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Description
For as long as humans have been working, they have been looking for ways to get that work done better, faster, and more efficient. Over the course of human history, mankind has created innumerable spectacular inventions, all with the goal of making the economy and daily life more efficient. Today, innovations and technological advancements are happening at a pace like never seen before, and technology like automation and artificial intelligence are poised to once again fundamentally alter the way people live and work in society. Whether society is prepared or not, robots are coming to replace human labor, and they are coming fast. In many areas artificial intelligence has disrupted entire industries of the economy. As people continue to make advancements in artificial intelligence, more industries will be disturbed, more jobs will be lost, and entirely new industries and professions will be created in their wake. The future of the economy and society will be determined by how humans adapt to the rapid innovations that are taking place every single day. In this paper I will examine the extent to which automation will take the place of human labor in the future, project the potential effect of automation to future unemployment, and what individuals and society will need to do to adapt to keep pace with rapidly advancing technology. I will also look at the history of automation in the economy. For centuries humans have been advancing technology to make their everyday work more productive and efficient, and for centuries this has forced humans to adapt to the modern technology through things like training and education. The thesis will additionally examine the ways in which the U.S. education system will have to adapt to meet the demands of the advancing economy, and how job retraining programs must be modernized to prepare workers for the changing economy.
ContributorsCunningham, Reed P. (Author) / DeSerpa, Allan (Thesis director) / Haglin, Brett (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Company X is one of the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors. The company relies on various suppliers in the U.S. and around the globe for its manufacturing process. The financial health of these suppliers is vital to the continuation of Company X's business without any material interruption. Therefore, it is in Company X's interest to monitor its supplier's financial performance. Company X has a supplier financial health model currently in use. Having been developed prior to watershed events like the Great Recession, the current model may not reflect the significant changes in the economic environment due to these events. Company X wants to know if there is a more accurate model for evaluating supplier health that better indicates business risk. The scope of this project will be limited to a sample of 24 suppliers representative of Company X's supplier base that are public companies. While Company X's suppliers consist of both private and public companies, the used of exclusively public companies ensures that we will have sufficient and appropriate data for the necessary analysis. The goal of this project is to discover if there is a more accurate model for evaluating the financial health of publicly traded suppliers that better indicates business risk. Analyzing this problem will require a comprehensive understanding of various financial health models available and their components. The team will study best practice and academia. This comprehension will allow us to customize a model by incorporating metrics that allows greater accuracy in evaluating supplier financial health in accordance with Company X's values.
ContributorsLi, Tong (Co-author) / Gonzalez, Alexandra (Co-author) / Park, Zoon Beom (Co-author) / Vogelsang, Meridith (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Mike (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Interaction is key to education, as students who perform their own inquiry into a subject retain information longer. The field of interactive fiction, which emphasizes personal decision making and freedom of choice, is ripe for opportunity as it is relatively simple to develop and deploy to audiences of any size. However, few interactive fiction platforms exist with the openness and flexibility required for classroom use. My project attempted to create an interactive fiction platform that can be created for and engaged with by both teachers and students. This led to the creation of an interactive fiction platform that conforms to a variety of requirements, such as openness and compatibility across multiple platforms, and which can display meaningful content. This was accomplished by someone with a content area education background and only limited computer science experience, and shows promise for similar future endeavors.
ContributorsWilley, Kyle Allen (Author) / Bruhn, Karen (Thesis director) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Viles, Rebecca (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
This research looks at a group of students from Tumaini Children's Home in Nyeri, Kenya. The purpose of this paper is to explore why this particular group of students is so academically successful. Quantitative research was taken from the average 2013 test scores of Tumaini students who took the Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam in comparison to the scores of students who are not residing in the orphanage. Qualitative research involves interviews from those students who live in Tumaini and interviews from adults who are closely connected to the orphanage. The purpose is to understand why the students are performing so well academically and what support they have created for themselves that allows them to do so.
ContributorsTooker, Amy Elizabeth (Author) / Puckett, Kathleen (Thesis director) / Cocchiarella, Martha (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Nations have a vital interest in creating a citizenry with certain attributes and beliefs and, since education contributes to the formation of children's national identity, government authorities can influence educational curricula to construct their ideal citizen. In this thesis, I study the educational systems of Pakistan and Arizona and explore the historical and conceptual origins of these entities' manipulation of curricula to construct a particular kind of citizen. I argue that an examination of the ethnic studies debate in Tucson, Arizona, in conjunction with Pakistan's history education policy, will illustrate that the educational systems in both these sites are developed to advance the interests of governing authorities. Resource material demonstrates that both educational systems endorse specific accounts of history, omitting information, perspectives, and beliefs. Eliminating or reimagining certain narratives of history alienates some students from identifying as citizens of the state, particularly when contributions of their ethnic, cultural, or religious groups are not included in the country's textbooks.
