Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Representation'

The current forms of representative democracy have come to face various fundamental challenges such as: decrease in political participation, distrust in partisan politics and politicians and perhaps increase of ideological polarization. To take solace in the belief that the current democratic tools are far from perfect yet the finest in modern societies, has not contributed to solution-oriented modifications of its efficacy. In this thesis Lua Nazerian intends to address the inadequacies and inherent limitations in the current form of representative democracy, by analyzing its underlying assumptions through a critical examination of the fundamental challenges in Classical pluralism, Agonist and Deliberative democratic theory. Furthermore, it proposes some modifications drawn from the Socratic idea of the non-pursuit of power, the bottom-up political approach and the learnings from the worldwide Baha’i community. The study is carried out within the field of international relations with a normative approach as well as it incorporates a case study of the Baha’i electoral and decision-making principle. Nevertheless, by using the Socratic idea together with the Baha’i principles in a bottom-up approach shifts then the paradigm from the inherent competitive culture of representative democracy to a more inclusive solution-oriented culture of learning.

In this study, I examine the factors that influence school districts’ commitment to implement ESL (English as a Second Language) education in compliance with the federal Bilingual Education Act of 1968. To explain variation in implementation effort, I focus on several features of the local implementation environment, including the role of Latino descriptive representation. Utilizing data on all public school districts in Texas, I employ a Heckman two-stage estimation procedure that accounts for factors that influence school districts’ decisions to implement bilingual education programs as well as factors that affect the amount of resources school districts are willing to allocate towards bilingual education. The results indicate that Latino school board and teacher representation play a positive and statistically significant role in determining: 1) whether school districts implement bilingual education programs; and 2) the level of expenditures and teacher positions allocated towards bilingual education. Thus, policy implementation outcomes translate into substantive representation.

This study aims to investigate how women’s and men’s religious and cultural experiences are represented in three religious studies textbooks for the new curriculum GY11. The chapter on Hinduism in each book has been analyzed and subsequently compared to one another. This study focuses on both qualitative and quantitative representation; how much space is given to each sex and what types of experiences are presented. The method used is framing, which means recurring themes and attitudes about said groups have been looked for. The results show that both the quantitative and qualitative representation of Hindu women and men is relatively even, which shows a positive development from textbooks published a decade ago.

The English language has become an international language and is globally used as a lingua franca. Therefore, there has been a shift in English-language education toward teaching English as an interna-tional language (EIL). Teaching from the EIL paradigm means that English is seen as an international language used in communication by people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As the approach to English-language education changes from the traditional native-speaker, target country context, so does the role of culture within English-language teaching. The aim of this thesis is to in-vestigate and analyse cultural representations in two Swedish EFL textbooks used in upper-secondary school to see how they correspond with the EIL paradigm. This is done by focusing on the geograph-ical origin of the cultural content as well as looking at what kinds of culture are represented in the textbooks. A content analysis of the textbooks is conducted, using Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English as the model for the analysis of the geographical origin. Horibe’s model of the three different kinds of culture in EIL is the model used for coding the second part of the analysis. The results of the analysis show that culture of target countries and "Culture as social custom" dominate the cultural content of the textbook. Thus, although there are some indications that the EIL paradigm has influ-enced the textbooks, the traditional approach to culture in language teaching still prevails in the ana-lysed textbooks. Because of the relatively small sample included in the thesis, further studies need to be conducted in order to make conclusions regarding the Swedish context as a whole.

Given the "right" representation, learning is easy. This thesis studies representation learning and meta-learning, with a special focus on sparse representations. Meta-learning is fundamental to machine learning, and it translates to learning to learn itself. The presentation unfolds in two parts. In the first part, we establish learning theoretic results for learning sparse representations. The second part introduces new multi-task and meta-learning paradigms for representation learning. On the sparse representations front, our main pursuits are generalization error bounds to support a supervised dictionary learning model for Lasso-style sparse coding. Such predictive sparse coding algorithms have been applied with much success in the literature; even more common have been applications of unsupervised sparse coding followed by supervised linear hypothesis learning. We present two generalization error bounds for predictive sparse coding, handling the overcomplete setting (more original dimensions than learned features) and the infinite-dimensional setting. Our analysis led to a fundamental stability result for the Lasso that shows the stability of the solution vector to design matrix perturbations. We also introduce and analyze new multi-task models for (unsupervised) sparse coding and predictive sparse coding, allowing for one dictionary per task but with sharing between the tasks' dictionaries. The second part introduces new meta-learning paradigms to realize unprecedented types of learning guarantees for meta-learning. Specifically sought are guarantees on a meta-learner's performance on new tasks encountered in an environment of tasks. Nearly all previous work produced bounds on the expected risk, whereas we produce tail bounds on the risk, thereby providing performance guarantees on the risk for a single new task drawn from the environment. The new paradigms include minimax multi-task learning (minimax MTL) and sample variance penalized meta-learning (SVP-ML). Regarding minimax MTL, we provide a high probability learning guarantee on its performance on individual tasks encountered in the future, the first of its kind. We also present two continua of meta-learning formulations, each interpolating between classical multi-task learning and minimax multi-task learning. The idea of SVP-ML is to minimize the task average of the training tasks' empirical risks plus a penalty on their sample variance. Controlling this sample variance can potentially yield a faster rate of decrease for upper bounds on the expected risk of new tasks, while also yielding high probability guarantees on the meta-learner's average performance over a draw of new test tasks. An algorithm is presented for SVP-ML with feature selection representations, as well as a quite natural convex relaxation of the SVP-ML objective.

