Matching Items (8)
Filtering by

Clear all filters

135955-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Instead of providing the illusion of agency to a reader via a tree or network of prewritten, branching paths, an interactive story should treat the reader as a player who has meaningful influence on the story. An interactive story can accomplish this task by giving the player a large toolset

Instead of providing the illusion of agency to a reader via a tree or network of prewritten, branching paths, an interactive story should treat the reader as a player who has meaningful influence on the story. An interactive story can accomplish this task by giving the player a large toolset for expression in the plot. LudoNarrare, an engine for interactive storytelling, puts "verbs" in this toolset. Verbs are contextual choices of action given to agents in a story that result in narrative events. This paper begins with an analysis and statement of the problem of creating interactive stories. From here, various attempts to solve this problem, ranging from commercial video games to academic research, are given a brief overview to give context to what paths have already been forged. With the background set, the model of interactive storytelling that the research behind LudoNarrare led to is exposed in detail. The section exploring this model contains explanations on what storyworlds are and how they are structured. It then discusses the way these storyworlds can be brought to life. The exposition on the LudoNarrare model finally wraps up by considering the way storyworlds created around this model can be designed. After the concepts of LudoNarrare are explored in the abstract, the story of the engine's research and development and the specifics of its software implementation are given. With LudoNarrare fully explained, the focus then turns to plans for evaluation of its quality in terms of entertainment value, robustness, and performance. To conclude, possible further paths of investigation for LudoNarrare and its model of interactive storytelling are proposed to inspire those who wish to continue in the spirit of the project.
ContributorsStark, Joshua Matthew (Author) / VanLehn, Kurt (Thesis director) / Wetzel, Jon (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
137481-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
We discuss processes involved in user-centric security design, including the synthesis of goals based on security and usability tasks. We suggest the usage of implicit security and the facilitation of secureuser actions. We propose a process for evaluating usability flaws by treating them as security threats and adapting traditional HCI

We discuss processes involved in user-centric security design, including the synthesis of goals based on security and usability tasks. We suggest the usage of implicit security and the facilitation of secureuser actions. We propose a process for evaluating usability flaws by treating them as security threats and adapting traditional HCI methods. We discuss how to correct these flaws once they are discovered. Finally, we discuss the Usable Security Development Model for developing usable secure systems.
ContributorsJorgensen, Jan Drake (Author) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Thesis director) / VanLehn, Kurt (Committee member) / Wilkerson, Kelly (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2013-05
148333-Thumbnail Image.png
Description

This thesis attempts to explain Everettian quantum mechanics from the ground up, such that those with little to no experience in quantum physics can understand it. First, we introduce the history of quantum theory, and some concepts that make up the framework of quantum physics. Through these concepts, we reveal

This thesis attempts to explain Everettian quantum mechanics from the ground up, such that those with little to no experience in quantum physics can understand it. First, we introduce the history of quantum theory, and some concepts that make up the framework of quantum physics. Through these concepts, we reveal why interpretations are necessary to map the quantum world onto our classical world. We then introduce the Copenhagen interpretation, and how many-worlds differs from it. From there, we dive into the concepts of entanglement and decoherence, explaining how worlds branch in an Everettian universe, and how an Everettian universe can appear as our classical observed world. From there, we attempt to answer common questions about many-worlds and discuss whether there are philosophical ramifications to believing such a theory. Finally, we look at whether the many-worlds interpretation can be proven, and why one might choose to believe it.

ContributorsSecrest, Micah (Author) / Foy, Joseph (Thesis director) / Hines, Taylor (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
148341-Thumbnail Image.png
Description

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of entanglement and the particular problems it poses for some physicists. In addition to looking at the history of entanglement and non-locality, this paper will use the Bell Test as a means for demonstrating how entanglement works, which measures the

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of entanglement and the particular problems it poses for some physicists. In addition to looking at the history of entanglement and non-locality, this paper will use the Bell Test as a means for demonstrating how entanglement works, which measures the behavior of electrons whose combined internal angular momentum is zero. This paper will go over Dr. Bell's famous inequality, which shows why the process of entanglement cannot be explained by traditional means of local processes. Entanglement will be viewed initially through the Copenhagen Interpretation, but this paper will also look at two particular models of quantum mechanics, de-Broglie Bohm theory and Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation, and observe how they explain the behavior of spin and entangled particles compared to the Copenhagen Interpretation.

