The aim of this investigation is to explore the preservice teachers' reasoning about variation (variability or spread) when they analyze data in situations that involve risk. In particular, in this communication the responses to two problems of a questionnaire administered to 96 preservice teachers are reported. The problems are of comparing…

Recently organizations have begun to realize the potential value in the huge amounts of raw, constantly fluctuating data sets that they generate and, with the help of advances in storage and processing technologies, collect. This leads to the phenomenon of big data. This data may be stored in structured format in relational database systems, but…

Seven institutional research maxims based on research and theory about how people cognitively process information are discussed: more may not be better; augment humans with models; chunk data wisely; know decision-makers; heuristics are not always helpful; arrange tables by patterns; and accept negative evidence and new hypotheses. (Author/MLW)

The research presented in this paper demonstrates that Katz and Kahn's (1966) distinction between people-processing and object-processing organizations is a useful classification scheme that can help explain differences in organizational communication systems. To assess the usefulness of Katz and Kahn's scheme, data derived from a sample of more…

In the face of more sophisticated data collection technology, California voters have demonstrated an increasing concern about their own privacy. In response, Assemblyman Cullen has proposed a bill to the state legislature which would require anyone opening an automated information system to send notice to the Secretary of State. This notice would…

The System for Program Information in Continuing Education (SPICE), an information system being implemented at The University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada), was designed to facilitate the collection, manipulation, and reporting of evaluative data from continuing education program participants. The objectives of the system include the following: to…

This paper addresses some of the problems of data access and exchange by discussing what an educational research institution should do about data archiving and data facilities. The work undertaken at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education is described. Generally, efforts in the past have been given to computerization of bibliographic…

Suggests structure based on two sets of principles for deriving meaning from data: Shannon's measure of entropy, which provides means of measuring amount of information in message; and Ranganathan's faceted classification scheme, which provides means of determining number of meaningful data. Syntax, meaning, and semantics of data are discussed.…

A major state-coordinated program in Texas is helping education decision makers and the general public who need information about inputs, activities and cost, and also about the results and impacts of educational programs. Educators have encountered two major problems in obtaining information for effective planning and management: the lack of…

This paper describes an investigation of the effects of group interaction and consensus on information processing behavior when information is received sequentially or simultaneously by the information processing unit. Responses were compared to the Bayesian norm and further analyzed to determine the extent to which groups differed from…

The ability to think critically in the presence of arguments with essential quantitative elements, most often graphical elements, will become an essential skill for educated citizens in the future. This paper takes one specific graphical display, a narrow series of observational and interpretational tasks related to a graph, and using a small set…

Fifteen papers on computer centers and data processing management presented at the Association for Educational Data Systems (AEDS) 1976 convention are included in this document. The first two papers review the recent controversy for proposed licensing of data processors, and they are followed by a description of the Institute for Certification of…

Discusses the problems of compressing a large textual database for storage on CD-ROM. A text-compression algorithm is presented, new algorithms for compression of indices are described, and the ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) database is used as an example. (14 references) (LRW)

Categorizes different theoretical justifications of data fusion into two approaches, examines their implications, analyzes some unsuccessful data fusion experiments, and proposes two conditions for effective data fusion. Results indicate that the efficacy and inter-scheme dissimilarity are good predictors for effectiveness of data fusion.…

This paper considers the processing of digital library queries, consisting of a text component and a structured component in distributed environments. The paper concentrates on the processing of the structured component of a distributed query. A method is proposed to identify the databases that are likely to be useful for processing any given…