Guiding a representation towards capturing temporally coherent aspects present invideo improves object identity encoding. Existing models apply temporal coherenceuniformly over all features based on the assumption that optimal encoding of objectidentity only requires temporally stable components. We test the validity of this assumptionby exploring the effects of applying a mixture of temporally coherent invariantfeatures, alongside variable features, in a single 'mixed' representation. Applyingtemporal coherence to different proportions of the available features, we evaluate arange of models on a supervised object classification task. This series of experimentswas tested on three video datasets, each with a different complexity of object shape andmotion. We also investigated whether a mixed-representation improves the capture ofinformation components associated with object position, alongside object identity, ina single representation. Tests were initially applied using a single layer autoencoderas a test bed, followed by subsequent tests investigating whether similar behaviouroccurred in the more abstract features learned by a deep network. A representationapplying temporal coherence in some fashion produced the best results in all tests,on both single layered and deep networks. The majority of tests favoured a mixed representation,especially in cases where the quantity of labelled data available to thesupervised task was plentiful. This work is the first time a mixed-representation hasbeen investigated, and demonstrates its use as a method for representation learning.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1986.
MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH.
Bibliography: leaves 51-52.
by Steven W. Albahari.
M.S.V.S.

This thesis is a study of aboutness. It defends the claim that we have singular thoughts about ordinary objects and argues that an essential part of how we do so is by maintaining singular representations. This proposal allows us to avoid traditional, unsatisfying conceptions of the scope of singular thought while restoring the sense in which such thought is a distinctively epistemic achievement. Reconnecting the study of aboutness with epistemology promises to alleviate the sense of directionlessness in the contemporary literature, offering a firmer grip on the phenomenon along with new, systematic resources for its investigation. Chapters 1-2 explore the effects of contextualist machinery on orthodox views about singular thought. It is widely thought that if there is to be a plausible connection between the truth of a de re attitude report about a subject and that subject's possession of a singular thought, then there can be no acquaintance requirement(s) on singular thought. Chapter 1 shows that this view rests on a faulty picture of how we talk about attitudes. Indeed, the truth of a de re attitude report cannot be taken to track the singular/non-singular distinction without collapsing it. A new, contextualist picture is needed. That there must be a distinction between singular and non-singular intentionality is emphasized in Chapter 2, where a key explanatory role for singular thought - brought out by a thought experiment due to Strawson - is examined. I show that the role does not call for any distinctive kind of mental content. Once we abandon the two widespread views questioned in Chapters 1-2, our grip on the phenomenon of singular aboutness is loosened: it is not constitutively tied to the kinds of attitude-reporting data or mental content by which it is often assumed to be revealed. Where are we to look for insight? What makes something the object of a singular thought? According to Russell, it is a datum of intuition that singular thought involves a kind of knowledge; a theory of aboutness will precisify the intuitive notion of 'knowing which thing one is thinking about' in order to capture this demand in a philosophically revealing way. If Russell is right, teasing out this connection to knowledge will allow us to see what it takes for a particular thing to be the immediate subject matter of thought. Chapter 3 discusses Evans's theory of this kind. Chapter 4 examines recent work by Dickie. While serious concerns emerge in each case, insights recovered are used to precisify Russell's requirement, leading to a novel picture of singular representation and the epistemic character of this achievement. While the chapters follow a narrative, providing an extended rationale for the proposal in Chapter 4, each may be read in isolation by those familiar with the philosophical issues. For those who are not, the Introduction provides sufficient background.

This abstract is a little involved and technical. Those looking for a more leisurely, thematic overview of the thesis can turn to the Introduction, which follows shortly. In the first chapter of the thesis, I examine Andy Clark’s argument for the extended mind thesis (EM henceforth). As Clark acknowledges, his argument for EM relies on a brand of functionalism developed by Frank Jackson and David Braddon-Mitchell. Mark Sprevak claims to have developed a reductio not only of Clark’s argument of EM, but of the functionalist position that Clark’s argument presupposes. I show that this reductio can be blocked, because it rests on an optional presupposition (a presupposition that is anyway implausible). But by rejecting this presupposition, we end up blocking Clark’s argument for EM as well as Sprevak’s reductio of that argument. This result is bad news for Clark, but rather better news for the functionalists on whose work Clark’s argument relies. In chapters 2 and 3, I develop and apply a model-based theory of mental representation. The basic idea is there is a type of mental representation (what I call ‘s-representation’) which is best understood by analogy with scientific models. In chapter 2, I develop a theory of content for s-representations, improving on the work of writers who have attempted to do so in the past. The theory of content I develop makes use of theoretical resources provided by those functionalist writers whose position I defended from Sprevak’s reductio in chapter 1. In chapter 3, I give reasons for thinking that s-representations are biologically ubiquitous and cognitively significant. I then show how my theory of s-representation differs from similar rival accounts in the literature. Finally, I argue that my account has the resources to deal with certain sceptical challenges raised by anti-representationalists (those sceptical of the claim that a certain class of mental capacities can be explained in representational terms). In Part II (chapters 4, 5 and 6), I apply the lessons learned from the first half of the thesis to develop some distinctive claims about the nature of visual perception. I do so by using Alva Noë’s theory of perception as a spring-board. I argue that many of Noë’s most notorious claims are false, but that there are still valuable resources to be gleaned from his theory. I then borrow and redeploy what is valuable in his theory (i.e. certain aspects of his ‘virtual content’ thesis and some of his claims about perspectival content). I do so, in part, by drawing on the s-representation story developed in Part I. I argue, in line with similar claims made by Rick Grush, that Noë’s notion of ‘sensorimotor knowledge’ can usefully be treated as a form of s-representation. With a fully reconstructed version of Noë’s theory in place, I show how it can make sense of some otherwise puzzling findings made by psychologists of perception.

In six experiments I investigated children’s handling of intensional contexts. The results were described in terms of a developmental extension of Fauconnier’s mental spaces account of meaning representation. Implications for children’s mentalistic development were explored. In chapter 1 I considered the “referential opacity” raised by the representational nature of the mind. I interpreted the findings of Russell (1987) as evidence for a developmental dissociation between handling of intensional contexts - due to the partial nature of representations - and “intentional” referential problems - due to representations being outdated or hypothetical. In experiments 1-3 I demonstrated this dissociation explicitly, and showed that it extended to non-linguistic intensional contexts. Experiments 4 &5 showed correlations between children’s handling of intensional contexts and linguistic ambiguity, which I explained by their common requirement that representational content be held as partial. Experiment 6 showed that children’s handling of intensional questions (and mentalistic explanations) improved after observing incorrect action on the basis of partial knowledge. This effect of supporting context was short-lived, suggesting that it supported on-line activity not question comprehension. After earlier success with out-dated and hypothetical representations, children’s handling of partial representations at 6-7 years explains their concurrent late success with intensional contexts and linguistic ambiguity, and constitutes a qualitative change in their representational abilities.