ContributorsWood, Keaten Lawrence (Author) / Foy, Joseph (Thesis director) / Hines, Taylor (Committee member) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
131386-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Collecting accurate collective decisions via crowdsourcing
is challenging due to cognitive biases, varying
worker expertise, and varying subjective scales. This
work investigates new ways to determine collective decisions
by prompting users to provide input in multiple
formats. A crowdsourced task is created that aims
to determine ground-truth by collecting information in
two different ways: rankings and numerical

Collecting accurate collective decisions via crowdsourcing
is challenging due to cognitive biases, varying
worker expertise, and varying subjective scales. This
work investigates new ways to determine collective decisions
by prompting users to provide input in multiple
formats. A crowdsourced task is created that aims
to determine ground-truth by collecting information in
two different ways: rankings and numerical estimates.
Results indicate that accurate collective decisions can
be achieved with less people when ordinal and cardinal
information is collected and aggregated together
using consensus-based, multimodal models. We also
show that presenting users with larger problems produces
more valuable ordinal information, and is a more
efficient way to collect an aggregate ranking. As a result,
we suggest input-elicitation to be more widely considered
for future work in crowdsourcing and incorporated
into future platforms to improve accuracy and efficiency.
ContributorsKemmer, Ryan Wyeth (Author) / Escobedo, Adolfo (Thesis director) / Maciejewski, Ross (Committee member) / Computing and Informatics Program (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
132796-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
This thesis surveys and analyzes applications of machine learning techniques to the fields of animation and computer graphics. Data-driven techniques utilizing machine learning have in recent years been successfully applied to many subfields of animation and computer graphics. These include, but are not limited to, fluid dynamics, kinematics, and character

This thesis surveys and analyzes applications of machine learning techniques to the fields of animation and computer graphics. Data-driven techniques utilizing machine learning have in recent years been successfully applied to many subfields of animation and computer graphics. These include, but are not limited to, fluid dynamics, kinematics, and character modeling. I argue that such applications offer significant advantages which will be pivotal in advancing the fields of animation and computer graphics. Further, I argue these advantages are especially relevant in real-time implementations when working with finite computational resources.
ContributorsSaba, Raphael Lucas (Author) / Foy, Joseph (Thesis director) / Olson, Loren (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
162272-Thumbnail Image.png
Description

The pandemic that hit in 2020 has boosted the growth of online learning that involves the booming of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). To support this situation, it will be helpful to have tools that can help students in choosing between the different courses and can help instructors to understand

The pandemic that hit in 2020 has boosted the growth of online learning that involves the booming of Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). To support this situation, it will be helpful to have tools that can help students in choosing between the different courses and can help instructors to understand what the students need. One of those tools is an online course ratings predictor. Using the predictor, online course instructors can learn the qualities that majority course takers deem as important, and thus they can adjust their lesson plans to fit those qualities. Meanwhile, students will be able to use it to help them in choosing the course to take by comparing the ratings. This research aims to find the best way to predict the rating of online courses using machine learning (ML). To create the ML model, different combinations of the length of the course, the number of materials it contains, the price of the course, the number of students taking the course, the course’s difficulty level, the usage of jargons or technical terms in the course description, the course’s instructors’ rating, the number of reviews the instructors got, and the number of classes the instructors have created on the same platform are used as the inputs. Meanwhile, the output of the model would be the average rating of a course. Data from 350 courses are used for this model, where 280 of them are used for training, 35 for testing, and the last 35 for validation. After trying out different machine learning models, wide neural networks model constantly gives the best training results while the medium tree model gives the best testing results. However, further research needs to be conducted as none of the results are not accurate, with 0.51 R-squared test result for the tree model.

ContributorsWidodo, Herlina (Author) / VanLehn, Kurt (Thesis director) / Craig, Scotty (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2021-12
147833-Thumbnail Image.png
Description

In light of the 2020 Presidential election, accusations regarding early voting methods have risen as a topic of debate among active voters. In order to ensure the voter’s trust in voting methods, it is important to analyze whether such accusations are truthful or just dramatized speculation. Do early voting methods

In light of the 2020 Presidential election, accusations regarding early voting methods have risen as a topic of debate among active voters. In order to ensure the voter’s trust in voting methods, it is important to analyze whether such accusations are truthful or just dramatized speculation. Do early voting methods negatively infringe on the integrity the U.S. election process? Using gathered voter statistics and conducted partisan research within recent elections, this defense examines the impact early voting has had through the analysis of two of its most controversial claims. The author finds that there exists little to no reasonable support to conclude existence of infringement to the integrity of the election process, and the reasons that explain this topic’s rise in popularity lies in the failure to accept defeat and the notion of fear.

Created2021-05