PlanetUSF

In odd moments in the last few weeks, I’ve been playing around with a standard demographic concept, the stationary population model. This is one of those things that don’t really exist in reality, a population with constant mortality and fertility rates, with no migration in or out, and where the population is the same every year (no natural increase). In essence, a stationary population model is like a stripped-down car, something with all the extras out of the way so you can look at the engine while it’s running. The question I’ve had is, if one looks at a stationary population model of high school, what can one say about a high school if one observes the total enrollment, the ninth-grade enrollment, the number of graduates, and the distribution of graduates by years in high school?

A few minutes of scribbling shows that the crude graduation rate (or the number of graduates divided by the total enrollment)  is equal to the probability of graduating times the rate of new ninth graders entering every year. The probability of graduating and the number of new ninth graders are both interesting and unobserved quantities. Unfortunately, they’re also dependent on a crucial third unobserved quantity, the difference between the entering-ninth-grade rate and the proportion of the high school in ninth grade. (One way of interpreting this is the overestimate of entering 9th graders. Another interpretation is the proportion of total school life experienced in repeating ninth grade.) 

Because my life is now booked, I’ve only spent odd moments away from a computer on this exercise, but the obvious next step is to generate some simulated stationary populations (e.g., bootstrap samples of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979), constrained to confirm to a range of graduation probabilities) and then look for regularities in the relationships between the underlying population measures and what would normally be observed from published data. Given the inherent constraints of the true value for the entering-ninth-grade rate (between 0.25 and the observed ninth-grade proportion), and a few other things, I suspect that regularities exist.

Then the next step is to move on to a stable population model, where you relax the zero-growth assumption and assume a constant growth rate. That’s important because school populations do not remain constant. (Neither does growth remain constant, but a stable population model introduces one level of complexity, and it’s loads easier to understand than the full-blown, “let the population do what it wants to” model.) The problem here is that one crucial number in a stable population model is a term that normally corresponds to the mean length of a generation. This has no clear interpretation in a model of high school enrollment, so that’s an interesting hurdle.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to jump ahead of me on this research program, feel free to dive in. The water’s fine, I’m not likely to follow up for some months, and there are some interesting payoffs. Among other things, in a stationary population model, the product of life expectancy at birth and the birth rate is always one. In the school parallel with a stationary population model, if you multiply the entering-ninth-grade rate by the average time spent in high school, you will always get one. From there and the data on graduates, it’s simple to calculate the average time spent in high school by those who eventually drop out.

Originally published on Sherman Dorn’s independent blog.

In previous versions of Blackboard, adding extra credit to your Gradebook was straightforward. Add a zero point column to the gradebook, and add points to it which would be added to the Total without changing the basis.

In Blackboard 8, the same method works, but due to a bug in the Grade Center, a little more work must be done to make it work properly. There is also a hack explained at the bottom of the article that might be a better option. The bug in particular is that zero point columns are not included in Total column calculations if the Total column is set to include All Gradable Columns.

Create the Extra Credit column as usual, making sure that it is zero points possible, and that it is set to include in the calculations.

Now click on the double chevrons of the Total column, and choose Modify Column.

In section 3, Click the radio button to change from “All Grade Columns” to “Selected Grade Columns…” The section will then expand to show all the columns in your Grade Center. Select all the Column you want included in the Total column, including your extra credit column, click the Right Triangle, and then scroll down and submit.

The Total column should now include your extra credit points.

We hope for an upcoming fix to resolve the need for this extra work.

The Hack

Instead of setting the Extra Credit column to be 0 points possible, set it instead to a really really small number, like 0.0000001. Because it’s not zero, scores in the column will be properly included in the Total column without needing any of the changes mentioned above. Please note, however, that this column is not zero points, it will add a trivial amount of points to the Total.

Please contact the Blackboard Trainers at 974-4692 to schedule time to learn all about Blackboard’s Grade Center and everything else Blackboard.

I’m having a problem logging in to moderate comments on my usf blog. For now, it appears to be a login redirect loop. I’m not sure how this could have happened, but several sites refer to it being not quite as uncommon as I’d like to think.