Utifrån lagen ska en tjänsteperson vara saklig och opartisk i sin bedömning och utredning av ärenden. Samtidigt som det är viktigt med mångfald och representation i offentlig förvaltning för demokratin enligt forskare. Detta för att klienter ska känna en samhörighet med tjänstepersonerna. Mot bakgrund av detta är det av intresse att undersöka den spänning roll som uppstår för tjänstepersonerna. Det övergivande syftet i den här studien är att öka förståelsen om tjänstepersoners upplevelser av dessa två roller som förväntas av dem. För att uppnå syftet har studien byggt på en huvudfrågeställning och två underfrågeställningar som stöd för att inhämta empiri. Frågeställningarna har besvarat genom kvalitativa intervjuer med fem tjänstepersoner runt om i landet. Den empiriska analysen har resulterat i att tjänstepersoner med en invandrarbakgrund inte gör ett aktiv val att vara representanter för sina klienter. Dessutom får dessa tjänstepersoner ta emot en del otrevligheter från både klienter med en invandrarbakgrund och svenska klienter. Med det sagt är studiens slutsats att tjänstepersoner är utsatts på grund av deras bakgrund, men också för deras opartiskhet.
According to the law, a public official must be objective and impartial in his assessment and investigation of cases. At the same time, it is important to have diversity and representation in public administration for democracy, according to researchers. This is for clients to feel and bond with the service providers. Because of this, it is of interest to investigate the tension role that arises for the public officia. The overarching purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of officials' experiences of these two roles expected of them. To achieve the aim, the study has one main question and two sub-questions as support for obtaining empirical data. The questions have been answered through qualitative interviews with five officials around the country. The empirical analysis has obtained results in in-service staff with an immigrant background and not actively being representative of their clients. Also, these employees receive as emotional and participative from clients with an immigrant background and Swedish clients. The study concludes that public officials are exposed because of their background, but also for their impartiality.

We present a concept for using procedural techniques to represent media. Procedural methods allow us to represent digital media (2D images, 3D environments etc.) with very little information and to render it photo realistically. Since not all kind of content can be created procedurally, traditional media representations (bitmaps, polygons etc.) must be used as well. We have adopted an object-based media representation where an object can be represented either with a procedure or with its traditional representation. Since the objects are created on the client the procedures can be adapted to its properties such as screen resolution and rendering performance. To keep the application as small and flexible as possible, each procedure is implemented as a library which is only loaded when needed. The media representation iswritten in XML to make it human readable and easy editable. The application is document driven where the content of the XML document determines which libraries to be loaded. The media objects resulting from the procedures is composited into the media representation preferred by the renderer together with the non-procedural objects. The parameters in the XML document are relative to parameters determined by the system properties (resolution, performance etc.) and hence adapt the procedures to the client. By mapping objects to individual libraries, the architecture is easy to make multi threaded and/or distributed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2011.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-109).
This dissertation is about whether and how non-representational attitudes could play a role in our theories of rationality. In Chapter 1 ('Negation, expressivism, and intentionality') I argue that the best explanation for why two mental states are inconsistent need not presuppose that such states are representational-that they have, in the jargon, truth-conditions. I use this to provide a solution to the 'negation problem' for metaethical expressivism. In Chapter 2 ('Structuring logical space') I sketch an account of mathematical practice along non-representational lines. I show how it can do justice to the applicability of mathematics, and propose ways in which one's epistemic goals can impose substantial constraints on which mathematical theories to accept. Chapter 3 ('Good questions') provides a general account of the way in which rationality constrains changes in our hypothesis space. In particular, I show how some such changes can be better than others by placing the discussion within a general framework of rational dynamics, on which rational epistemic change involves maximizing expected epistemic utility.
by Alejandro Perez Carballo.
Ph.D.

This thesis investigates terminological representation languages, as used in KL-ONE-type knowledge representation systems, from an algebraic point of view. Terminological representation languages are based on two primitive syntactic types, called concepts and roles, which are usually interpreted model-theoretically as sets and relations, respectively. I propose an algebraic rather than a model-theoretic approach. I show that terminological representations can be naturally accommodated in equational algebras of sets interacting with relations, and I use equational logic as a vehicle for reasoning about concepts interacting with roles.

The act of representation is, to an extent, a sine qua non condition within the artistic process and always acquires its meaning in relation to a presence. Presence acts as an internal or external stimulus, and re-presentation is the effect of a presence. From this perspective, I have examined the work of Francis Bacon, Susan Hiller, Giorgio Morandi, Gerhard Richter, Iannis Xenakis, and, among others, the theories of Giorgio Agamben, Benjamin Buchloch, Daniel Chandler, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Hal Foster and Henri Lefebvre. Within the frame of this enquiry, I have created a series of polyptychs exploring different possibilities, correlations and aspects of my topic. The internal or external stimulus for the creation of these series varies: from recorded video stills of London’s urban scenery to a one-wave loop videotaped at a Greek coast, and from a specific architectural site to various landscapes – all painted in situ or from photographs. Although this variety calls for dissimilar creative strategies for each polyptych, all of them are connected with each other, as they share the following properties: • the openness, which practically relativizes the beginning and the end of the artwork, the part and the whole, the real space–time and the imagery space–time, • the rhythm (practically, its simplified form is repetition), as the element that makes the synthesis and unification of different states of presence possible – through the function of consonance, • the pictorial language (i.e., colour, line, shape, etc.), as the intermediate between the individual and the collective evaluation of the artwork. In the context of my semisite-specific practice, I reactivate the notion of topicality to approximate the foundation of a stable and real ground where the artwork forms and develops. By exploring the act of representation, I discuss the poetic metaphor from and to the real, the constitution of the real and its consequences on how we value art. I argue that, both practically and theoretically, rhythm is identified through the principle of presence, and I examine rhythm as the methodological tool whose vibration penetrates practical experimentation and whose contents are susceptible to theoretical exploration. Odysseas Elytis’ poem eloquently describes the experience that artists relish during the creative process – the poetic point of view. By the same token, art practice repulses a well established methodology, thus maintaining an entropy, or an openness. I put forward the hypothesis that rhythm can offer a sustainable methodological tool for art practice-based areas of study. In my research, I explore the structure and limits of visual/pictorial language, that are simultaneously historical and physical. Practically, this exploration is correlated with a quest for the proper (proportion, colour, gesture, etc.) within my compositions – i.e., a search on artistic manipulation and its criteria of evalutation. Finally, I investigate the theoretical context of Presence and Representation, its relation to the real and how different comprehensions correspond with and influence different viewpoints and theses, which, in turn, have personal and social consequences. As Daniel Chandler (1994) indicates, it is unavoidable to ask ‘whose realities are privileged in particular representations’, a recognition which eschews a retreat to mere subjectivism, as it ‘pays due tribute to the unequal distribution of power in the social world.’

