scholarly journals Students’ Understanding of the Derivative Concept in the Context of Mathematics for Economics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Feudel ◽  
Rolf Biehler
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Economic Interpretation ◽  
Economics Students ◽  
The Common ◽  
Derivative Concept

Abstract The derivative concept plays a major role in economics. However, its use in economics is very heterogeneous, sometimes inconsistent, and contradicts students’ prior knowledge from school. This applies in particular to the common economic interpretation of the derivative as the amount of change while increasing the production by one unit. Hence, in calculus courses for economics students, learners should acquire an understanding of the derivative that is mathematically acceptable and connected to their prior knowledge, but which also takes into account its practical use in economics. In this paper we first develop a theoretical model describing such an understanding of the derivative for economics students. We then present an exploratory study investigating the extent to which economics students have such an understanding after their calculus course. The results indicate that many of them might not have acquired this kind of understanding, in particular concerning the common economic interpretation of the derivative. The study furthermore yields possible gaps in students’ understanding and possible misconceptions.

scholarly journals KoGuN: Accelerating Deep Reinforcement Learning via Integrating Human Suboptimal Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng Zhang ◽  
Jianye Hao ◽  
Weixun Wang ◽  
Hongyao Tang ◽  
Yi Ma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Fuzzy Rule ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Learning Agents ◽  
The Common ◽  
Low Performance

Reinforcement learning agents usually learn from scratch, which requires a large number of interactions with the environment. This is quite different from the learning process of human. When faced with a new task, human naturally have the common sense and use the prior knowledge to derive an initial policy and guide the learning process afterwards. Although the prior knowledge may be not fully applicable to the new task, the learning process is significantly sped up since the initial policy ensures a quick-start of learning and intermediate guidance allows to avoid unnecessary exploration. Taking this inspiration, we propose knowledge guided policy network (KoGuN), a novel framework that combines human prior suboptimal knowledge with reinforcement learning. Our framework consists of a fuzzy rule controller to represent human knowledge and a refine module to finetune suboptimal prior knowledge. The proposed framework is end-to-end and can be combined with existing policy-based reinforcement learning algorithm. We conduct experiments on several control tasks. The empirical results show that our approach, which combines suboptimal human knowledge and RL, achieves significant improvement on learning efficiency of flat RL algorithms, even with very low-performance human prior knowledge.

How Things Are

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Siderits
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Abstract Objects ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Common Strategy ◽  
Classical Indian Philosophy ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
The Common

This work is designed to introduce some of the more important fruits of Indian Buddhist metaphysical theorizing to philosophers with little or no prior knowledge of classical Indian philosophy. It is widely known among non-specialists that Buddhists deny the existence of a self. Less widely appreciated among philosophers currently working in metaphysics is the fact that the Indian Buddhist tradition contains a wealth of material on a broad assortment of other issues that have also been foci of recent debate. Indian Buddhist philosophers have argued for a variety of interesting claims about the nature of the causal relation, about persistence, about abstract objects, about the consequences of presentism, about the prospects for a viable ontological emergentism. They engaged in a spirited debate over illusionism in the philosophy of consciousness. Some espoused global anti-realism while others called its coherence into question. And so on. This work is meant to introduce the views of such major Buddhist philosophers as Vasubandhu, Dharmakīrti, and Nāgārjuna on these and other issues. And it presents their arguments and analyses in a manner meant to make them accessible to students of philosophy who lack specialist knowledge of the Indian tradition. Analytic metaphysicians who are interested in moving beyond the common strategy of appealing to the intuitions of “the folk” should find much of interest here.

Open Judiciary Worldwide

2020 ◽  
pp. 1207-1221
Author(s):  
Carlos E. Jiménez-Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
Learning Practices ◽  
The Common ◽  
Research Questions

Despite its origins, openness in the judiciary has expanded beyond transparency and, therefore, beyond the common law open justice principle. Several initiatives worldwide are echoing this trend and a new term, open judiciary, is arising as a way to address openness in the justice field. This chapter gives an overview of open judiciary initiatives worldwide, focusing on some of the most successful, in order to identify drivers of adoption, critical success factors, and preliminary results. The research is embedded in a broader exploratory study on the state of the art of open judiciary. The chapter is addressed to answer two of the research questions: What are some learning practices that can be identified worldwide in relation to openness in the judiciary? What are some of the most important lessons that can be learnt from these practices?

scholarly journals Creating the Habit of Recycling in Early Childhood: A Sustainable Practice in Spain

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (22) ◽  
pp. 6393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pilar Buil ◽  
Olga Roger-Loppacher ◽  
Mireia Tintoré
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Daily Routine ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
Teaching Unit ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Depth Interviews

