Heuristic Notion Research Articles

A rational heuristic model of economic decision making

A conspicuous ‘hole’ lies between the ‘rational-choice’ paradigm and the ‘behavioral decision-making’ paradigm. The ‘missing model’ is ‘heuristic’ (research-based) yet ‘rational’ (non-biasing): a set of methods for the logically sound discovery and design of economic actions, options and objectives. Such a model is developed in this paper, enriching the notion and repertory of heuristics that are typically considered in economic and cognitive sciences with the notion and set of heuristics typically considered in the philosophy of science and the logic of discovery. The model then provides a response to the hitherto unaddressed question of how knowledge, on which the rationality and wisdom of any decision largely depends, can be constructed in a valid and reliable way. The specification of the heuristics that can effectively and efficiently guide economic discovery and innovation seems to be overdue in an economy said to be knowledge intensive and innovation oriented.

PowerPoint's Pedagogy

Teacher-student discourse is increasingly mediated through, by and with digital technologies. In-class discussions have found new, textually-rich venues online; chalk and whiteboard lectures are rapidly giving way to PowerPoint presentations. Yet, what does this mean experientially for students? This article investigates college students' experiences of PowerPoint in the classroom. The research asks: What are the tacit and pedagogical dimensions of the PowerPoint presentation for students? The method of inquiry is informed by a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and by the heuristic notions of pedagogical tact and thoughtfulness.

PowerPoint's Pedagogy

Teacher-student discourse is increasingly mediated through, by and with digital technologies. In-class discussions have found new, textually-rich venues online; chalk and whiteboard lectures are rapidly giving way to PowerPoint presentations. Yet, what does this mean experientially for students? This article investigates college students' experiences of PowerPoint in the classroom. The research asks: What are the tacit and pedagogical dimensions of the PowerPoint presentation for students? The method of inquiry is informed by a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and by the heuristic notions of pedagogical tact and thoughtfulness.

Дискуссионные вопросы кросс-культурных исследований влияния грамотности на когнитивное развитие и концепция симпрактического общества

In the polemic with the book by the leading Western cross_cultural psychologists S. Scribner and M. Cole The Psychology of Literacy the author verifies and clarifies the concept of sympractical society. The paper discusses the influence of literacy on cognitive processes development and the effectiveness of tests in investigating this influence. Along with reviewing main theoretical differences between the research conducted by S. Scribner and M. Cole and the Middle Asian research conducted by A.R. Luria in early 1930s, the author substantiates the heuristic notion of 'a dynamic system of meaning' proposed by L.S. Vygotsky and integrates it into the concept of sympractical society. The latter enables him to provide a fuller interpretation of the data included in The Psychology of Literacy within the framework of the cultural_historical theory.

On moral intuitions and moral heuristics: a response

moral heuristics are pervasive, and they produce moral errors. we can identify those errors as such even if we do not endorse any contentious moral view. to accept this point, it is also unnecessary to make controversial claims about moral truth. but the notion of moral heuristics can be understood in diverse ways, and a great deal of work remains to be done in understanding the nature of moral intuitions, especially those that operate automatically and nonreflectively, and in exploring the possibility of altering such intuitions through modest changes in context and narrative.

Prying open the space for social work in the new millennium

Social work in the United Kingdom faces all manner of woes. Critical public inquiries, disgruntled users of the service, the bureaucratisation of practice, problems with recruitment, and the overhaul of training, all continue to reinforce a culture of pessimism. It has been suggested that social work in the United Kingdom stands at the crossroads where a decision must be made either to accept these depressing conditions as they are, or to challenge them by asserting a new future for a reinvigorated profession. The latter option is supported by the authors of this article because we share the view that as social workers we have available to us discursive freedom with which to analyse the profession's contemporary ailments and to find a way through them based on a discourse of social justice. The idea and practice of discursive freedom can be captured in the heuristic notion of 'space' which the authors use here as a shared focus for analysing contemporary social work from four different critical perspectives. In this way a dialogue is promoted between theory and practice and within critical theory. In its method and its results this inquiry is still very much work-in-progress. This provisional quality sits comfortably with the notion of 'space' and gives rein to its recursive qualities. These qualities, it is argued, must lie at the heart of transformative social work.

Phase space quantization and the uncertainty principle

We replace the usual heuristic notion of quantum cell by that of ‘quantum blob’, which does not depend on the dimension of phase space. Quantum blobs, which are defined in terms of symplectic capacities, are canonical invariants. They allow us to prove an exact uncertainty principle for semiclassically quantized Hamiltonian systems.

Paradigms lost, paradigms regained? Development studies in the twenty-first century

Until the mid-1980s post-World War II development thinking shared three basic paradigms, ie essentialising the Third World and its inhabitants as homogeneous entities, an unconditional belief in progress and in the makeability of society, and the importance of the (nation)state in realising that progress. Development theories (from modernisation to dependencia) as well as the international development aid industry all shared these paradigms. From the mid-1980s onwards these three paradigms increasingly lost their hegemonic status and are currently, on the threshold of the twenty-first century, being replaced by a loose set of partly descriptive, partly heuristic notions like civil society, social capital, diversity and risk. This article is an attempt to analyse the most important reasons for the loss of the central paradigms in development thinking. It tries to assess the importance for development studies of several postmodern, post-development and globalisation-inspired notions and insights.

