Computer-aided design (CAD) programs are essential to engineering as they allow for better designs through low-cost iterations. While CAD programs are typically taught to undergraduate students as a job skill, such software can also help students learn engineering concepts. A current limitation of CAD programs (even those that are specifically designed for educational purposes) is that they are not capable of providing automated real-time help to students. To encourage CAD programs to build in assistance to students, we used data generated from students using a free, open source CAD software called Aladdin to demonstrate how student data combined with machine learning techniques can predict how well a particular student will perform in a design task. We challenged students to design a house that consumed zero net energy as part of an introductory engineering technology undergraduate course. Using data from 128 students, along with the scikit-learn Python machine learning library, we tested our models using both total counts of design actions and sequences of design actions as inputs. We found that our models using early design sequence actions are particularly valuable for prediction. Our logistic regression model achieved a >60% chance of predicting if a student would succeed in designing a zero net energy house. Our results suggest that it would be feasible for Aladdin to provide useful feedback to students when they are approximately halfway through their design. Further improvements to these models could lead to earlier predictions and thus provide students feedback sooner to enhance their learning.
The advancement of technology has progressed faster than any other field in the world and with the development of these new technologies, it is important to make sure that these tools can be used by everyone, including people with disabilities. Accessibility options in computing devices help ensure that everyone has the same access to advanced technologies. Unfortunately, for those who require more unique and sometimes challenging accommodations, such as people with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( ALS), the most commonly used accessibility features are simply not enough. While assistive technology for those with ALS does exist, it requires multiple peripheral devices that can become quite expensive collectively. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a more affordable and readily available option for ALS assistive technology that can be implemented on a smartphone or tablet.
The increasing complexity of today's software requires the contribution of thousands of developers. This complex collaboration structure makes developers more likely to introduce defect-prone changes that lead to software faults. Determining when these defect-prone changes are introduced has proven challenging, and using traditional machine learning (ML) methods to make these determinations seems to have reached a plateau. In this work, we build contribution graphs consisting of developers and source files to capture the nuanced complexity of changes required to build software. By leveraging these contribution graphs, our research shows the potential of using graph-based ML to improve Just-In-Time (JIT) defect prediction. We hypothesize that features extracted from the contribution graphs may be better predictors of defect-prone changes than intrinsic features derived from software characteristics. We corroborate our hypothesis using graph-based ML for classifying edges that represent defect-prone changes. This new framing of the JIT defect prediction problem leads to remarkably better results. We test our approach on 14 open-source projects and show that our best model can predict whether or not a code change will lead to a defect with an F1 score as high as 86.25$\%$. This represents an increase of as much as 55.4$\%$ over the state-of-the-art in JIT defect prediction. We describe limitations, open challenges, and how this method can be used for operational JIT defect prediction.
For effective planning and management of water resources and implementation of the related strategies, it is important to ensure proper estimation of evaporation losses, especially in regions that are prone to drought. Changes in climatic factors, such as changes in temperature, wind speed, sunshine hours, humidity, and solar radiation can have a significant impact on the evaporation process. As such, evaporation is a highly non-linear, non-stationary process, and can be difficult to be modeled based on climatic factors, especially in different agro-climatic conditions. The aim of this study, therefore, is to investigate the feasibility of several machines learning (ML) models (conditional random forest regression, Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines, Bagged Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines, Model Tree M5, K- nearest neighbor, and the weighted K- nearest neighbor) for modeling the monthly pan evaporation estimation. This study proposes the development of newly explored ML models for modeling evaporation losses in three different locations over the Iraq region based on the available climatic data in such areas. The evaluation of the performance of the proposed model based on various evaluation criteria showed the capability of the proposed weighted K- nearest neighbor model in modeling the monthly evaporation losses in the studies areas with better accuracy when compared with the other existing models used as a benchmark in this study.
Emerging mobility systems such as connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) provide the most intriguing opportunity for more accessible, safe, and efficient transportation. CAVs are expected to significantly improve safety by eliminating the human factor and ensure transportation efficiency by allowing users to monitor transportation network conditions and make better operating decisions. However, CAVs could alter the users' tendency-to-travel, leading to a higher traffic demand than expected, thus causing rebound effects (e.g., increased vehicle-miles-traveled). In this chapter, we focus on tackling social factors that could drive an emerging mobility system to unsustainable congestion levels. We propose a mobility market that models the economic in-nature interactions of the travelers in a smart city network with roads and public transit infrastructure. Using techniques from mechanism design, we introduce appropriate monetary incentives (e.g., tolls, fares, fees) and show how a mobility system consisting of selfish travelers that seek to travel either with a CAV or use public transit can be socially efficient. Furthermore, the proposed mobility market ensures that travelers always report their true travel preferences and always benefit from participating in the market; lastly, we also show that the market generates enough revenue to potentially cover its operating costs.
