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Affirmative Action and Fair School Choice Design for Minority Students
Get PDFAbstract
Affirmative Action and Fair School Choice Design for Minority Students
Muntasir Chaudhury Ph.D.
Concordia University, 2023
In the first main chapter of this thesis we propose three basic welfare axioms for school choice mechanisms with an affirmative action policy: non-wastefulness, respecting the affirmative action policy, and minimal responsiveness, and show that none of the previously proposed mechanisms satisfy all three welfare axioms. Then we introduce a new mechanism which satisfies the three welfare axioms. This mechanism issues immediate acceptances to minority students for minority reserve seats and otherwise it is based on deferred acceptance. We analyze the fairness and incentive properties of this newly proposed affirmative action mechanism.
In the second main chapter we investigate school choice mechanisms with an affirmative action policy that have appealing responsiveness properties to changes in the strength of the affirmative action policy. We present two intuitive mechanisms which satisfy stringent responsiveness criteria and are the first ones to be studied with such properties. One is fully responsive and results in a welfare improvement for minority students when the minority reserves are increased, while the other one only ensures a welfare improvement when moving to an affirmative action policy. We study further properties of these two school choice mechanisms which suggest trade-offs.
In the third main chapter we use a stylized model to explore whether the choice of the matching mechanism in school choice has an impact on the degree of school segregation. We find that the celebrated Deferred Acceptance and the well-known Top Trading Cycle mechanisms both lead to complete segregation, while the Immediate Acceptance mechanism results in less segregation, even though it has often been replaced by the Deferred Acceptance mechanism on the recommendation of theorists. Our results suggest that in order to reduce school segregation, despite their manipulability, the use of matching mechanisms that rely more on student preferences than schools’ priority rankings should be reconsidered. We also study practically relevant special cases which indicate that standardized entrance exams do not aggravate the segregation outcomes but the funding and quality gap among schools do
Using ASSL as a Method for Intent Expression to Enact Autonomic Networking
Get PDFThe term “Intent” is used in network management to designate the specification of goals or outcomes, without specifying how to achieve them. Ideally, intent should be specified in a natural language (e.g., English), but it must then be transformed into a representation that
can be interpreted by the network devices.
The term “Autonomic Network” is used to describe a network that assumes many management functions “on its own”. Such networks are well-suited to being “intent-driven”. This thesis provides a comprehensive definition of Intent, in the form of a set of Intent
Objectives.
A set of Intent examples (expressed in English) is then presented, chosen to reflect intents from three distinct network environments (Carrier networks, Data Center networks, and Enterprise networks), and all of the Intent Objectives. Transformations of the examples into
the Autonomic System Specification Language (ASSL) are given. ASSL was designed for the specification and verification of autonomic systems.
We show that, in spite of being designed for autonomic systems, ASSL is capable of expressing network intents. The expressiveness of ASSL is evaluated by demonstrating that it can cover almost all of the Intent Objectives, for the three network environments.
We conclude with discussion of the expressiveness of ASSL, with respect to each of the Intent Objectives, and the ways in which the current ASSL development environment could be improved
Mitigating the Cold-Start Problem by Leveraging Category Level Associations
Get PDFRecommender systems model user preferences by exploiting their profiles, historical transactions, and ratings of the items. The quality of the recommendations heavily relies on the availability of the data. While typical recommendation methods such as collaborative and content-based filtering can be effective in a wide range of online shopping and e-commerce applications, they suffer from the cold-start problem in settings where new users enter the system and ratings are sparse for
new or low-volume items. To this end, we present a pairwise association rule-based recommendation algorithm that builds a model of collective user preferences by utilizing mined associations at both the item and the category levels. In the meantime, the model allows an individual user’s in-session activities to be integrated at the category level to further improve the recommendation quality. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves recommendation performance, as compared to similar approaches
Les pratiques de jeux mobiles Free-to-Play : L’entrecroisement du temps, de la technologie et des jeux dans la vie quotidienne
