A sample of 328 freshman economics students is disaggregated by the students' gender, previous knowledge of economics, attitudes toward economics, and innate abilities. Results show that students learn more economics if they take microeconomics before macroeconomics. Appended are 14 references. (MLF)

Empirical estimates of production frontiers and average production functions performed for selected public elementary school districts in California support the hypothesis of an optimal school size model. Some policy implications of the results are briefly analyzed. Appended are 16 references. (MLF)

A neuromathematical model of information processing applied to science learning is expanded to include two coefficients representing the motivational state of the learner. The inclusion of these coefficients (which are described) permits modeling of the effects of variations in motivation on the rate and amount of information in learning tasks.…

Describes the recall precision trade-off in information retrieval as the deceleration in the proportion of relevant documents retrieved over time. Several mathematical functions sharing this property are examined and it is concluded that the equation that best models recall as a function of time is the logarithm of a quadratic equation. (21…

This study is an attempt to answer the following research question: can the reliability of a criterion-referenced test be accurately determined according to a multiple classification of the student's performance? Specifically, the study pursues the beta-multinomial model, which postulates the probability distribution of an examinee's degree of…

This document consists of three papers. The first, "A Parallel Model of (Sequential) Problem Solving," describes a parallel model designed to solve a class of relatively simple problems from elementary physics and discusses implications for models of problem-solving in general. It is shown that one of the most salient features of problem…

Presents a model for the geometric analysis of the relationship between information queries and information systems retrieval, and demonstrates the utility of this analysis by its application to six conventional information retrieval similarity measures and a seventh spreading activation measure. (Author/CLB)

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men, this paper reveals that earnings below expectations induce a return to school. Appended are 12 references. (MLF)

Introduces a new model of viewing documents based on citing-cited relationship between them. Using Bayes' decision theory, it is shown how source document may be indexed and weighted by relevant cited document features, corresponding to one pass relevance feedback Model 1 (probabilistic indexing) or Model 2 (probabilistic retrieval). (24…

A brief, practical overview of "design effects" (DEFFs) is presented for users of the results of sample surveys. The overview is intended to help such users to determine how and when to use DEFFs and to compute them correctly. DEFFs are needed only for inferential statistics, not for descriptive statistics. When the selections for…

A model of test item dependency is presented and used to illustrate the effect that violations of local independence have on the behavior of item characteristic curves. The dependency model is flexible enough to simulate the interaction of a number of factors including item difficulty and item discrimination, varying degrees of item dependence,…

A common problem in practical educational research is that of perfect scores which result when latent trait models are used. A simple procedure for managing the perfect and zero response problem encountered in converting test scores into measures is presented. It allows the test user to chose among two or three reasonable finite representations of…

The usefulness of path analysis as a means of better understanding various linear models is demonstrated. First, two linear models are presented in matrix form using linear structural relations (LISREL) notation. The two models, regression and factor analysis, are shown to be identical although the research question and data matrix to which these…

Presents adaptation of a probabilistic theoretical model previously used in relevance feedback for use in automatic indexing of documents (in the sense of imitating) human indexers. Methods for model application are proposed, independence assumptions used in the model are interpreted, and the probability of a dependence model is discussed.…

Examines relationships among the parameters of the Zipf size-frequency distribution as well as its sampling properties. Highlights include its importance in bibliometrics, tables for the sampling distribution of the maximal value of a finite Zipf distribution, and an approximation formula for confidence intervals. (Author/LRW)