Bounds for the difference between a linear unbiased estimate and the best linear unbiased estimate

Intuitively it is obvious that if a linear unbiased estimator is only “slightly” suboptimal, the estimate cannot differ “much” from the corresponding best linear unbiased estimate for any “reasonable” observation vector. I present a Euclidean, nonstochastic bound which quantifies this heuristic notion. I then use it to constrain the difference between two vertical motion estimators from repeated precise levelling, where a candidate estimator is both known to be suboptimal at the standard model, and thought to be more resistant than the optimal estimator against deviations from it.

Heuristics and Biases in Evolutionary Biology

Approaching science by considering the epistemological virtues which scientists see as constitutive of good science, and the way these virtues trade-off against one another, makes it possible to capture action that may be lost by approaches which focus on either the theoretical or institutional level. Following Wimsatt (1984) I use the notion of heuristics and biases to help explore a case study from the history of biology. Early in the 20th century, mutation theorists and natural historians fought over the role that isolation plays in evolution. This debate was principally about whether replication was the central scientific virtue (and hence the ultimate goal of science to replace non-experimental evidence with experimental evidence) or whether consilience of inductions was the central virtue (and hence, as many kinds of evidence as possible should be pursued).

Inverse Nyquist array: a quantitative theory

Rosenbrock's inverse Nyquist array (INA) (1970, 1974) is made robust for uncertain MIMO systems by direct application of SISO quantitative feedback theory (QFT) methodology to each element of the inverse closed loop system. This enables quantitative bounds to be generated for not only the elements of the closed loop transfer function matrix but also for the overall closed loop interaction index; thereby making precise the heuristic notion of 'sufficient' diagonal dominance used in the traditional Nyquist array. This technique will be used to convert the original MIMO problem into a series of exact robust performance problems involving both parametric and unstructured uncertainty. An illustrative example is presented comparing the solution using this new technique and a mu-synthesis solution.

Perspectives on utility-based decision models in primary health care within developing countries

In a previous issue of this journal, Newman et al. [1] discuss the notion of preference-based heuristics and their use in studies assisted by the PRICOR (Primary Health Care Operations Research) Project. This article focuses on one class of such heuristics—those that attempt to disaggregate individual or group preferences (utilities) into definable components in an effort to evaluate a specified series of alternative strategies or programs. In particular, the Multiple Criteria Utility Assessment (MCUA) heuristic, used by several PRICOR-funded researchers, is examined. The article reviews the concept of utility as denned in five PRICOR studies (presented in this issue), outlines the procedure for performing an MCUA, discusses some of the common problems met by PRICOR researchers in using the model, and suggests ways to apply the procedure more effectively. The article closes with a postscript, outlining the direction the PRICOR Project is currently taking in assisting researchers and primary health care system managers in developing countries to use operations research in solving service delivery decision problems.

A C∗-algebra formulation of gauge transformations of the second kind for the electromagnetic field

A definition of gauge transformations of the second kind for the quantized free electromagnetic field is proposed within a Weyl algebra framework. This paper is complementary to recent work of Strocchi and Wightman on gauge transformations for the electromagnetic field using the indefinite metric formalism. The algebraic approach accounts for the general features of the heuristic notion of gauge transformation in a natural way as well as clarifying some of the constructions of the indefinite metric approach.

Heuristic Decision Policies for the Control of Reversible Traffic Links

Mathematical models of the delays incurred in a traffic link with reversible lanes, as a function of demands for service and allocation decisions, are constructed assuming that the state of the operation is reviewed periodically. There is a penalty associated with each allocation change that is manifested as a loss of capacity. Heuristic algorithms are derived that enable the determination of decision policies that minimize the delay per vehicle during some horizon. The first phase of the determination is performed upon a basic model, in which the reversal penalties are ignored, and results in a sequence of optimal periodwise decisions. This policy is then subjected to a second phase, performed upon the lost time model, in which reversal penalties are included. Progressively better policies are generated in this phase according to the heuristic notion that an optimal policy does not differ much from the policy obtained in the first phase. The solution of the models is illustrated in a case study using actual data for the Chesapeake Bridge.

Nonlinear functions of weak processes. I

It is well-known that powers of a (Schwartz) distribution generally fail to exist in nontrivial cases; the same is true of stochastic and operational distributions (i.e. linear mappings into random variables or operators in Hilbert space). However, in these latter cases a notion of “renormalization” is applicable to the powers, which in a number of interesting cases leads again to a distribution. Section 1 of this paper gives a general theory of renormalization; an intrinsic characterization of renormalized products; their existence in finite-dimensional situations; and a specialization to a certain quantum process underlying all “free Bose-Einstein quantum fields.” In the latter case the present renormalized product may be identified with the “Wick product” heuristically treated in connection with quantum field computations by means of a common recursion relation, and the “theorem of Wick” given a simple abstract formulation and treatment. Section 2 treats the renormalized powers in the case of a process constituting a mathematical formulation of the heuristic notion of “free neutral scalar field in a two-dimensional space-time.” An intrinsic characterization for the renormalized powers, as a self-adjoint operator-valued distribution in space, at a fixed time, is developed in terms of simple and natural transformation properties of the distributions, under certain unitary transformations. The existence of the distributions thus characterized is shown by an explicit limiting procedure which yields the commutativity as well as the self-adjointness of all the renormalized powers of the “field” at a fixed time, and provides their simultaneous spectral resolution. These results subsume Theorem 1 of [ 16].