The Hessenberg representation is a representation of the symmetric group afforded on the cohomology ring of a regular semisimple Hessenberg variety. We study this representation via a combinatorial presentation called GKM Theory. This presentation allows for the study of the representation entirely from a graph. The thesis derives a combinatorial construction of a basis of the equivariant cohomology as a free module over a polynomial ring. This generalizes classical constructions of Schubert classes and divided difference operators for the equivariant cohomology of the flag variety.

The thesis analyzes some aspects of the theory of distributive lattices, particularly two representation theorems: Birkhoff's representation theorem for finite distributive lattices and Stone's representation theorem for infinite distributive lattices.

Ces dernières années, les techniques d’apprentissage profond ont fondamentalement transformé l'état de l'art de nombreuses applications de l'apprentissage automatique, devenant la nouvelle approche standard pour plusieurs d’entre elles. Les architectures provenant de ces techniques ont été utilisées pour l'apprentissage par transfert, ce qui a élargi la puissance des modèles profonds à des tâches qui ne disposaient pas de suffisamment de données pour les entraîner à partir de zéro. Le sujet d'étude de cette thèse couvre les espaces de représentation créés par les architectures profondes. Dans un premier temps, nous étudions les propriétés de leurs espaces, en prêtant un intérêt particulier à la redondance des dimensions et la précision numérique de leurs représentations. Nos résultats démontrent un fort degré de robustesse, pointant vers des schémas de compression simples et puissants. Ensuite, nous nous concentrons sur le l'affinement de ces représentations. Nous choisissons d'adopter un problème multi-tâches intermodal et de concevoir une fonction de coût capable de tirer parti des données de plusieurs modalités, tout en tenant compte des différentes tâches associées au même ensemble de données. Afin d'équilibrer correctement ces coûts, nous développons également un nouveau processus d'échantillonnage qui ne prend en compte que des exemples contribuant à la phase d'apprentissage, c'est-à-dire ceux ayant un coût positif. Enfin, nous testons notre approche sur un ensemble de données à grande échelle de recettes de cuisine et d'images associées. Notre méthode améliore de 5 fois l'état de l'art sur cette tâche, et nous montrons que l'aspect multitâche de notre approche favorise l'organisation sémantique de l'espace de représentation, lui permettant d'effectuer des sous-tâches jamais vues pendant l'entraînement, comme l'exclusion et la sélection d’ingrédients. Les résultats que nous présentons dans cette thèse ouvrent de nombreuses possibilités, y compris la compression de caractéristiques pour les applications distantes, l'apprentissage multi-modal et multitâche robuste et l'affinement de l'espace des caractéristiques. Pour l'application dans le contexte de la cuisine, beaucoup de nos résultats sont directement applicables dans une situation réelle, en particulier pour la détection d'allergènes, la recherche de recettes alternatives en raison de restrictions alimentaires et la planification de menus
In recent years, Deep Learning techniques have swept the state-of-the-art of many applications of Machine Learning, becoming the new standard approach for them. The architectures issued from these techniques have been used for transfer learning, which extended the power of deep models to tasks that did not have enough data to fully train them from scratch. This thesis' subject of study is the representation spaces created by deep architectures. First, we study properties inherent to them, with particular interest in dimensionality redundancy and precision of their features. Our findings reveal a strong degree of robustness, pointing the path to simple and powerful compression schemes. Then, we focus on refining these representations. We choose to adopt a cross-modal multi-task problem, and design a loss function capable of taking advantage of data coming from multiple modalities, while also taking into account different tasks associated to the same dataset. In order to correctly balance these losses, we also we develop a new sampling scheme that only takes into account examples contributing to the learning phase, i.e. those having a positive loss. Finally, we test our approach in a large-scale dataset of cooking recipes and associated pictures. Our method achieves a 5-fold improvement over the state-of-the-art, and we show that the multi-task aspect of our approach promotes a semantically meaningful organization of the representation space, allowing it to perform subtasks never seen during training, like ingredient exclusion and selection. The results we present in this thesis open many possibilities, including feature compression for remote applications, robust multi-modal and multi-task learning, and feature space refinement. For the cooking application, in particular, many of our findings are directly applicable in a real-world context, especially for the detection of allergens, finding alternative recipes due to dietary restrictions, and menu planning

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed Jan. 19, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 320-329).

