An Experiment on the Numerical Modelling of Verbal Ratio Statements

Verbal statements are intuitively attractive for preference elicitation. In the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) the verbal responses to pairwise comparisons of relative importance are converted into real numbers according to the nine-point integer scale. Several alternative scales have been proposed for the conversion, but sufficient empirical evidence has not been produced to support the choice among these scales. We performed a comparative study in which subjects were requested to quantify verbal ratio statements by adjusting the heights of visually displayed bars. Subjects were also asked to employ verbal expressions in pairwise comparisons of areas of figures with different shapes. The principal result of the experiment was that the perceived meaning of the verbal expressions varies from one subject to the next and also depends on the set of elements involved in the comparison. Our results indicate that there are alternative numerical scales which yield more accurate estimates than the usual 1-to-9 scale and reduce the inconsistency of the comparison matrices. Alternative ways of using verbal preference statements are suggested to overcome the difficulties that arise from the context dependence of verbal pairwise comparisons. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Holy and Great Council – Communication of the Church Message

The article examines the impressions of observers about the Holy and Great Council in Crete in 2016 that have been most discussed, above all a strong competition between national churches and their leaders, and an enormous discrepancy between the agendas seen as urgent by hierarchs and by laypeople. While the fathers of the council based their work on categories of late antiquity, communicating a lack of interest about the “secular” reality, laypeople have stressed a hermeneutic rethinking of Byzantine identity, of Orthodox hermeneutics, of making people aware of and interpreting the historical heritage of Orthodoxy. On the one hand, observers received a message of a lack not only of Orthodox unity, but even of the interpretation of what that unity should consist of. On the other hand, the council unintentionally mobilized Orthodox people worldwide for unity, gathering at the first congress of the International Orthodox Theological Association three years after the council.     

小学生算术应用题上真实性思考及相关因素的研究

采用由7道真实性算术应用题构成的测试材料研究了207名六年级小学生。首先要求被试解答这些题目,然后对给出的不同解答作出评定。结果表明:(1)我国六年级小学生在无提示条件下真实性思考的人数比例是36.6%,显著地高于真实性解答的人数比例27.3%。(2)在解题真实性思考上,优生显著地高于中等生,中等生显著地高于差生;在对不确定真实性解答的评分上,优生显著地高于中等生与差生,在对常规性解答的评分上,优生显著地低于中等生与差生。(3)提示条件显著地提高了学生的真实性思考水平,并且与学生的学业水平存在着显著的交互作用;提示条件不影响学生对不确定真实性解答与常规性解答的评分。     

Beyond Rasiowa's Algebraic Approach to Non-classical Logics

This paper reviews the impact of Rasiowa's well-known book on the evolution of algebraic logic during the last thirty or forty years. It starts with some comments on the importance and influence of this book, highlighting some of the reasons for this influence, and some of its key points, mathematically speaking, concerning the general theory of algebraic logic, a theory nowadays called Abstract Algebraic Logic. Then, a consideration of the diverse ways in which these key points can be generalized allows us to survey some issues in the development of the field in the last twenty to thirty years. The last part of the paper reviews some recent lines of research that in some way transcend Rasiowa's approach. I hope in this way to give the reader a general view of Rasiowa's key position in the evolution of Algebraic Logic during the twentieth century. This paper is an extended version of the invited talk given by the author at the conference Trends in Logic III, dedicated to the memory of A. MOSTOWSKI, H. RASIOWA and C. RAUSZER, and held in Warsaw and Ruciane-Nida from 23rd to 25th September 2005. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Triple Bottomline Many‐Objective‐Based Decision Making for a Land Use Management Problem

A land use many‐objective optimization problem for a 1500‐ha farm with 315 paddocks was formulated with 14 objectives (maximizing sawlog production, pulpwood production, milksolids, beef, sheep meat, wool, carbon sequestration, water production, income and Earnings Before Interest and Tax; and minimizing costs, nitrate leaching, phosphorus loss and sedimentation). This was solved using a modified Reference‐point‐based Non‐dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II augmented by simulated epigenetic operations. The search space had complex variable interactions and was based on economic data and several interoperating simulation models. The solution was an approximation of a Hyperspace Pareto Frontier (HPF), where each non‐dominated trade‐off point represented a set of land‐use management actions taken within a 10‐year period and their related management options, spanning a planning period of 50 years. A trade‐off analysis was achieved using Hyper‐Radial Visualization (HRV) by collapsing the HPF into a 2‐D visualization capability through an interactive virtual reality (VR)‐based method, thereby facilitating intuitive selection of a sound compromise solution dictated by the decision makers' preferences under uncertainty conditions. Four scenarios of the HRV were considered emphasizing economic, sedimentation and nitrate leaching aspects—giving rise to a triple bottomline (i.e. the economic, environmental and social complex, where the social aspect is represented by the preferences of the various stakeholders). Highlights of the proposed approach are the development of an innovative epigenetics‐based multi‐objective optimizer, uncertainty incorporation in the search space data and decision making on a multi‐dimensional space through a VR‐simulation‐based visual steering process controlled at its core by a multi‐criterion decision making‐based process. This approach has widespread applicability to many other ‘wicked’ societal problem‐solving tasks. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Isolating the effects of active responding in computer-based instruction

This experiment evaluated the effects of requiring overt answer construction in computer-based programmed instruction using an alternating treatments design. Four college students worked through an instructional program that alternated between presenting frames with blanks requiring overt responses and complete frames without blanks. All students produced a higher percentage of correct posttest answers corresponding to program segments that required overt answer construction.     

A new look at the attribution of moral responsibility: The underestimated relevance of social roles

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent’s intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent’s freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We will present an experiment to support this claim.