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ContributorsShi, Ge (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-25
ContributorsShatuho, Kristina (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-27
Description
Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is the product of volunteers collaborating to build software in an open, public manner. The large number of FLOSS projects, combined with the data that is inherently archived with this online process, make studying this phenomenon attractive. Some FLOSS projects are very functional, well-known, and successful, such as Linux, the Apache Web Server, and Firefox. However, for every successful FLOSS project there are 100's of projects that are unsuccessful. These projects fail to attract sufficient interest from developers and users and become inactive or abandoned before useful functionality is achieved. The goal of this research is to better understand the open source development process and gain insight into why some FLOSS projects succeed while others fail. This dissertation presents an agent-based model of the FLOSS development process. The model is built around the concept that projects must manage to attract contributions from a limited pool of participants in order to progress. In the model developer and user agents select from a landscape of competing FLOSS projects based on perceived utility. Via the selections that are made and subsequent contributions, some projects are propelled to success while others remain stagnant and inactive. Findings from a diverse set of empirical studies of FLOSS projects are used to formulate the model, which is then calibrated on empirical data from multiple sources of public FLOSS data. The model is able to reproduce key characteristics observed in the FLOSS domain and is capable of making accurate predictions. The model is used to gain a better understanding of the FLOSS development process, including what it means for FLOSS projects to be successful and what conditions increase the probability of project success. It is shown that FLOSS is a producer-driven process, and project factors that are important for developers selecting projects are identified. In addition, it is shown that projects are sensitive to when core developers make contributions, and the exhibited bandwagon effects mean that some projects will be successful regardless of competing projects. Recommendations for improving software engineering in general based on the positive characteristics of FLOSS are also presented.
ContributorsRadtke, Nicholas Patrick (Author) / Collofello, James S. (Thesis advisor) / Janssen, Marco A (Thesis advisor) / Sarjoughian, Hessam S. (Committee member) / Sundaram, Hari (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
ContributorsCarlisi, Daniel (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-04-07
Description
Yannis Constantinidis was the last of the handful of composers referred to collectively as the Greek National School. The members of this group strove to create a distinctive national style for Greece, founded upon a synthesis of Western compositional idioms with melodic, rhyhmic, and modal features of their local folk traditions. Constantinidis particularly looked to the folk melodies of his native Asia Minor and the nearby Dodecanese Islands. His musical output includes operettas, musical comedies, orchestral works, chamber and vocal music, and much piano music, all of which draws upon folk repertories for thematic material. The present essay examines how he incorporates this thematic material in his piano compositions, written between 1943 and 1971, with a special focus on the 22 Songs and Dances from the Dodecanese. In general, Constantinidis's pianistic style is expressed through miniature pieces in which the folk tunes are presented mostly intact, but embedded in accompaniment based in early twentieth-century modal harmony. Following the dictates of the founding members of the Greek National School, Manolis Kalomiris and Georgios Lambelet, the modal basis of his harmonic vocabulary is firmly rooted in the characteristics of the most common modes of Greek folk music. A close study of his 22 Songs and Dances from the Dodecanese not only offers a valuable insight into his harmonic imagination, but also demonstrates how he subtly adapts his source melodies. This work also reveals his care in creating a musical expression of the words of the original folk songs, even in purely instrumental compositon.
ContributorsSavvidou, Dina (Author) / Hamilton, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Little, Bliss (Committee member) / Meir, Baruch (Committee member) / Thompson, Janice M (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Supply chains are increasingly complex as companies branch out into newer products and markets. In many cases, multiple products with moderate differences in performance and price compete for the same unit of demand. Simultaneous occurrences of multiple scenarios (competitive, disruptive, regulatory, economic, etc.), coupled with business decisions (pricing, product introduction, etc.) can drastically change demand structures within a short period of time. Furthermore, product obsolescence and cannibalization are real concerns due to short product life cycles. Analytical tools that can handle this complexity are important to quantify the impact of business scenarios/decisions on supply chain performance. Traditional analysis methods struggle in this environment of large, complex datasets with hundreds of features becoming the norm in supply chains. We present an empirical analysis framework termed Scenario Trees that provides a novel representation for impulse and delayed scenario events and a direction for modeling multivariate constrained responses. Amongst potential learners, supervised learners and feature extraction strategies based on tree-based ensembles are employed to extract the most impactful scenarios and predict their outcome on metrics at different product hierarchies. These models are able to provide accurate predictions in modeling environments characterized by incomplete datasets due to product substitution, missing values, outliers, redundant features, mixed variables and nonlinear interaction effects. Graphical model summaries are generated to aid model understanding. Models in complex environments benefit from feature selection methods that extract non-redundant feature subsets from the data. Additional model simplification can be achieved by extracting specific levels/values that contribute to variable importance. We propose and evaluate new analytical methods to address this problem of feature value selection and study their comparative performance using simulated datasets. We show that supply chain surveillance can be structured as a feature value selection problem. For situations such as new product introduction, a bottom-up approach to scenario analysis is designed using an agent-based simulation and data mining framework. This simulation engine envelopes utility theory, discrete choice models and diffusion theory and acts as a test bed for enacting different business scenarios. We demonstrate the use of machine learning algorithms to analyze scenarios and generate graphical summaries to aid decision making.
