There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

The paper presents the most comprehensive and large-scale study to date on how students perceive the impacts of the first wave of COVID-19 crisis in early 2020 on various aspects of their lives on a global level. With a sample of 30,383 students from 62 countries, the study reveals that amid the worldwide lockdown and transition to online learning students were most satisfied with the support provided by teaching staff and their universities’ public relations. Still, deficient computer skills and the perception of a higher workload prevented them from perceiving their own improved performance in the new teaching environment. Students were mainly concerned about issues to do with their future professional career and studies, and experienced boredom, anxiety, and frustration. The pandemic has led to the adoption of particular hygienic behaviours (e.g., wearing masks, washing hands) and discouraged certain daily practices (e.g., leaving home, shaking hands). Students were also more satisfied with the role played by hospitals and universities during the epidemic compared to the governments and banks. The findings also show that students with certain socio-demographic characteristics (male, part-time, first-level, applied sciences, a lower living standard, from Africa or Asia) were significantly less satisfied with their academic work/life during the crisis, whereas female, full-time, first-level students and students faced with financial problems were generally affected more by the pandemic in terms of their emotional life and personal circumstances. Key factors influencing students’ satisfaction with the role of their university are also identified. Policymakers and higher education institutions around the world may benefit from these findings while formulating policy recommendations and strategies to support students during this and any future pandemics.

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Life of Higher Education Students: A Global Perspective

Relief-based feature selection: Introduction and review.

Orange is a machine learning and data mining suite for data analysis through Python scripting and visual programming. Here we report on the scripting part, which features interactive data analysis and component-based assembly of data mining procedures. In the selection and design of components, we focus on the flexibility of their reuse: our principal intention is to let the user write simple and clear scripts in Python, which build upon C++ implementations of computationally-intensive tasks. Orange is intended both for experienced users and programmers, as well as for students of data mining.

/pdf/orange-data-mining-toolbox-in-python-1zoih80d02.pdf

Orange: data mining toolbox in python

The lack of knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged extensive research in the academic sphere, reflected in the exponentially growing scientific literature. While the state of COVID-19 research reveals it is currently in an early stage of developing knowledge, a comprehensive and in-depth overview is still missing. Accordingly, the paper’s main aim is to provide an extensive bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 research across the science and social science research landscape, using innovative bibliometric approaches (e.g., Venn diagram, Biblioshiny descriptive statistics, VOSviewer co-occurrence network analysis, Jaccard distance cluster analysis, text mining based on binary logistic regression). The bibliometric analysis considers the Scopus database, including all relevant information on COVID-19 related publications (n = 16,866) available in the first half of 2020. The empirical results indicate the domination of health sciences in terms of number of relevant publications and total citations, while physical sciences and social sciences and humanities lag behind significantly. Nevertheless, there is an evidence of COVID-19 research collaboration within and between different subject area classifications with a gradual increase in importance of non-health scientific disciplines. The findings emphasize the great need for a comprehensive and in-depth approach that considers various scientific disciplines in COVID-19 research so as to benefit not only the scientific community but evidence-based policymaking as part of efforts to properly respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9132/pdf

A Bibliometric Analysis of COVID-19 across Science and Social Science Research Landscape

Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Life of Higher Education Students: Global Survey Dataset from the First Wave

Background:The use of e-learning techniques in higher education is becoming ever more frequent. In some institutions, e-learning has completely replaced the traditional teaching methods, while in others it supplements classical courses.Materials and methods:The paper presents a study conducted in a member institution of the University of Ljubljana that provides public administration programmes. We analysed the relationship between the proportion of the course implemented in the Moodle e-learning platform and students’ performance on one hand and their satisfaction on the other.Results:The empirical findings reveal a positive correlation for both elements. The results can help decision-makers learn more about how to enhance students’ success and satisfaction using an e-learning platform.Conclusions:The results of our study indicate that the implementation of blended learning with a LMS platform Moodle at the Faculty of Administration resulted in a statistically significant increase in students’ effectiveness, measured by the average grade and the average number of admissions to the exams.

/pdf/analysis-of-selected-aspects-of-students-performance-and-1drp821a1d.pdf

Lan Umek

Papers

Orange: data mining toolbox in python

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Life of Higher Education Students: A Global Perspective

A Bibliometric Analysis of COVID-19 across Science and Social Science Research Landscape

Impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Life of Higher Education Students: Global Survey Dataset from the First Wave

Analysis of Selected Aspects of Students’ Performance and Satisfaction in a Moodle-Based E-Learning System Environment