I am unable to do anything since I don’t have direct access to the site’s resources (it’s likely just a plugin got bust up or something).

If you’d like to comment on something here, more than likely you have my email. Just use that fellow instead.

Sorry for the inconvenience
(I got several emails recently about comments I need to moderate or look at, so that’s why I’m addressing the issue)

During the past 2 years, USF has had an agreement with Ruckus to offer streaming content to all students. This agreement was signed with no cost to USF or to the students, and put forth as an alternative to illegal downloading of music. As you may be aware, the Ruckus service has closed its door and is no longer operational.

Even though Ruckus is no longer available, music streaming has evolved and now students and staff alike have more options. Here are some alternative sites for streaming music:

LastFM
Pandora
Slacker

They operate slightly different than the Ruckus player.

• You are not allowed to build specific playlists with the free versions. Instead, the player keeps track of your taste in music by allowing you to use “Love It” or “Hate It” type buttons with every song. It uses those selections to improve your playlist.
• You are only allowed to skip a certain number of songs with the free version.
• You have the option to purchase songs that you like.
• iPhone applications available for all of the above sites.

By popular request, a new module has been added to make it easier for students to see if new grades have been posted, and to quickly get to their grades in all courses.

Everyone should currently see the My Grades module on the Welcome Tab, as soon as you log in. This module shows a list of all courses you currently have access to. Each course is a link that goes directly to the Grades page of that course, just as if you had clicked into the Courses tab, then into your course, then on Course Tools, then on Grades.

Additionally, if grades have been added or updated since you last viewed the module, My Grades will tell you which courses have grades posted and how many.

Lastly, there is a link to View All Grades, which goes to a page with all the Grades pages of all your courses in one, easy to access tabbed interface.

The module is available by default on everyone’s Welcome Tab, but due to the way that Blackboard adds modules, there’s a good change that it’s at the bottom of the page and out of view. You can always reorder the modules on any tab by clicking Modify Layout on that tab. Use this to move the module to the top so it’s visible as soon as you log in.

This My Grades module is a direct result of overwhelming student requests for an easy way to view course grades without having to drill down into a course everytime. Please let us know how this works for you, and any improvements you might like to see.

I’ve been playing around with some PHP MVC frameworks lately, Cake PHP primarily, with Symfony and Ruby on Rails for comparison. Its my first foray into the MVC design method at all, and while I’m seeing the benefits, at times it seems to be an almost frustratingly efficient system. I say that in the sense that because everything can be broken down into such basic elements, it begs the question of just how basic you should be with certain things.

For example, I have my Posts table setup with a boolean field “is_page”, indicating whether the post should be displayed as a post or a page, this information is also used to determine whether the page title should be displayed as a menu link. When taking the MVC approach, Posts and Pages should be seperate, and while that would be correct, it would also require creating 2 controllers, with essentially the same functions and code in each. That seems a little redundant, as the only real difference should be in the layout used when the item is displayed.

Nonetheless, as the pieces slowly come together, I’m beginning to understand the power of a solid MVC framework. If you find yourself creating websites that share common elements, such as contact forms or a coupon system, you’ll find great benefit from setting aside some time to really play with a few frameworks and see which one is what you need.

It must also be said that there are a ton of choices in PHP frameworks out there, many of them are quite solid. The alternative to CakePHP that I’ve been looking at most lately is the Zend Framework. It offers a lot of the handy abilities of CakePHP but is much more flexible, lightweight, and very modular.

Date Requested: 02/20/09
Time Requested: 5pm-12am
Addl. Comments: I have a party to go to!

Due to critical site maintenance, access to the full text Wiley InterScience may be significantly interrupted tomorrow, Saturday February 7th. The work involves major software updates and will start at 9:00 eastern time. The service interruption may last for up to 12 hours.