Dans cette thèse, nous proposons d’évaluer la représentation politique en Europe, tout en insistant sur la nécessité de considérer le point de vue individuel du citoyen. Nous développons ainsi une perspective nouvelle et originale sur la congruence entre les citoyens et les partis politiques. De plus, nous analysons la manière dont le système partisan affecte cette congruence au niveau micro et macro et, par conséquent, la manière dont celle-ci influence la satisfaction des citoyens envers le système politique. Nous nous appuyons tout d’abord sur le concept de représentation chez Pitkin, ainsi que les théories récentes sur le rôle des représentants. Ce faisant, l’importance des partis politiques, en particulier dans le contexte européen, est rappelée. Nous abordons ensuite la recherche sur l’opinion publique et la façon dont cette dernière analyse la relation entre les citoyens et l’Etat. Dans un troisième temps, nous revenons sur les approches qui combinent la recherche sur les partis politiques et l’opinion publique, en nous concentrant en particulier sur le concept de congruence. Toutefois, ces recherches présentent des lacunes, auxquelles nous proposons de remédier en développant une nouvelle approche de la relation entre les citoyens et les partis politiques. A partir d’une compréhension normative différenciée de la qualité de la représentation, des nouvelles normes pour juger la représentation du point de vue des citoyens sont présentées et de nouveaux concepts de congruence au niveau micro sont développés. Ce faisant, nous élaborons une typologie innovante de la congruence entre les citoyens et les partis politiques, reposant sur neuf concepts différents, introduits à travers (1) l'identification des critères d'évaluation de la représentation et (2) la formulation des normes pour l'évaluation de la représentation. Ces normes sont alors concrétisées en des indicateurs empiriques. Nous commençons par décrire, dans une optique comparative, la congruence entre les États membres de l'UE pour l'année 2014. Nous explorons ensuite la relation entre le système partisan et la congruence au niveau micro et macro, mettant ainsi en lumière l’impact du système partisan sur la congruence en fonction des divers concepts utilisés. Au niveau micro, l’analyse montre que la relation entre un concept de la congruence et le système partisan est stable et ne diffère pas, quel que soit l’enjeu. Au niveau macro, en revanche, les effets ne sont pas systématiques, mais varient en fonction des enjeux. Ces résultats éclairent sous un nouveau jour la relation entre le système partisan et la représentation, et contribuent ainsi à sa meilleure compréhension. Enfin, les effets de la congruence sont analysés à l'aide de modèles multi-niveaux, de façon à démontrer comment la congruence influence les jugements des citoyens sur la représentation politique. Il est démontré qu’au niveau micro, cette influence est systématique ; toutefois, l’intensité de cet effet varie selon l’enjeu. De ce point de vue, les enjeux qui importent le plus sont l’intégration européenne, la redistribution et la politique fiscale. En conclusion, notre recherche enrichit le débat théorique sur les partis politiques ; nos résultats permettent une meilleure compréhension de la représentation et expliquent la présumée « crise de la représentation », ouvrant de nouvelles pistes de recherches pour le futur
The thesis aims at evaluating representation in Europe while emphasizing the need to consider the individual citizen’s perspective. It develops a new and original perspective on how congruence between citizens and parties affects systemic satisfaction. It draws on Pitkin’s theory on representation and the most recent theoretical advancements which focus mainly on representatives. The thesis highlights the important role of political parties, especially in the European context. After elaborating the “supply” side of the representational link (political parties), it demonstrates how the relation of citizens and the state is analyzed in public opinion research – the “demand”-side. In a next step, the dissertation refers to approaches which combine the supply and the demand-side of the representational link. In particular, it focuses on the concept of congruence. Building up on these lines in research, the thesis reveals gaps in existing research and develops an innovative insight into the representational link. Based on a differentiated normative understanding of “good” representation, the dissertation develops new standards for judging representation from citizens’ perspective. It develops new conceptualizations of congruence on the micro-level and suggests a typology of congruence between citizens and parliamentary parties, including micro- and macro-measures, resulting in nine different conceptualizations. The new concepts are introduced through (1) identifying the criteria for evaluating representation that every perspective suggests and (2) the formulation of the implicit standard for evaluating representation. These standards are transformed into empirical indicators. Based on this new, nuanced understanding of “good” representation, the dissertation explains how the characteristics of party-systems impact on different types of congruence. Further, the thesis contributes to the explanation of citizens’ political attitudes. It formulates nuanced assumptions about the relation between congruence and perceived responsiveness, yet highlighting the need to distinguish between an aggregate and an individual perspective on representation. The empirical analysis is based on an own original dataset which integrates EES-and CHES-data. First, the descriptive part of the empirical analysis compares congruence within the EU-member-states for the year 2014. We explore congruence on the micro- and on the macro-level with reference to multiple issue-dimensions that relate to societal cleavages or dimensions on which parties compete. The empirical analysis reveals a differentiated judgment about the functioning of representation in the EU- member-states, depending on the respective understanding of “good” representation. Second, we explain the relation of party-systems and congruence and provide greater insight into the relation of context and the quality of representation. The study refers – again – to multiple issue-dimensions and systematically compares the results of the dissertation with findings offered by the conventional macro-perspective on congruence. Third, the thesis tests how congruence influences citizens’ representational judgments via multi-level models. The analysis accounts for the nuanced conceptualization of congruence and is conducted for multiple issue-dimensions. The results provide new insights into the relevance of different standards for evaluating representation for citizen’s attitudes and accounts for differences between issue-dimensions. Concluding, the thesis illustrates how these results impact on our understanding of good representation, relates the findings to the presumed “crisis of representation” and highlights how this dissertation might inspire future research