Early childhood education on sustainability has been an issue of high relevance in the last decade. In Spain, many different efforts have been made to increase children’s knowledge, skills, and awareness related to sustainability issues. However, uncertainty about the effectiveness of education on sustainable development exists. This research reports on an exploratory study organized by the association that promotes aluminum packaging recycling in Spain (Arpal). Seven teachers were trained on sustainability in general and on aluminum packaging recycling in particular. These teachers defined and implemented a teaching unit with active learning activities that involved three preschools. Fifty-four children under 6 years of age, mainly 2 and 3 years old, along with their parents, participated in the teaching unit. Qualitative and quantitative methods (questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and focus groups) were carried out to assess the impact. The results proved that different partners, such as children, parents, teachers, managers, and associations, can work together with the common goal of improving education on sustainable development in early childhood, and all of them benefit from this collaboration. Moreover, this study confirmed that education on sustainability should be embedded in the daily routine of preschools. Furthermore, after the exploratory study, the teaching unit was implemented in 29 Andalusian preschools.

scholarly journals STATE FISCAL SPACE RESEARCH FORMATION IN THE CONTEXT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 445
Author(s):  
Ērika Žubule ◽  
Anita Puzule
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Regulation System ◽  
Economic Interpretation ◽  
Government Operation ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
The Common ◽  
Fiscal Space ◽  
The Government ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Budgetary Expenditure

The scientific objective of the research is to carry out the country's fiscal space for the study of public finance policy affects the context of sustainable development. The selection and topicality of the research issue is justified by the fact that each country's sustainable development is affected by the government's policies. One of its main components is fiscal or budgetary policy. Traditionally, it is defined as the money required for setting revenue and expenditure policy that is needed to ensure the government operation, but the economic interpretation says it is the economy regulation system through taxes and government spending. It is emphasized that it is closely linked with the state's role in the redistribution of society profits, determining the state budget's proportion in the gross domestic product, defining objectives for the common tax burden, budgetary expenditure, allowable deficit, volume, and structure of the government debt. In addition, the concept of “fiscal space” correlating with application of the fiscal policy measures becomes topical. Thus, the government is able to influence income of both the society generally and certain groups of residents, their purchasing power and impact on economic development in general. It defines the need of concept fiscal space.

scholarly journals Love Your Country: EEG Evidence of Actor Preferences of Audiences in Patriotic Movies

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lian Zhu ◽  
Yufei Wu
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Late Positive Potential ◽  
Rating Task ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
The Common ◽  
Electroencephalogram Eeg

Movie watching is one of the common ways to spark love for the country. A good patriotic movie can arouse love and pride, encourage people to stand by their countries, and reinforce a sense of national belonging. To evoke audience emotion and enhance patriotism, the choice of actors is fundamental and is a dilemma for film producers. In this exploratory study, an electroencephalogram (EEG) with a rating task was used to investigate how actor types (i.e., skilled vs. publicity) in patriotic movies modulate the willingness of audiences to watch a film and their emotional responses. Behavioral results showed that audiences are more willing to watch patriotic movies starring skilled actors than to watch patriotic movies starring publicity actors. Furthermore, brain results indicated that smaller P3 and late positive potential (LPP) were elicited in response to skilled actors than to publicity actors in patriotic movies. A larger theta oscillation was also observed with skilled actors than with publicity actors. These findings demonstrate that the willingness of audiences to watch a movie is deeply affected by actor types in patriotic films. Specifically, skilled actors engage audiences emotionally, more so than publicity actors, and increase the popularity of patriotic movies. This study is the first to employ neuroscientific technology to study movie casting, which advances film studies with careful scientific measurements and a possible new direction.La première des vertus est le dévouement à la patrie.Napoléon Bonaparte 

Persuasion in Islamic finance

2020 ◽  
pp. 031289622092655
Author(s):  
Saad Azmat ◽  
Haiqa Ali ◽  
Kym Brown ◽  
Michael Skully
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Product Quality ◽  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Jel Classification ◽  
Islamic Finance ◽  
Islamic Banks ◽  
Persuasive Strategies ◽  
Equilibrium Level ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
The Impact

This article explores the mechanisms of persuasion in Islamic finance that may have helped support the growth of this market. Our theoretical model may explain those factors which may influence a customer to select an Islamic financial product. For complex decisions where a person may not fully understand the background concepts such as with finance or Arabic terminology, product quality may be judged based on information in advertising and prior knowledge. Our model shows that Islamic bankers can use the customer’s “coarse thinking” process when advertising products. They may be a means to make products appear more religiously (Shariah) compliant. The equilibrium level of persuasive strategies proposed help reinforces the impact of persuasion for Islamic banks. JEL Classification: JEL: G21, G11, M31

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