What Luck!

Who is the luckiest person in the world? What do we mean by ‘luck’? Luck is usually treated as something persistent, a quality that attaches to people, places or objects. We feel that luck should be balanced, that the wheel of fortune should always rotate to balance things out, but it doesn’t. Fate is a powerful and related idea that destiny pre-ordains the course of our lives. Fortune-telling techniques purport to get a glimpse of fate and to see hidden truths. Somewhat paradoxically, most kinds of divination make use of random methods. The paradox of fairness is explained. It seems, though, that what distinguishes self-described lucky people from those who consider themselves unlucky is a question of attitude, of how one interprets the chance events that have filled our lives.

The Degree of Practicing Alternative Evaluation Strategies by Mathematics Teachers in the Elementary Stage in Hail City

This study aimed at discovering the degree of practicing alternative evaluation strategies by mathematics teachers in Hail city. The study sample consisted of (55) teachers of mathematics in elementary stage. They were chosen by using random methods. To achieve the objectives of the study, the researchers used the descriptive methodology. An observation card was designed. Data were processed statistically. The results of the study showed that the degree of practicing alternative evaluation strategies as a whole by mathematics teachers was medium. Its mean was (2.12). The results also showed that there were no significant differences in the degree of practicing alternative evaluation strategies by mathematics teachers in the elementary stage due to the variable of experience, while there were significant differences due to the variable of training courses in favor of teachers participation in three training courses and more.

Variation and change in a specialized register

Corpus-based studies of specialized registers typically sample texts using random methods as far as possible, but they disregard social characteristics of the speakers/writers. In contrast, in corpus-based studies of conversation and quantitative sociolinguistic studies, sampling is more typically designed to optimize social representation. To our knowledge, this study is the first to compare linguistic outcomes from random versus sociolinguistic sampling in a specialized register. Our data comes from the biographical radio chat show, Desert Island Discs (DID), at different points in time. We constructed two versions of a DID corpus: a sociolinguistic judgment sample based on guest demographics, and a random sample. We compare grammatical usage between them using an inductive (‘key POS-tags’) method and close manual analysis, uncovering some evidence of significant grammatical differences between the samples and differing patterns of diachronic change. We discuss the implications of our research for corpus design, representativeness and analysis in specialized registers.

The Impact of Music in Increasing Intelligence: A "Gendhing Lancaran" Experiment on Spatial-Temporal Ability

The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of the Javanese gamelan pieces, namely gendhing lancaran towards the increasing of the spatial-temporal ability. The subjects of this research consist of 60 elementary school students in the fourth grade. By using random methods, those subjects are grouped into two groups those are 30 students on the experiment group and 30 others on the control group. The subjects were assigned to one of two conditions: listening gendhing lancaran (for the experiment group) or no music (for the control group). As a spatial-temporal task, CFIT (culture fair intelligence test) was administered before and after listening gendhing lancaran. The experiment group is scored significantly higher than the non-music group on CFIT. These data support this research as the elements of sounds produced by various music instruments can give stimulus or influence spatial-temporal ability. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah menginvestigasi pengaruh tetembangan gamelan Jawa, yaitu gendhing lancaran terhadap peningkatan kemampuan spasial-temporal. Subjek penelitian ini adalah 60 murid sekolah dasar di kelas empat. Dengan menggunakan metode acak, subjek-subjek tersebut dijadikan ke dalam dua kelompok, yaitu 30 dalam kelompok eksperimen dan 30 lainnya dalam kelompok pengawasan. Mereka dikaitkan dengan salah satu dari dua kondisi: mendengar gendhing lancaran (untuk kelompok eksperimen) atau tidak mendengar musik tersebut (untuk kelompok pengawasan). Sebagai tugas spasial-temporal, CFIT (culture fair intelligence test) dicatat sebelum dan sesudah mendengar gendhing lancaran. Kelompok eksperimen secara signifikan bernilai lebih tinggi dibandingkan kelompok pengawasan melalui CFIT. Data ini mendukung penelitian ini di mana elemen-elemen bunyi yang dihasilkan berbagai alat musik dapat memberikan stimulus atau pengaruh pada kemampuan spasial-temporal.

Recipes for Structural Fairness in Games

Background. Although fairness is central to society and to games that are taken seriously, the structural aspect of fairness has not been addressed as a problem of games. Aim. To resolve the problem of structural fairness in multi-player, multi-episodic games, especially for business games that are transaction based, where sales result from individual transactions rather than from formulae that aggregate and allocate modeled-market demand. Method. Mathematics and examples are used to clarify positions, present proofs, and show application. Argument. Structural fairness is of three kinds: positional, order, and arrival. Finding. For fixed number of parties, positional rotation assures complete positional fairness, whereas order rotation assures both complete positional fairness and complete order fairness, but only when number-of-party and number-of-episode conditions are satisfied. For variable number of parties, arrival rotation assures fairness to parties added last. The classic Gold and Pray model can be modified to allow supply to affect demand by applying order rotation to stock outs. Application. The rotational procedures apply to business games with modeled and real markets, and may apply to all games with a scoring system that is taken seriously. Conclusion. Games can be structurally fair, but the game that is structurally fair must be a multi-episodic game that incorporates fairness into its design. For assuring structural fairness, proportional and random methods are generally inferior to rotation.