For the last two days, the H. W. Wilson databases have been experiencing intermittent trouble. Wilson is working on the issue. Databases include Wilson omnifile full text mega edition, Education full-text, Business full-text, Humanities full-text, Biography index, among others.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

I was interested to learn that HTML was designed to give you less control. In my mind, I thought that knowning HTML would give me not only a better understanding of how websites work but a bit more control as well. Understanding the size of your window helped me to understand the difference between my website being viewed on one window versus another. Learning about logical elements and physical elements helped me to understand the framework of HTML much better.

CSS is a bit confusing to me. Does this mean that I will have one sheet with formatting and another with HTML code?

Practicing the paragraph tag was easy enough. The line breaks and headings and horizontal lines were even better practice. Learning these block elements were helpful and will be great later down the road. I like that with ordered lists you don’t have to supply the numbers and the browser automatically adds one. I feel like its one less thing to worry about. The little things like subscript, superscript, and strikethrough were interesting to learn as well as the teletype.

I’d have to say page 134 was above all, my favorite page and another one of those pages that I’ve folded down and will keep looking at as the semester progresses.

Here are the items newly arrived at the USF Polytechnic Library during the month of January. As always, new circulating books are found in the “New books” stacks in the Group Study area; the new reference and special collections books as well as new A/V are being immediately shelved in their respective stacks.

To note, we received a copy of own Dr Alfredo Weitzenfeld’s book, The neural simulation language : a system for brain modeling , for our USFP Faculty Publications Special Collection.

VHS/DVD

• Tim Wise: on white privilege [videorecording]: racism, white denial & the costs of inequality / Tim Wise ; produced by Sut Jhally. Northhampton, Mass. : Media Education Foundation, c2008
  E185.615 .T55 2008
• The price of pleasure [videorecording] : pornography, sexuality, & relationships / [presented by] Open Lens Media ; produced and directed by Miguel Picker & Chyng Sun. Northampton, MA : Media Education Foundation, c2008.
  HQ472.U6 P75 2008
• War made easy [videorecording] : how presidents & pundits keep spinning us to death / a presentation of the Institute for Public Accuracy ; a Media Education Foundation production ; written and directed by Loretta Alper & Jeremy Earp ; produced by Loretta Alper. Northampton, MA : Media Education Foundation, c2007.
  PN4784.W37 W37 2007

Faculty Publications

• The neural simulation language : a system for brain modeling / Alfredo Weitzenfeld, Michael Arbib, Amanda Alexander. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2002.
  Faculty Publications QP363.3 .W45 2002

Reference

• Encyclopedia of associations. Detroit : Gale Research Co., 1961-
  Reference HS17 .G334 47th v.1 pts.1-3, v.2
• The International year book and statesmen’s who’s who. London : Burke’s Peerage Ltd., [1953-
  Reference JA51 .I57 2009
• Florida. LexisNexis Florida annotated statutes. Charlottesville, Va. : LexisNexis, c2002-
  Reference KFF29 .F55 v.27 2008
• Florida education directory … by FASA. Tallahassee, Fla. : CMD Publishing, [1999]-
  Reference L903.F5 A3 2008/09