ContributorsFritcke, Emily Anne (Author) / Saikia, Yasmin (Thesis director) / Haines, Chad (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
"Improving Life Outcomes for Children in Arizona: Educational Social Impact Bond" is a creative project that is structured as a pitch to the Arizona Department of Education to consider social impact bonds as a way to fund pilot education programs. The pitch begins with a brief overview of the umbrella of impact investing, and then a focus on social impact bonds, an area of impact investing. A profile of Arizona's current educational rankings along with statistics are then presented, highlighting the need for an educational social impact bond to help increase achievement. The pitch then starts to focus particularly on high school drop outs and how by funding early childhood education the chances of a child graduating high school increase. An overview of existing early education social impact bonds that are enacted are then presented, followed by a possible structure for an early education social impact bond in Arizona. An analysis of the possible lifetime cost savings of investing in early childhood education are then presented, that are as a result of decreasing the amount of high school drop outs. Lastly, is a brief side-by-side comparison of the Arizona structure to the precedent social impact bonds.
ContributorsRodriguez, Karina (Author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Trujillo, Gary (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
In order to discover if Company X's current system of local trucking is the most efficient and cost-effective way to move freight between sites in the Western U.S., we will compare the current system to varying alternatives to see if there are potential avenues for Company X to create or implement an improved cost saving freight movement system.
ContributorsPicone, David (Co-author) / Krueger, Brandon (Co-author) / Harrison, Sarah (Co-author) / Way, Noah (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
A thorough understanding of the key concepts of logic is critical for student success. Logic is often not explicitly taught as its own subject in modern curriculums, which results in misconceptions among students as to what comprises logical reasoning. In addition, current standardized testing schemes often promote teaching styles which emphasize students' abilities to memorize set problem-solving methods over their capacities to reason abstractly and creatively. These phenomena, in tandem with halting progress in United States education compared to other developed nations, suggest that implementing logic courses into public schools and universities can better prepare students for professional careers and beyond. In particular, logic is essential for mathematics students as they transition from calculation-based courses to theoretical, proof-based classes. Many students find this adjustment difficult, and existing university-level courses which emphasize the technical aspects of symbolic logic do not fully bridge the gap between these two different approaches to mathematics. As a step towards resolving this problem, this project proposes a logic course which integrates historical, technical, and interdisciplinary investigations to present logic as a robust and meaningful subject warranting independent study. This course is designed with mathematics students in mind, with particular stresses on different formulations of deductively valid proof schemes. Additionally, this class can either be taught before existing logic classes in an effort to gradually expose students to logic over an extended period of time, or it can replace current logic courses as a more holistic introduction to the subject. The first section of the course investigates historical developments in studies of argumentation and logic throughout different civilizations; specifically, the works of ancient China, ancient India, ancient Greece, medieval Europe, and modernity are investigated. Along the way, several important themes are highlighted within appropriate historical contexts; these are often presented in an ad hoc way in courses emphasizing technical features of symbolic logic. After the motivations for modern symbolic logic are established, the key technical features of symbolic logic are presented, including: logical connectives, truth tables, logical equivalence, derivations, predicates, and quantifiers. Potential obstacles in students' understandings of these ideas are anticipated, and resolution methods are proposed. Finally, examples of how ideas of symbolic logic are manifested in many modern disciplines are presented. In particular, key concepts in game theory, computer science, biology, grammar, and mathematics are reformulated in the context of symbolic logic. By combining the three perspectives of historical context, technical aspects, and practical applications of symbolic logic, this course will ideally make logic a more meaningful and accessible subject for students.
ContributorsRyba, Austin (Author) / Vaz, Paul (Thesis director) / Jones, Donald (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
When making investment decisions many different indicators are taken into consideration before picking a stock/corporation to invest in (retail or institutional). Traditionally these indicators tend to be financial measures such as earnings per share, price to earnings ratio, price to book value ratio, dividend yield/payout ratio, etc. Often these indicators do not take into consideration the actual running intricacies of a company as they are simply based on historical financial statements, thus limiting an investor's decision-making ability. In this paper I analyze several companies stock performance to see if analyzing operational factors such as supply chain management before making an investment decision would have resulted in a profitable investment and thus prove as a reliable investment indicator. To do this I focused my analysis over a period of 5 years on two companies within three different industries; Fast Food, Processing, and Ecommerce. These industries were selected as the nature of their businesses require intensive supply chains thus this strategy would be most applicable to them as opposed to a software or IT company. Of the two companies selected from each respective industry one company would be listed/analyzed in Gartner's ranking of the "Annual Supply Chain Top 25" while the other company would not be. This Gartner ranking would serve as a measure of whether or not a company had a good supply chain. These companies then had their traditional financial metrics evaluated to see if supply chain analysis indirectly encapsulated some of these metrics as well. The goal of this analysis was to find if there was a strong correlation between companies listed on Gartner's rating scale and strong stock performance. If this was true this would suggest that there is a benefit to be captured by investors through using supply chain analysis as an indicator when making investment decisions.
ContributorsThompson, Tyler Thomas (Author) / Kellso, James (Thesis director) / Smith, Geoffrey (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The purpose of this thesis is to gain a more nuanced understanding of what research is currently going on in the academic realm of supply chain management. This thesis is composed of two parts. The first part contains summaries and personal takeaways from four different supply chain management seminars that were put on by professors who were visiting the ASU campus. These seminars include general topics such as RFID readability, supply chain cash conversion cycles, risk management within the healthcare supply chain, and building trust and trustworthiness in global business. The second part of the thesis will then use a literature review to expand upon the topic of risk management within the healthcare supply chain, and to explore how previous research ties into the current happenings of the industry, as well as its future implications.
ContributorsHemzacek, Noah (Author) / Printezis, Antonios (Thesis director) / Choi, Thomas (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05