Get PDFLes jeux mobiles gratuits (Free-to-Play; F2P) sont aujourd’hui joués par des millions de personnes à travers le monde. Désormais, les pratiques de jeux F2P se sont insérées dans la routine et la vie quotidienne des joueurs. Ces jeux, qui ne prennent parfois que quelques minutes à jouer, s’intègrent aujourd’hui à l’ensemble des activités et obligations des joueurs. Ce processus se distingue notamment sur la base des caractéristiques de jeu, mais aussi des technologies mobiles qui permettent aux joueurs de jouer dans divers contextes de leur vie quotidienne. En s’inspirant de la théorie des pratiques sociales, les pratiques de jeu qui font partie de la vie quotidienne des joueurs sont ainsi conceptualisées comme des comportements « routinisés » se composant de plusieurs éléments, comme les technologies mobiles et les temporalités du quotidien. L’objectif de ce projet est donc de comprendre comment les pratiques de jeu mobile F2P s’intègrent à la vie quotidienne des joueurs. En s’appuyant sur une analyse de contenu thématique d’entrevues semi- structurées menées avec des joueurs, il est possible de voir comment les pratiques de jeu s’actualisent en fonction de trois dimensions principales, soit les caractéristiques propres aux jeux mobiles F2P, l’utilisation des technologies mobiles et les dispositions temporelles du quotidien. Ces résultats mettent en lumière comment la théorie des pratiques sociales permet une compréhension profonde des pratiques de jeux mobiles F2P, tout est les situant dans le contexte de la vie quotidienne des joueurs
What happens when an artist appropriates emerging technologies to create paintings? An exploration through portraiture
Get PDFThis studio thesis investigates the process and result of merging traditional art-making media with emerging technologies in creating portraits. Through the creation of 10 oil portrait paintings with AI and AR components, the following questions are considered: What happens when artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) are paired with traditional art-making tools, and what benefits can students gain from using AI and AR in the art room? How can emerging technologies such as AI and AR be used in conjunction with traditional methods of creation such as painting and drawing? Through interviews, journaling, and the creation of the portraits, I explored the subject and found a marked distinction between the use of traditional media and emerging technologies, both physically and mentally. I described how it affected my creative process and the result of the final works. I also look at using emerging technologies with traditional media in the art class and its possible uses and effects on students and teachers. This thesis calls for the responsible use of emerging technologies in art-making and considers how elementary teachers can use and teach these emerging technologies as a tool in the creation of artworks
On Neuromorphic Computing: A Case Study on Radio Resource Allocation with LAVA Software Framework
Get PDFNeuromorphic computing is a neuro-inspired computing gaining traction because of its ability to perform complex calculations faster, with greater energy efficiency, and on a smaller footprint compared to traditional Von Neumann architectures. Due to how fundamentally different their architecture is from the Von Neumann architecture, there are currently significant uncertainties over how we program and use neuromorphic chips. When neuromorphic chip implementation is linked with the implementations employing emerging device technologies, additional challenges related to programming devices are introduced.
To address these issues, neuromorphic frameworks with the abstractions and tools to develop applications might prove beneficial. Lava framework is an open-source neuromorphic framework designed by Intel Labs to build applications that fully exploit the principles of neural computation and map them to neuromorphic hardware. The Lava framework includes high-level libraries for deep learning, dynamic neural fields, and constrained optimization for productive algorithm development. It also consists of tools to map those algorithms to different types of hardware architectures. Lava is the only existing neuromorphic framework that comes with specifically designed optimization solvers. Therefore, we have selected the Lava framework for our resource allocation problem implementation.
This thesis aims to conduct a case study on the use of Lava neuromorphic framework for radio resource allocation. First, we design and formulate the problem as an integer linear program (ILP). Then, it is reduced to a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO), a format that can be solved using Lava. To evaluate the performance of the proposed Lava-based approach, we compare our results to the ones obtained with classical CPU-based solvers. Solving problems on Lava requires several hyperparameters as inputs. Currently, tuning the hyperparameters is a tedious task. Determining the optimal set of hyperparameters is even more difficult for large problem instances. We believe that improving the Solver-Tuner utility for hyperparameter tuning can help solve large problems
Representation Otherwise: A Public Pedagogy Contesting Islamophobia through Popular Culture
Get PDFMy dissertation argues for popular culture as a public pedagogy by analyzing internet series, stand-up comedy and music videos created in the US to subvert stereotypes. Popular culture is a powerful force in generating stereotypes, including those involved in Islamophobia; and film and media have long defined Muslims (along with Arabs, who are often conflated with Muslims) in terms of religion, gender and race, for instance by portraying Muslim men as “terrorists”, Muslim women as either helpless maidens or veiled and oppressed, and Islam altogether as a “problem”. However, stereotyped groups also use popular culture to speak for themselves. Popular culture is used to resist, contest, counter and subvert stereotypes. This potential is being realized by second-generation Muslims familiar with the platforms provided by Anglo-American popular culture. Their work has come into its own especially in the aftermath of 9/11, a time that saw both the intensification of stereotypes and heightening of Muslim-American consciousness.
