2023
Authors
Ridgway, J; Campos, P; Nicholson, J; Teixeira, S;
Publication
Statistics for Empowerment and Social Engagement: Teaching Civic Statistics to Develop Informed Citizens
Abstract
How might you use data visualisation in your teaching? Here, we offer some ideas, and some provocations to review your teaching. We begin with an invitation to examine some of the historical landmarks in data visualisation (DV), to classify the data presented, and to describe the benefits of a sample of the DV to users. Early uses of DV by Nightingale and Neurath are shown, to provide examples of DV which communicated the need for action, and provoked social change. A number of modern DVs are presented, categorised as: tools to display individual data sets and tools for the exploration of specific rich data sets. We argue that students introduced to the core features of Civic Statistics can acquire skills in all of the facets of Civic Statistics set out in Chap. 3. We conclude by revisiting Herschel, to provoke thoughts about the balance of activities appropriate to statistics courses. © Springer Nature Switzerl and AG 2022.
2023
Authors
Lopes, P; Campos, P; Meira Machado, L; Soutinho, G;
Publication
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Abstract
2023
Authors
Campos, P; Pinto, E; Torres, A;
Publication
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE RESEARCH
Abstract
In many e-commerce platforms user communities share product information in the form of reviews and ratings to help other consumers to make their choices. This study develops a new theoretical framework generating a bipartite network of products sold by Amazon.com in the category musical instruments, by linking products through the reviews. We analyze product rating and perceived helpfulness of online customer reviews and the relationship between the centrality of reviews, product rating and the helpfulness of reviews using Clustering, regression trees, and random forests algorithms to, respectively, classify and find patterns in 2214 reviews. Results demonstrate: (1) that a high number of reviews do not imply a high product rating; (2) when reviews are helpful for consumer decision-making we observe an increase on the number of reviews; (3) a clear positive relationship between product rating and helpfulness of the reviews; and (4) a weak relationship between the centrality measures (betweenness and eigenvector) giving the importance of the product in the network, and the quality measures (product rating and helpfulness of reviews) regarding musical instruments. These results suggest that products may be central to the network, although with low ratings and with reviews providing little helpfulness to consumers. The findings in this study provide several important contributions for e-commerce businesses' improvement of the review service management to support customers' experiences and online customers' decision-making.
2023
Authors
Santos, B; Campos, P;
Publication
INTELLIGENT DATA ANALYSIS
Abstract
An increasing area of study for economists and sociologists is the varying organizational structures between business networks. The use of network science makes it possible to identify the determinants of the performance of these business networks. In this work we look for the determinants of inter-firm performance. On one hand, a new method of supervised clustering with attributed networks is proposed, SUWAN, with the aim at obtaining class-uniform clusters of the turnover, while minimizing the number of clusters. This method deals with representative-based supervised clustering, where a set of initial representatives is randomly chosen. One of the innovative aspects of SUWAN is that we use a supervised clustering algorithm to attributed networks that can be accomplished through a combination of weights between the matrix of distances of nodes and their attributes when defining the clusters. As a benchmark, we use Subgroup Discovery on attributed network data. Subgroup Discovery focuses on detecting subgroups described by specific patterns that are interesting with respect to some target concept and a set of explaining features. On the other hand, in order to analyze the impact of the network's topology on the group's performance, some network topology measures, and the group total turnover were exploited. The proposed methodologies are applied to an inter-organizational network, the EuroGroups Register, a central register that contains statistical information on business networks from European countries.
2023
Authors
Santos, MVB; Mota, I; Campos, P;
Publication
JOURNAL OF MARKETING ANALYTICS
Abstract
Sponsored advertising on search engines is one of the fastest growing online advertising marketplaces. The space available for paid ads, or positions, is sold using auctions and payment is calculated considering the number of clicks each position receives. Two mechanisms are generally used in position auctions: Generalized Second Price (GSP) (e.g. Google, Yahoo!) and Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) (e.g. Facebook). To understand which mechanism guarantees the highest payoff to market players (search engines and advertisers), a multi-agent simulation is developed in Netlogo. Using the generated data, a supervised learning-based analysis on search engines and bidders' payoffs is made using linear regression models and regression trees. Results suggest that the average payoff for auctioneers (the search engines) and bidders (the advertisers), the price for each position, and first bidder's payment, are significantly different in the GSP and VCG mechanisms. We also found the mechanism that generates the highest payoff for the search engine is the VCG, while for the bidders it is the GSP.
2023
Authors
Leao, G; Camacho, R; Sousa, A; Veiga, G;
Publication
ROBOT2022: FIFTH IBERIAN ROBOTICS CONFERENCE: ADVANCES IN ROBOTICS, VOL 2
Abstract
Bin picking is a challenging problem that involves using a robotic manipulator to remove, one-by-one, a set of objects randomly stacked in a container. When the objects are prone to entanglement, having an estimation of their pose and shape is highly valuable for more reliable grasp and motion planning. This paper focuses on modeling entangled tubes with varying degrees of curvature. An unconventional machine learning technique, Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), is used to construct sets of rules (theories) capable of modeling multiple tubes when given the cylinders that constitute them. Datasets of entangled tubes are created via simulation in Gazebo. Experiments using Aleph and SWI-Prolog illustrate how ILP can build explainable theories with a high performance, using a relatively small dataset and low amount of time for training. Therefore, this work serves as a proof-of-concept that ILP is a valuable method to acquire knowledge and validate heuristics for pose and shape estimation in complex bin picking scenarios.
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