Reinforcement learning is one of the core components in designing an artificial intelligent system emphasizing real-time response. Reinforcement learning influences the system to take actions within an arbitrary environment either having previous knowledge about the environment model or not. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on Reinforcement Learning focusing on various dimensions including challenges, the recent development of different state-of-the-art techniques, and future directions. The fundamental objective of this paper is to provide a framework for the presentation of available methods of reinforcement learning that is informative enough and simple to follow for the new researchers and academics in this domain considering the latest concerns. First, we illustrated the core techniques of reinforcement learning in an easily understandable and comparable way. Finally, we analyzed and depicted the recent developments in reinforcement learning approaches. My analysis pointed out that most of the models focused on tuning policy values rather than tuning other things in a particular state of reasoning.
Automated machine learning (AutoML) aims to find optimal machine learning solutions automatically given a machine learning problem. It could release the burden of data scientists from the multifarious manual tuning process and enable the access of domain experts to the off-the-shelf machine learning solutions without extensive experience. In this paper, we review the current developments of AutoML in terms of three categories, automated feature engineering (AutoFE), automated model and hyperparameter learning (AutoMHL), and automated deep learning (AutoDL). State-of-the-art techniques adopted in the three categories are presented, including Bayesian optimization, reinforcement learning, evolutionary algorithm, and gradient-based approaches. We summarize popular AutoML frameworks and conclude with current open challenges of AutoML.
Machine translation systems require semantic knowledge and grammatical understanding. Neural machine translation (NMT) systems often assume this information is captured by an attention mechanism and a decoder that ensures fluency. Recent work has shown that incorporating explicit syntax alleviates the burden of modeling both types of knowledge. However, requiring parses is expensive and does not explore the question of what syntax a model needs during translation. To address both of these issues we introduce a model that simultaneously translates while inducing dependency trees. In this way, we leverage the benefits of structure while investigating what syntax NMT must induce to maximize performance. We show that our dependency trees are 1. language pair dependent and 2. improve translation quality.
Predictive models of student success in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a critical component of effective content personalization and adaptive interventions. In this article we review the state of the art in predictive models of student success in MOOCs and present a categorization of MOOC research according to the predictors (features), prediction (outcomes), and underlying theoretical model. We critically survey work across each category, providing data on the raw data source, feature engineering, statistical model, evaluation method, prediction architecture, and other aspects of these experiments. Such a review is particularly useful given the rapid expansion of predictive modeling research in MOOCs since the emergence of major MOOC platforms in 2012. This survey reveals several key methodological gaps, which include extensive filtering of experimental subpopulations, ineffective student model evaluation, and the use of experimental data which would be unavailable for real-world student success prediction and intervention, which is the ultimate goal of such models. Finally, we highlight opportunities for future research, which include temporal modeling, research bridging predictive and explanatory student models, work which contributes to learning theory, and evaluating long-term learner success in MOOCs.
While end-to-end neural machine translation (NMT) has achieved notable success in the past years in translating a handful of resource-rich language pairs, it still suffers from the data scarcity problem for low-resource language pairs and domains. To tackle this problem, we propose an interactive multimodal framework for zero-resource neural machine translation. Instead of being passively exposed to large amounts of parallel corpora, our learners (implemented as encoder-decoder architecture) engage in cooperative image description games, and thus develop their own image captioning or neural machine translation model from the need to communicate in order to succeed at the game. Experimental results on the IAPR-TC12 and Multi30K datasets show that the proposed learning mechanism significantly improves over the state-of-the-art methods.
A large number of machine translation approaches have been developed recently with the aim of migrating content easily across languages. However, the literature suggests that many obstacles must be dealt with to achieve better automatic translations. A central issue that machine translation systems must handle is ambiguity. A promising way of overcoming this problem is using semantic web technologies. This article presents the results of a systematic review of approaches that rely on semantic web technologies within machine translation approaches for translating texts. Overall, our survey suggests that while semantic web technologies can enhance the quality of machine translation outputs for various problems, the combination of both is still in its infancy.