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A large-scale multiple surveillance system for infectious disease outbreaks has been in operation in England and Wales since the early 1990s. Changes to the statistical algorithm at the heart of the system were proposed and the purpose of this paper is to compare two new algorithms with the original algorithm. Test data to evaluate performance are created from weekly counts of the number of cases of each of more than 2000 diseases over a twenty-year period. The time series of each disease is separated into one series giving the baseline (background) disease incidence and a second series giving disease outbreaks. One series is shifted forward by twelve months and the two are then recombined, giving a realistic series in which it is known where outbreaks have been added. The metrics used to evaluate performance include a scoring rule that appropriately balances sensitivity against specificity and is sensitive to variation in probabilities near 1. In the context of disease surveillance, a scoring rule can be adapted to reflect the size of outbreaks and this was done. Results indicate that the two new algorithms are comparable to each other and better than the algorithm they were designed to replace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how A-level students construct relationships between work and happiness in their accounts of choosing mathematics and further mathematics A-level. I develop a theoretical framework that positions work and happiness as opposed, managed and working on the self and use this to examine students' dual engagement with individual practices of the self and institutional practices of school mathematics. Interviews with students acknowledge four imperatives that they use as discursive resources to position themselves as successful/unsuccessful students: you have to work, you have to not work, you have to be happy, you have to work at being happy. Tensions in these positions lead students to rework their identities or drop further mathematics. I then identify the practices of mathematics teaching that students use to explain un/happiness in work, and show how dependable mathematics and working together are constructed as 'happy objects' for students, who develop strategies for claiming control over these shapers of happiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 30 years, there has been a great deal of work directed at, first, understanding students' difficulties in algebra and, second, examining ways of tackling these difficulties. There is a vast research literature detailing successful ways of teaching algebra in experimental and laboratory settings. Yet, there is no clear evidence that this work has had a significant effect in terms of improving either attainment or engagement in algebra in ordinary, or non-experimental, classroom settings. Indeed, in England, current attainment in algebra appears to be no better than that of 30 years ago. In this paper, we analyse the algebra topics from two textbooks currently in widespread use in England, focusing on Grade 7 (ages 12-13). We examine the extent to which these textbooks draw on the research literature to support the teaching of algebra. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses, first, the kind of Newtonian methodology Malthus had been exposed to at Cambridge; secondly, the views on algebra and the doctrine of proportions he inherited from MacLaurin and the contribution of his colleague Bewick Bewin in devising a special role for this doctrine in the moral sciences; thirdly, Malthus's ideas on language and the reasons for rejection of an artificial language for political economy. Then it discusses his idea of political economy as a moral science and his claims to be Adam Smith's true heir. The conclusion is that Hollander is right when he contends that Malthus's and Ricardo's methods, as contrasted with their methodologies, were just two opposite poles within one spectrum, but also that the Cantabrigian and Scottish tradition provided staple for a design of a moral and political science alternative to the Unitarian and the Benthamite programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Oughtred's Clavis mathematicae, first published in 1631, was regarded for the remainder of the seventeenth century as a classic text in algebra, reprinted, translated, and explained for over 70 years. Yet its content was limited, its style obscure and its notation old-fashioned even when it was first written, and it now seems extraordinary that it should have had such a long life. The early success of the book, and the great esteem in which Oughtred was held by contemporary and later mathematicians, can only be understood in the light of the general state of algebra teaching in England during the first half of the seventeenth century. In later years the book was kept alive by the efforts of one of its greatest admirers, John Wallis. The aim of this paper is to set the story of the Clavis into the wider context of English algebra, and the political background of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many disciplines of scholarship are interested in the Relative Age Effect (RAE), whereby age-banding confers advantages on older members of the cohort over younger ones. Most research does not test this relationship in a manner consistent with theory (which requires a decline in frequency across the cohort year), instead resorting to non-parametric, non-directional approaches. In this article, the authors address this disconnect, provide an overview of the benefits associated with Poisson regression modelling, and two managerially useful measures for quantifying RAE bias, namely the Indices of Discrimination and Wastage. In a tutorial-like exposition, applications and extensions of this approach are illustrated using data on professional soccer players competing in the top two tiers of the “Big Five” European football leagues in the search to identify paragon clubs, leagues, and countries from which others may learn to mitigate this form of age-discrimination in the talent identification process. As with OLS regression, Poisson regression may include more than one independent variable. In this way we test competing explanations of RAE; control for unwanted sources of covariation; model interaction effects (that different clubs and countries may not all be subject to RAE to the same degree); and test for non-monotonic versions of RAE suggested in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]