Books

• Ethical conflicts in psychology / Donald N. Bersoff. Washington, DC : American Psychological Association, c2008.
  BF76.4 .E814 2008
• Building a GIS : system architecture design strategies for managers / Dave Peters. Redlands, Calif. : ESRI Press, 2008.
  G70.212 .P48 2008
• Charlie Gehringer : a biography of the hall of fame Tigers second baseman / John C. Skipper. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., c2008.
  GV865.G44 S45 2008
• Busting ‘em, and other big league stories / by Ty Cobb ; with an introduction by John N. Wheeler. Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland, c2003.
  GV873 .C6 2003
• The new Blackwell companion to social theory / edited by Bryan S. Turner. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom ; Malden, MA, USA : Wiley-Blackwell, c2009
  H61 .B4773 2009
• Prescriptive entrepreneurship / James O. Fiet with Pankaj C. Patel. Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA : Edward Elgar, c2008.
  HB615 .F534 2008
• The venturesome economy : how innovation sustains prosperity in a more connected world / Amar Bhidé. Princeton, N.J. ; Woodstock, Oxfordshire : Princeton University Press, c2008.
  HC110.T4 B45 2008
• Management / Peter F. Drucker, with Joseph A. Maciariello. New York, NY : Collins, c2008.
  HD31 .D773 2008
• How to negotiate anything with anyone anywhere around the world / Frank L. Acuff. New York : AMACOM/ American Management Association, c2008.
  HD58.6 .A27 2008
• Building conflict competent teams / Craig E. Runde, Tim A. Flanagan. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass ; [Greensboro, NC] : Center for Creative Leadership, c2008.
  Professional Development HD66 .R86 2008
• Moral gray zones : side productions, identity, and regulation in an aeronautic plant / Michel Anteby. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2008.
  HD6971 .A657 2008
• The skeptical business searcher : the information advisor’s guide to evaluating Web data, sites, and sources / by Robert Berkman ; foreword by Reva Basch. Medford, N.J. : Information Today, Inc., c2004.
  HF54.56 .B4685 2004
• Temptations in the office : ethical choices and legal obligations / Stephen M. Goldman. Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2008.
  HF5387 .G645 2008
• Marketing ethics / George G. Brenkert. Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub., 2008.
  HF5415 .B637 2008
• Fusion for profit : how marketing and finance can work together to create value / by Sharan Jagpal ; with the assistance of Shireen Jagpal. New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.
  HF5415 .J333 2008
• Excel sales forecasting for dummies / by Conrad Carlberg. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley Pub., c2005.
  HF5415.2 .C297 2005
• Review of marketing research. Armonk, N.Y. ; London : M.E. Sharpe, c2005-
  HF5415.2 .R467 v.5
• Excel 2007 bible / John Walkenbach. Indianapolis, IN : Wiley, c2007.
  HF5548.4.M523 W34579 2007
• Queer inclusions, continental divisions : public recognition of sexual diversity in Canada and the United States / David Rayside. Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c2008.
  HQ76.8.C3 R39 2008
• McMafia : a journey through the global criminal underworld / Misha Glenny. New York : Knopf Books, 2008.
  HV6441 .G54 2008
• Cyber bullying : bullying in the digital age / Robin M. Kowalski, Susan P. Limber, and Patricia W. Agatston. Malden, MA ; Oxford : Blackwell, 2008.
  HV6773 .K69 2008
• A companion to contemporary political philosophy / edited by Robert E. Goodin, Philip Pettit and Thomas Pogge. Malden, MA ; Oxford : Blackwell Pub., 2007.
  JA71 .C565 2007 v.1 & v.2
• Defiant dads : fathers’ rights activists in America / Jocelyn Elise Crowley. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2008.
  KF547 .C76 2008
• Corporate tax digest / John Catherall, Daniel E. Feld. Boston : Warren, Gorham & Lamont, c1997.
  KF6460.3 .C38 1997 suppl.2009 no.1
• Finding the right texts : what works for beginning and struggling readers / edited by Elfrieda H. Hiebert, Misty Sailors. New York : Guilford Press, c2009.
  LB1050.5 .F544 2009
• Inquire within : implementing inquiry-based science standards in grades 3-8 / Douglas Llewellyn. Thousand Oaks, CA : Corwin Press, c2007.
  LB1585.3 .L58 2007
• Developing learner-centered teaching : a practical guide for faculty / Phyllis Blumberg ; foreword by Maryellen Weimer. San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, c2009.
  LB2331 .B55 2009
• Academic advising : a comprehensive handbook / Virginia N. Gordon, Wesley R. Habley, Thomas J. Grites, and associates. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass, c2008.
  Professional Development LB2343 .A29 2008
• Bringing out the best in teachers : what effective principals do / Joseph Blase, Peggy C. Kirby. Thousand Oaks, CA : Corwin Press, c2009.
  LB2840 .B57 2009
• Differentiated literacy coaching : scaffolding for student and teacher success / Mary Catherine Moran. Alexandria, Va. : Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, c2007.
  LB2844.1.R4 M67 2007
• Constructivist strategies for teaching English language learners / Sharon Adelman Reyes, Trina Lynn Vallone. Thousand Oaks, CA : Corwin Press, c2008.
  PE1128.A2 R4725 2008
• Getting it published : a guide for scholars and anyone else serious about serious books / William Germano. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008.
  Professional Development PN161 .G46 2008
• Television entertainment / Jonathan Gray. New York : Routledge, 2008.
  PN1992.6 .G69 2008
• Access 2007 bible / Michael R. Groh … [et al.] Indianapolis, Ind. : Wiley Publishing, 2007.
  QA76.9.D3 G76 2007
• The handbook of information and computer ethics / edited by Kenneth Einar Himma and Herman T. Tavani. Hoboken, N.J. : Wiley, c2008.
  QA76.9.M65 H36 2008
• Learning SAS by example : a programmer’s guide / Ron Cody. Cary, N.C. : SAS Institute, 2007.
  QA276.4 .C54 2007
• Advanced Excel for scientific data analysis / Robert de Levie. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.
  QD75.4.E4 D43 2008
• The engineering handbook of smart technology for aging, disability, and independence / edited by Abdelsalam (Sumi) Helal, Mounir Mokhtari, Bessam Abdulrazak. Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley, c2008.
  RM950 .E56 2008
• Information systems engineering : from data analysis to process networks / Paul Johannesson, Eva Soderstrom [editors]. Hershey : IGI Pub., c2008.
  T58.5 .I5285 2008
• Information technology entrepreneurship and innovation / Fang Zhao [editor]. Hershey : Information Science Reference, c2008.
  T58.5 .I5377 2008
• Designing the digital experience : how to use experience design tools and techniques to build Websites customers love / David Lee King. Medford, N.J. : CyberAge Books/Information Today, c2008.
  TK5105.888 .K5546 2008
• Building findable websites : web standards, SEO, and beyond / [Aarron Walter]. Berkeley, CA : New Riders, c2008.
  TK5105.888 .W358 2008