I also argue that current efforts at contesting stereotypes by Muslims in the American cultural sphere have been facilitated by the fact that the circulation of digital and digitalized culture on the internet allows diverse voices to be more easily heard by a wide audience. I discuss how each of these works counters stereotypes and allows the targeted communities to be understood more positively and realistically by serving as a public pedagogy through its accessibility and its offering of knowledge previously omitted in representation. First, I argue that Muslim-Americans are drawing on a long tradition of minority groups, such as African-Americans and Jewish-Americans, utilizing popular culture in similar ways. Understanding how minorities were historically situated as the “Other” and how they were not only defined by but also responded through popular culture sheds light on the current movement by Muslims who are challenging stereotypes by creating a third space defining modern Americanness through a popular culture that is the most widespread and imitated in the world; thus I will be examining activity that has a wide influence. American popular culture also has great potential to have a transnational impact, an aspect I address in the conclusion
Energy Efficient Application Provisioning in Virtualized Internet of Things
Get PDFThe Internet of Things is a new paradigm that allows an enormous number of devices i.e., sensors, actuators, RFID tags, etc. to cooperate to reach a common goal. The wireless sensor networks as the key components of the IoT are extensively being used in various domains and applications. However, in traditional WSNs, applications are embedded into the sensor, precluding them from being re-used by other applications. Therefore, the sensor become application-specific and task-oriented devices with increased deployment and maintenance costs. To cope with these issues, a viable approach is to apply virtualization to WSNs. Virtualization abstracts the physical sensing capabilities of the sensors into logical units, allowing them to be reused by multiple applications. WSN virtualization can be done at either node- and/or network-level. However, virtualization challenges the energy consumption in WSNs. Thus, inefficient application provisioning can have a drastic impact on the energy consumption of the WSNs, leading to faster depletion of sensor nodes’ batteries. This thesis proposes algorithmic approaches to tackle the key challenges related to energy consumption in virtualized IoT-based networks.
The first challenge faced by virtualized IoT networks is the energy efficiency in dynamic task assignment considering node-level virtualization. Addressing this challenge is critical for energy efficiency. Considering that the IoT devices (e.g., sensors) need to interact and exchange messages, the second challenge is the problem of energy efficiency in dynamic network embedding in virtualized IoT networks considering both node- and network-level virtualization. Yet, another challenge is energy-efficient distributed task assignment in virtualized IoT networks. The IoT nodes are constrained devices with limited available energy and processing capabilities. Thus, it is not always feasible to have powerful nodes in the network to execute the algorithms.
To tackle the first challenge, we modeled the problem using integer linear programming and proposed a heuristic to solve the problem. For the second challenge, after modeling the problem using ILP, we proposed our Dynamic Network Embedding heuristic to solve the problem in an energy efficient manner. When it comes to the third challenge, we modeled the problem using non-cooperative game theory and proposed an energy-efficient heuristic to solve the problem
A Grounded Theory Exploration of the Ambiguous Career Transition from Instructional Systems Design to Performance Improvement
Get PDFInstructional designers often navigate ambiguity in their professional journeys towards performance improvement. Although there are many similarities between the two professions, there are also important differences. Most notable is that instructional designers tend to focus on learning-based solutions, while performance improvement practitioners take a broader approach that may include training as just one aspect of their proposal in solving a business problem. This study explores the experiences of professionals who successfully adopted this broader approach and, through their stories, seeks to understand what made the transition successful. Their journeys were captured using an adapted version of Robert Atkinson’s life story interview technique, and the data was analyzed using Kathy Charmaz’s constructivist grounded methodology. The result was a selection of four emergent themes.
These emergent themes and their underlying categories led to a model that captured the ambiguous ID-to-PI transition. This model suggests three immediate actions that serve as a guidebook for instructional designers seeking to move into performance improvement. These actions are: (1) Build a collection of performance stories, (2) Be an active member in a performance-focused professional organization, such as the International Society of Performance Improvement, and (3) Find your performance lens to see the world.
This model is then simplified to resemble Carl Binder’s Performance Chain®. Finally, the ID-to-PI career transition is mapped out with Binder’s Performance Chain® and Six Boxes® for business results, work outputs, behaviours and behaviour influences in hopes of making the journey from ID to PI less ambiguous.
Keywords: Performance Improvement, Instructional System Design, Instructional Design, ID-to-PI career transition, ISPI, Charmaz, and Constructivist Grounded Theor
Numerical study of the effect of instability on detonation dynamics and critical phenomena
Get PDFDetonation is a supersonic, self-sustained, combustion-driven wave. Real detonation wavefronts are inherently unstable, and their structures are unsteady with different levels of instabilities embedded at the frontal structure. To elucidate the effects of instabilities on various dynamics of the detonation wave, such as its initiation, failure, and propagation mechanism, this thesis research proposes a series of numerical investigations by perturbing the unstable detonation structure from mixture inhomogeneity, boundary conditions, and an external obstacle to increase flow instability artificially. Through these studies of different scenarios, the significance of the instabilities of the unstable detonation front structure on the detonation dynamics and critical phenomena would be conclusively demonstrated, and the results contribute to a better understanding of gaseous detonation behaviour