Theory and research results about the structure of social representations have been built usually from the study of isolated representations. The studies aiming at identifying structural relations involving two or more representations are more recent. In the literature, different terms have been employed to refer to inter-related social representation sets, managed or not by a superior ideological stance; in those cases, we refer to representation families, systems or networks. In this context, there are coordination relations, in which associations can be identified at the same level of a social thinking architecture. Traditionally, the studies of representations in conjunction – presenting element intersections at the level of their cores or object labels – have been privileged. The present research aims at contributing to the knowledge about disjoint representations. When, at an inter-representation level, there are two or more representation structures linked by relations between cognems or between object-label words, we propose the name of representational system to the macrostructure that is formed, with relations formalized by the basic cognitive schemes model. The main research aim was to identify relations among elements of different social representations, submitting to test the existence of connection points among representations at the same level of the social thinking architecture. It is a model that conceives inter-representation relations at the level of cognems. All the studies concerned the investigation of a representational system including the social representation on aging. Most of the studies were conducted with university undergraduate samples from Padua, Italy – and Studies 1-A and 1-B also had a Brazilian sample of undergraduates and an Italian sample of elderly people. The first studies had the purpose of characterizing the representation system. After a preliminary qualitative study conducted with interviews with people from different age groups, which has allowed to identify the cognems of the social representation on aging, Studies 1-A and 1-B were comparative investigations that characterized the structural status of the elements of that representation and also structural differences linked to age groups and cultural context. Study 2 was a survey marked by paired evaluations of proximity between objects linked to the aging theme which allowed the identification of three social representations highly connected to aging, by means prototypical and similarity analyses: death, health and family. Study 3 had a mixed nature, with characteristics of both a quasi-experiment and a survey. It provided the characterization of the structures of the chosen social representations in the system and also assessed the intensity of relations between social objects in that system. Additionally, participants evaluated pairs of elements of the representation on aging and the other representations and indicated if they perceived a connection or not, enabling the identification of possible connection points. After the identification of those possible relationships, the focus shifted to testing the plausibility of a model for connection points including a bridge relation between those elements. Study 4 consisted of context manipulations of emphasis or relativization of a peripheral element of the social representation on health that was connected to elements from the social representation on aging. It was observed that a context change relative to a peripheral element of a representation interferes on the activation of schemes relative to a second representation, regardless of their structural status; it is a first empirical evidence of the validity of a theoretical conception of coordination relations involving disjoint representations of a same system by means of connection points. Finally, Studies 5-A and 5-B aimed at verifying if denying or confirming the information of cognems from connection points would be associated with activation differences of semantic and evaluative relations (bridge relations) with elements connected to them, from the representation on aging. Differences were identified in the sense that compatibility with the content of the manipulated cognem was associated with higher valences of at least one of the hyperconnectors. As a conclusion, evidence was found of relations among social representations at the level of their elements, and the conception of a theoretical model of inter-representation connection points presented promising results. The model contributes to the understanding of mechanisms of association of social representations in disjunction and also opens possibilities for application especially concerning social representation dynamics, which might also take representation systems into account.
Le teorie e i risultati di ricerca sulla struttura delle rappresentazioni sociali sono stati costruiti, in generale, a partire dallo studio di rappresentazioni isolate. Gli studi volti a identificare le relazioni strutturali che coinvolgono due o più rappresentazioni sono più recenti. In letteratura, termini diversi sono stati impiegati per riferirsi a insiemi interconnessi di rappresentazioni sociali, gestiti o non da un’istanza ideologica superiore; in questi casi, ci riferiamo a famiglie, sistemi o reti di rappresentazioni. In questo contesto, vi sono relazioni di coordinamento, in cui le associazioni possono essere identificate allo stesso livello dell’architettura del pensiero sociale. Tradizionalmente, sono stati privilegiati gli studi di rappresentazioni in congiunzione, che presentano intersezioni di elementi al livello dei loro nuclei o etichette di oggetto. La presente ricerca si propone di contribuire alla conoscenza di rappresentazioni disgiunte. Quando, a livello inter-rappresentazione, ci sono due o più strutture legate da relazioni tra cognemi o tra etichette di oggetti, proponiamo il nome di sistema rappresentazionale per la macrostruttura che ne risulta, con relazioni formalizzate dal modello di schemi cognitivi di base. L'obiettivo principale della ricerca è consistito nell’identificazione di relazioni tra elementi di rappresentazioni sociali diverse, sottoponendo a prova l'esistenza di punti di connessione tra rappresentazioni allo stesso livello dell’architettura del pensiero sociale. Si tratta di un modello che concepisce le relazioni interrappresentazione al livello dei cognemi. Tutti i cinque studi condotti hanno coinvolto un sistema di rappresentazioni, tenendo la rappresentazione sociale dell’invecchiamento come punto di riferimento. La maggior parte degli studi è stata svolta con campioni di convenienza di studenti universitari di Padova, Italia. Gli Studi 1-A e 1-B hanno avuto anche un campione brasiliano di studenti e un campione italiano di anziani. I primi studi avevano lo scopo di caratterizzare il sistema rappresentazionale. Dopo un’indagine preliminare qualitativa condotta con interviste a persone di diverse fasce di età, la quale ha permesso di identificare i cognemi della rappresentazione sociale sull’invecchiamento, gli Studi 1-A e 1-B sono stati realizzati tramite ricerche comparative che hanno caratterizzato lo statuto strutturale degli elementi di quella rappresentazione e anche delle differenze strutturali legate a gruppi di età e contesti culturali diversi. Lo Studio 2 è consistito in una ricerca caratterizzata da valutazioni appaiate di prossimità tra oggetti legati al tema dell'invecchiamento, la quale ha permesso l'identificazione di tre rappresentazioni sociali altamente connesse all'invecchiamento attraverso analisi prototipiche e di similitudine: morte, salute e famiglia. Lo Studio 3 ha avuto un carattere misto, con caratteristiche sia di quasi-esperimento sia di survey. Ha fornito la caratterizzazione delle strutture delle rappresentazioni sociali scelte dal sistema ed anche permesso di valutare l'intensità delle relazioni tra oggetti sociali in quel sistema. Inoltre, i partecipanti hanno valutato le coppie di elementi della rappresentazione sull’invecchiamento e sugli altri tre oggetti e hanno indicato se percepivano una relazione o meno tra di loro, permettendo l’individuazione di possibili punti di connessione. Dopo l'individuazione delle relazioni possibili, l'attenzione è stata rivolta a verificare la plausibilità di un modello di punti di connessione tra elementi con una relazione ponte. Lo Studio 4 è consistito nella manipolazione di un elemento periferico della rappresentazione sociale della salute (tramite sua enfasi o relativizzazione), collegata ad elementi della rappresentazione sociale dell’ invecchiamento. E' stato osservato che un cambiamento di contesto rispetto ad un elemento periferico di una rappresentazione interferisce sull’attivazione di schemi relativi ad una seconda rappresentazione del sistema, indipendentemente dal suo statuto strutturale. Si tratta di una prima evidenza empirica della validità di una concezione teorica che sottolinea le relazioni di coordinamento fra rappresentazioni disgiunte in uno stesso sistema per mezzo di punti di connessione. Infine, gli Studi 5-A e 5-B avevano lo scopo di verificare se il negare o confermare le informazioni di cognemi in punti di connessione fosse associato a differenze di attivazione di relazioni semantiche e valutative (relazioni ponte) con elementi ad essi connessi, della rappresentazione dell’invecchiamento. Sono state individuate delle differenze, nel senso che una compatibilità con il contenuto del cognema manipolato è stata associata con valenze più alte di almeno uno degli iperconnettori. In conclusione, si sono trovate evidenze empiriche riguardo relazioni tra rappresentazioni sociali a livello dei loro elementi, e ha trovato sostegno, con risultati promettenti, la concezione di un modello teorico di punti di connessione tra rappresentazioni. Il modello conntribuisce alla comprensione dei meccanismi di associazione di rappresentazioni sociali in disgiunzione e apre anche la possibilità di applicazioni soprattutto per quanto riguarda le dinamiche delle rappresentazioni sociali, attraverso interventi mirati sui sistemi di rappresentazione presi in esame.