Children’s Books

• An anthology of American folktales and legends / Frank de Caro, editor. Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, c2009.
  GR105 .A67 2009
• Keisha’s doors / written by Marvie Ellis ; illustrated by Jenny Loehr = Las puertas de Keisha / escrita por Marvie Ellis ; illustrada por Jenny Loehr. Round Rock, Tex. : Speech Kids Texas Press, 2005.
  PZ73 .E4248 2005
• Tacos anyone? : an autism story / written by Marvie Ellis ; illustrated by Jenny Loehr = Alguien quiere tacos? : una historia de autismo / escrita por Marvie Ellis ; illustrada por Jenny Loehr. Round Rock, Tex. : Speech Kids Texas Press, 2005.
  PZ73 .E425 2005

Databases

• International Monetary Fund databases

We have just published our 2009 Black History Month Library resources page . Take a look to our list of books, full-text journals and databases.

Rain, originally uploaded by paulltran.

It rained pretty much all day yesterday. I think I appreciate rain in the summer time. It gets extremely hot when you exercise outside. Sometimes you just wish it would start pouring. However, in the winter time, the weather becomes cold when it precipitates.

Web of Knowledge is now sporting several enhancements:

• Search grant activity and funding acknowledgements in Web of Science and see where funding money is going; what research has been developed from a specific grant; and who is funding research at your institution.
• You can access searches created with the Refine and Analyze capabilities through the Search History - and create alerts.
• Discover an easier way to let the world know about your achievements: create new accounts. Suggest publication lists. And get metrics and data analysis for researchers at your institution, with the new ResearcherID batch upload and download Web services.
• Personalize your view of citation relationships with enhanced citation mapping capabilities.

Some of you might also be interested in ScienceWatch.com, a website produced by the publishers of Web of Knowledge, Thomson Reuters. This website “tracks trends and performance in basic research i.e. lists hot papers, emerging research fronts, country trends, rising stars and the like. Note that site deals primarily with STM but cover a bit of business, psychology and social sciences as well.