This paper reports on an empirical study involving end users that addresses the question of whether it is possible to provide the benefits of formal testing within the informal spreadsheet paradigm. We have developed a "What You See Is What You Test" (WYSIWYT) methodology that brings the benefits of formal...
End users create software when they use spreadsheet systems, web authoring tools and graphical languages, and when they create educational simulations, macros-by-demonstration, and dynamic e-business web applications and mash-ups. Some end-user developers, such as accountants or teachers, may have no formal training at all in programming. Others, such as scientists...
Basic biological information is stored in strings of nucleic acids (DNA, RNA) or amino acids
(proteins). Teasing out the meaning of these strings is a central problem of modern biology. Matching and
aligning strings brings out their shared characteristics. Although string matching is well-understood in the
edit-distance model, biological strings...
We introduce a visual specification language for spreadsheets that allows the definition of spreadsheet templates. These templates are used by a spreadsheet generator to create Excel spreadsheets that are probably free from a large class of errors, such as reference, omission, and type errors. We demonstrate how spreadsheets can be...
A common heuristic for solving Partially Observable Markov Decision Problems POMDPs is to first solve the underlying Markov Decision Process MDP and then construct a POMDP policy by performing a fixed depth lookahead search in the POMDP and evaluating the leaf nodes using the MDP value function. A problem with...
In this paper, based on coding theory concepts, new time scheduling algorithms for multihop packet radio networks are described. Each mobile host is assigned a word from an appropriate constant weight code of length n, distance d and weight w. The host can send a message at the j[superscipt th]...
End users develop more software than any other group of programmers, using software authoring devices such as email filtering editors, by-demonstration macro builders, and spreadsheet environments. Despite this, there has been only a little research on finding ways to help these programmers with the dependability of the software they create....
Object oriented programming languages are noted for their ability to allow users to quickly construct large software systems. They achieve this ability by allowing the programmer to concentrate on what it is they want to do, ignoring details of how that functionality is achieved. Such characteristics should make the object...
Attracting, educating and retaining new engineering students is a challenge. The creative aspirations and "can do" attitude spawned by the space race, Heathkits, and homemade crystal radios have been replaced with the passive satisfaction of video games, cell phones and throwaway electronic appliances. At Oregon State University we have made...
If basic assumptions about how knowledge workers conceptualize and use work units are wrong, then any solutions resting on those assumptions are unlikely to be successful since, instead of decreasing costs, they will lead to increasing them. This paper reports on how knowledge workers understand, use and switch between units...
Although researchers have begun to explicitly support end-user programmers' debugging by providing information to help them find bugs, there is little research addressing the right content to communicate to these users. The specific semantic content of these debugging communications matters because, if the users are not actually seeking the information...
Despite years of research into human computer interaction (HCI), the environments programmers must use for problem-solving today—with separate modes and tools for writing, compiling, testing, visualizing, and debugging— derive their basic structure from historical accident, and take little advantage of HCI research into the cognitive issues of programming. Neglecting these...
One dimensional nonlinear difference equations have been used to model population growth. The standard biological models have the interesting characteristic that
they display global stability if they display local stability. Various researchers have sought
a simple explanation for this agreement of local and global stability. Here, we show that
enveloping...
Although spreadsheets can be argued to be the most widely-used visual programming languages (VPLs) today, most are very limited compared to other VPLs, supporting only p few built-in types and offering only primitive support for code reuse. The inheritance mechanisms of object-oriented programming might seem to offer help for the...
Although spreadsheets can be argued to be the most widely-used end-user programming languages today, they are very limited compared to other programming languages, supporting only a few built-in types and offering only primitive support for code reuse. The inheritance mechanisms of object-oriented programming might seem to offer help for the...
The WYSIWYT (What You See is What You Test) methodology applies formal analysis and testing techniques to the spreadsheet paradigm. So far the methodology has been applied to a research spreadsheet prototype, Forms/3. However, this prototype lacks the mathematical libraries, referential functions, ranges, and macros of commercial spreadsheets like Excel...
An important issue in engineering education is the availability of laboratory resources for student use. Using a computer network to link geographically distant students with laboratory teaching resources makes expensive and innovative equipment available to more students. At Oregon State University, we provide a working environment where remotely-located students can...
It is well known that the Fibonacci numbers can be expressed in the
form Round {1/√5 λ₀[superscript n]} where λ₀ = (1 + √5)/2. [Knu75] We look at integer sequences which are solutions to non-negative difference equations and show that if the equation is 1-Bounded then the solution can be...
This paper presents qualitative results from interviews with knowledge workers about their recovery strategies after interruptions. Special focus is given to when these strategies fail due to the nature of the interruption and existing computer support. Potential solutions offered by participants to overcome some of these problems are presented. These...
This paper addresses cost-sensitive classification in the setting where there are costs for measuring each attribute as well as costs for misclassification errors. We show how to formulate this as a Markov Decision Process in which the transition model is learned from the training data. Specifically we assume a set...