In network design, a communication network is optimized for a given set of parameters like cost, reliability and delay. This study analyzes network design problem using Genetic Algorithms in detail and makes comparison of different approaches and representations. Encoding of a problem is one of the most crucial design choices in Genetic Algorithms. For network design problem, this study compares adjacency matrix representation with list of edges representation. Also, another problem is defining a fair fitness function that will not favor one optimization parameter to the other. Multi-objective optimization is a recommended solution for such problems. This study describes and compares some of those approaches for different combinations in network design problem.

IntroductionRepresentation in politics has been a major debate in political science with various groups being underrepresented in the decision-making assembles, one of these groups has been the youth which is strongly underrepresented. This essay aims to examine youth representation at a municipal level. Few studies have conducted about youth representation but there is widespread study about representation. The already elected politicians are in many ways key factor in order for the youth to even be able get their representation since they possess the power to let them inside the political room. It will be this gap inside political science that is going to be investigated in this essay. MethodThis essay methodology is qualitative case study of Sundsvall municipality's politicians approach to youth representation. Four politicians with different backgrounds and party belong have been interviewed and afterwards have a thematic analysis been conducted from their answers. With made it possible to find patterns and connections that are related to research within representation and youth. ResultsThe essay concluded that youth representation is much based on the parties and their structured way how to influence society and henceforth complexed to be represented in any other way. Everything that the politicians acts on is what the political parties want with mean the can never express their own agenda and feel like they represent the party voters and ideology more than Sundsvall city. The parties hold a lot of power because aside the mandate in the municipal council they appoint all the positions in various committees and municipal companies that the votes never choose between. Which means that the youth relies on parties including them to grant them these positions. The biggest issue with this is that studies have shown that youth are going away from becoming member of political parties which here becomes issue with young representation with this essay concur. Based on the Hanna Fenichel Pitkin approach to representation the politicians express that they think substantive representation are most important then descriptive representation but with deeper analysis shows more than both are combined rather than separate. The few elected youth can in many ways through symbolic representation developed becoming a symbol for youth represented as a group. The essay found that young politicians argued that they do not consider descriptive as most important but that they themselves had received votes because there are youths and experienced duty to manage youth opinion, which here may drew the conclusion about when a group are underrepresented the descriptive representation became more important and puts more pressure on those who is to belong to their group to represent that particular group. Youth representation in Sundsvall was able to examine by the LUPP resulted there the youth express that I high and much high level want to influence the municipality policy, but few believe that they can actually do it. The politics said that this is an issue but note that they want to know if this only applies to youth or everybody. All politician was, to some extent self-critical and meant that they themselves needed to get better at including youth and not having them on the sideline.

2019-06-04

This research aims to understand how black descriptive representation comes about and why black descriptive representation matters, at the state level. What distinguishes this research from previous works is its simultaneous analysis of different forms of descriptive representation at the subnational level, rather than in Congress or at the local level. This research argues black descriptive representation can take four different forms: dyadic, collective, parity and caucus. An important and understudied mechanism for black descriptive representation is the formation of state legislative black caucuses and their potential to influence policy and behavior. Subnational descriptive representation need not have negative tradeoffs for black substantive policy representation, as has been found with minority representation in Congress (Lublin 1997). Black representation is akin to a diamond, and looking at it from only one perspective is similar to judging a diamond only by its color, instead of also judging it by its hardness and fluorescence, as well as its clarity, shape, and size. In short, this work recognizes the multifaceted nature of black representation in the states. This research defines a theory of black descriptive representation as taking four different forms: dyadic, collective, parity, and caucus. Dyadic descriptive representation is the one-to-one relationship between a legislator and a voter, and heretofore it has received the most scholarly attention. This one-to-one relationship may occur between a minority citizen and their elected representation in Congress, in the state legislature, or in local government (Bobo and Gilliam 1990; Barreto, Segura, and Woods 2004), but this work focuses on dyadic descriptive representation in Congress. Although some argue that dyadic descriptive representation leads to better policy outcomes for blacks (Whitby 1997; Hutchings, McClerking, and Charles 2004), and encourages blacks to engage in politics (Gay 2001; Gay 2002; Tate 2003; Banducci, Donovan, and Karp 2004; Griffin and Keane 2006), others argue that dyadic descriptive representation is not only unnecessary to implement policies beneficial to blacks (Swain 1993), but also that it may actually lead to poorer policy outcomes for the group (Lublin 1997). That is, there is a tradeoff between increasing the number of black representatives (descriptive representation) and passing policies beneficial to the group (substantive representation). Collective descriptive representation is the relationship that an individual has with elected officials with whom they share a group identity. For blacks, collective descriptive representation may include the percentage of black lawmakers in the state legislature or Congress. An argument developed in this research is that collective descriptive representation in the state legislature, a topic rarely studied by scholars of race and ethnicity, may maximize both descriptive and substantive representation, and as a result, it may encourage black political behavior and lead to better policy outcomes for the group. Both parity and caucus descriptive representation are extensions of collective descriptive representation in the state legislature. Parity descriptive representation examines the extent to which the percentage of blacks in the state legislature is equal to a state's black population and is a measure of racial equity in electoral representation. Caucus descriptive representation is the formal organization of black lawmakers within a state legislature. Almost no published research has empirically studied legislative black caucuses in the states (for an exception see King-Meadows and Schaller 2006). Since the four forms of descriptive representation are distinct, the expectation is that they be caused by different factors. Moreover, this research builds on previous work by measuring and defining collective descriptive representation in all fifty states and is the first research to argue that state legislative black caucuses shape political behavior.

