focus is on the determinants of two types of publications identified by the journals ranking in Economics of the French National Committee for Scientific Research (CNRS): publications in high-quality journals and publications in low quality journals. The joint estimates of these two types of publications indicate that there is a tradeoff between the high quality publications and low quality publications, and this tradeoff is imputable to the scientific environment of professors. Our results confirm a negative impact of teaching and administrative duties on the publications in high quality journals.

The main goal of this master's thesis is to analyze methodology of sports event management followed by comprehensive description and its application on conducted sporting event (NOAH Golf Tournament) for corporate purpose based on analysis of the various economic, marketing and managerial aspects. Part of the paper is demonstration of growing importance of golf in China including market research.

Nesta tese estudamos dois problemas em digrafos: um problema de empacotamento e um problema de contagem. Estudamos o problema de empacotamento máximo de arborescências no digrafo aleatório D(n,p), onde cada possvel arco é inserido aleatoriamente ao acaso com probabilidade p = p(n). Denote por (D(n,p)) o maior inteiro possvel 0 tal que, para todo 0 l , temos ^(l-1)_i=0 (l-i)|{v in d^in(v) = i}| Provamos que a quantidade máxima de arborescências em D(n,p) é (D(n,p)) assintoticamente quase certamente. Nós também mostramos estimativas justas para (D(n, p)) para todo p [0, 1]. As principais ferramentas que utilizamos são relacionadas a propriedades de expansão do D(n, p), o comportamento do grau de entrada do digrafo aleatório e um resultado clássico de Frank que serve como ligação entre subpartições em digrafos e a quantidade de arborescências. Para o problema de contagem, estudamos a densidade de subtorneios fortemente conexos com 5 vértices em torneios grandes. Determinamos a densidade assintótica máxima para 5 torneios bem como as famlias assintóticas extremais de cada torneios. Como subproduto deste trabalho caracterizamos torneios que são blow-ups recursivos de um circuito orientado com 3 vértices como torneios que probem torneios especficos de tamanho 5. Como principal ferramenta para esse problema utilizados a teoria de álgebra de flags e configurações combinatórias obtidas através do método semidefinido. / In this thesis we study two problems dealing with digraphs: a packing problem and a counting problem. We study the problem of packing the maximum number of arborescences in the random digraph D(n,p), where each possible arc is included uniformly at random with probability p = p(n). Let (D(n,p)) denote the largest integer 0 such that, for all 0 l , we have ^(l-1)_i=0 (l-i)|{v in d^in(v) = i}|. We show that the maximum number of arc-disjoint arborescences in D(n, p) is (D(n, p)) asymptotically almost surely. We also give tight estimates for (D(n, p)) for every p [0, 1]. The main tools that we used were expansion properties of random digraphs, the behavior of in-degree of random digraphs and a classic result by Frank relating subpartitions and number of arborescences. For the counting problem, we study the density of fixed strongly connected subtournaments on 5 vertices in large tournaments. We determine the maximum density asymptotically for five tournaments as well as unique extremal sequences for each tournament. As a byproduct of this study we also characterize tournaments that are recursive blow-ups of a 3-cycle as tournaments that avoid three specific tournaments of size 5. We use the theory of flag algebras as a main tool for this problem and combinatorial settings obtained from semidefinite method.

<p>Esports have been a growing market segment for recreation and competition. Few works of research examine the decisions that competitors need to make to maximize the probability of winning. Game theory Nash equilibriums are used to evaluate options available for players to select out of game decisions related to side selection, character selection, and stage selection. Backward induction techniques are used to solve these subgame decisions. The introduction of a rating system for players is derived from traditional sport statistics. The primary factor tracked in damage dealt and damage received using the same framework from sabermetrics was used to predict outcomes of baseball games. Conclusions demonstrated tracking damage can be used to predict the outcome of a match. Other techniques such as principal component analysis did not provide adequate data to measure individual metrics for the use of predictive application.</p>

This work deals with information system designed to organize tournaments and leagues in e-sports. Its purpose is to propose changes in the information system of the organization. Another purpose also aims to select suitable systems and tournament leaderboards for implementation in the information system and system requirements include knowledge gained from the players. This work seeks the risks that exist in the current state of information system and proposes measures for them.