ContributorsShinde, Amit (Author) / Runger, George C. (Thesis advisor) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Villalobos, Rene (Committee member) / Janakiram, Mani (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This paper describes six representative works by twentieth-century Chinese composers: Jian-Zhong Wang, Er-Yao Lin, Yi-Qiang Sun, Pei-Xun Chen, Ying-Hai Li, and Yi Chen, which are recorded by the author on the CD. The six pieces selected for the CD all exemplify traits of Nationalism, with or without Western influences. Of the six works on the CD, two are transcriptions of the Han Chinese folk-like songs, one is a composition in the style of the Uyghur folk music, two are transcriptions of traditional Chinese instrumental music dating back to the eighteenth century, and one is an original composition in a contemporary style using folk materials. Two of the composers, who studied in the United States, were strongly influenced by Western compositional style. The other four, who did not study abroad, retained traditional Chinese style in their compositions. The pianistic level of difficulty in these six pieces varies from intermediate to advanced level. This paper includes biographical information for the six composers, background information on the compositions, and a brief analysis of each work. The author was exposed to these six pieces growing up, always believing that they are beautiful and deserve to be appreciated. When the author came to the United States for her studies, she realized that Chinese compositions, including these six pieces, were not sufficiently known to her peers. This recording and paper are offered in the hopes of promoting a wider familiarity with Chinese music and culture.
ContributorsLuo, Yali, D.M.A (Author) / Hamilton, Robert (Thesis advisor) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Pagano, Caio (Committee member) / Cosand, Walter (Committee member) / Rogers, Rodney (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
TaxiWorld is a Matlab simulation of a city with a fleet of taxis which operate within it, with the goal of transporting passengers to their destinations. The size of the city, as well as the number of available taxis and the frequency and general locations of fare appearances can all be set on a scenario-by-scenario basis. The taxis must attempt to service the fares as quickly as possible, by picking each one up and carrying it to its drop-off location. The TaxiWorld scenario is formally modeled using both Decentralized Partially-Observable Markov Decision Processes (Dec-POMDPs) and Multi-agent Markov Decision Processes (MMDPs). The purpose of developing formal models is to learn how to build and use formal Markov models, such as can be given to planners to solve for optimal policies in problem domains. However, finding optimal solutions for Dec-POMDPs is NEXP-Complete, so an empirical algorithm was also developed as an improvement to the method already in use on the simulator, and the methods were compared in identical scenarios to determine which is more effective. The empirical method is of course not optimal - rather, it attempts to simply account for some of the most important factors to achieve an acceptable level of effectiveness while still retaining a reasonable level of computational complexity for online solving.
ContributorsWhite, Christopher (Author) / Kambhampati, Subbarao (Thesis advisor) / Gupta, Sandeep (Committee member) / Varsamopoulos, Georgios (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The purpose of this project was to examine the lives and solo piano works of four members of the early generation of female composers in Taiwan. These four women were born between 1950 and 1960, began to appear on the Taiwanese musical scene after 1980, and were still active as composers at the time of this study. They include Fan-Ling Su (b. 1955), Hwei-Lee Chang (b. 1956), Shyh-Ji Pan-Chew (b. 1957), and Kwang-I Ying (b. 1960). Detailed biographical information on the four composers is presented and discussed. In addition, the musical form and features of all solo piano works at all levels by the four composers are analyzed, and the musical characteristics of each composer's work are discussed. The biography of a fifth composer, Wei-Ho Dai (b. 1950), is also discussed but is placed in the Appendices because her piano music could not be located. This research paper is presented in six chapters: (1) Prologue; the life and music of (2) Fan-Ling Su, (3) Hwei-Lee Chang, (4) Shyh-Ji Pan-Chew, and (5) Kwang-I Ying; and (6) Conclusion. The Prologue provides an overview of the development of Western classical music in Taiwan, a review of extant literature on the selected composers and their music, and the development of piano music in Taiwan. The Conclusion is comprised of comparisons of the four composers' music, including their personal interests and preferences as exhibited in their music. For example, all of the composers have used atonality in their music. Two of the composers, Fan-Ling Su and Kwang-I Ying, openly apply Chinese elements in their piano works, while Hwei-Lee Chang tries to avoid direct use of the Chinese pentatonic scale. The piano works of Hwei-Lee Chang and Shyh-Ji Pan-Chew are chromatic and atonal, and show an economical usage of material. Biographical information on Wei-Ho Dai and an overview of Taiwanese history are presented in the Appendices.
ContributorsWang, Jinding (Author) / Pagano, Caio (Thesis advisor) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Humphreys, Jere T. (Committee member) / Meyer-Thompson, Janice (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
ContributorsShi, Zhan (Performer) / ASU Library. Music Library (Publisher)
Created2018-03-26