Museums have a task to present history in a way that's meaningful for the visitors. Museums also have a responsibility to represent everyone in the society, not exclude groups and at the same time make other groups more highlighted. This paper is about how the exhibition ”Historien i Sörmland” represents gender differences and how women and men are portrayed in different ways. Women are often under-represented in exhibitions around the world, leaving the men as a benchmark. The results show that women are under-represented in the exhibition ”Historien i Sörmland” and that the men and women who are portrayed contribute to the stereotype images of masculinity and femininity.

De senaste decennierna har en rad streckkodstekniker utvecklats för att grafiskt representera digital information. Gemensamt för dessa är en strävan efter hög densitet, det vill säga kapacitet att lagra mycket data på en liten yta. Densiteten begränsas emellertid av kravet på precision vid tolkning av den digitala datan, eftersom felaktigheter i digital data kan resultera i omfattande informationsförlust.

Analog information, exempelvis ljud, är däremot inte beroende av exakthet hos underliggande data i samma utsträckning. En analog ljudsignal kan beskrivas och återges approximativt, och ändå tolkas korrekt av en lyssnare. Detta faktum gör att det finns fördelar med att representera ett ljud utifrån dess analoga egenskaper. Exempelvis medför det sänkta kravet på absolut precision att densiteten hos representationen kan vara högre än hos konventionella streckkoder. I detta arbete utvecklas och utvärderas en grafisk representationsteknik som drar nytta av de analoga egenskaperna hos ljud – DAG (Dynamic Audio Graph). Ett flertal användningsområden för en sådan teknik har identifierats, bland annat musikdistribution via trycksaker, långtidsarkivering av ljud och illustration av ljud för upphovsrättsskydd.

Facial expressions play an important role in such areas as human communication or medical state evaluation. For machine learning tasks in those areas, it would be beneficial to have a representation of facial expressions which corresponds to human similarity perception. In this work, the data-driven approach to representation learning of facial expressions is taken. The methodology is built upon Variational Autoencoders and eliminates the appearance-related features from the latent space by using neutral facial expressions as additional inputs. In order to improve the quality of the learned representation, we modify the prior distribution of the latent variable to impose the structure on the latent space that is consistent with human perception of facial expressions. We conduct the experiments on two datasets and the additionally collected similarity data, show that the human-like topology in the latent representation helps to improve the performance on the stereotypical emotion classification task and demonstrate the benefits of using a probabilistic generative model in exploring the roles of latent dimensions through the generative process.
Ansiktsuttryck spelar en viktig roll i områden som mänsklig kommunikation eller vid utvärdering av medicinska tillstånd. För att tillämpa maskininlärning i dessa områden skulle det vara fördelaktigt att ha en representation av ansiktsuttryck som bevarar människors uppfattning av likhet. I det här arbetet används ett data-drivet angreppssätt till representationsinlärning av ansiktsuttryck. Metodologin bygger på s. k. Variational Autoencoders och eliminerar utseende-relaterade drag från den latenta rymden genom att använda neutrala ansiktsuttryck som extra input-data. För att förbättra kvaliteten på den inlärda representationen så modifierar vi a priori-distributionen för den latenta variabeln för att ålägga den struktur på den latenta rymden som är överensstämmande med mänsklig perception av ansiktsuttryck. Vi utför experiment på två dataset och även insamlad likhets-data och visar att den människolika topologin i den latenta representationen hjälper till att förbättra prestandan på en typisk emotionsklassificeringsuppgift samt fördelarna med att använda en probabilistisk generativ modell när man undersöker latenta dimensioners roll i den generativa processen.

The thesis contains a discussion of surrealism and the work of Meret Oppenheim and Leonora Carrington. In the thesis I also distinguish three groups of paintings in essays and describe my work and the way in which theory and practice have recommended one another. 'Salience and Surrealism' discusses how the features of collaboration, play and partnership involve women artists within the surrealist movement, and how their ideas of the feminine principle evolve and change. I also discuss the changing attitudes to imagination, creative inspiration and activity, and the understanding brought about by the meeting between surrealism and psychology. The salience of surrealism as an introverted urge and instinct toward individuation, is suggested by Kenneth Wack 'as the source of surrealism's most abiding success.' The contemporary use of salience applies to features, characteristics, and from architecture as protrusions or fortifications. The dictionary definition begins with extroverted examples like dancig, leaping about and jetting forth. The archaic meaning is origin or first beginning, hence in old medicine salience applies to the heart when it first shows in the embryo. In salience the anagram of, a silence, gave heed to the atmosphere of silence from creativity and in paintings. A silence, also corresponds with the middle part of Meret Oppenheim's life when she experienced an artisitc crisis and depression. This essay looks back fifty years of self-expression from this artist and finds prominent features to suggest the essential dichotomies which mark the artwork. Meret Oppenheim's ouevre includes painting, sculpture, poetry, books, and theatre costume and apparal. Her multiple talents in the arts and literature are like those of Leonora Carrington who has published several books and plays, in the visual arts she sculpted and painted. The salience of their creative and intellectual endeavours found realisation in the wisdom of the feminine, of animal spirits and of natural worlds. The principles of alchemy also inspired and informed their attitudes to creativity which emerges from the unification of opposites. Both artists called for a new alliance between male and female principles, and evolve concepts of androgyny, which for them lift creation to higher levels. These women as artists found a field of the arts that furnished them with both physical life and spiritual life
Master of Arts (Hons)

It is now part and parcel of the official philosophical wisdom that models are essential to the acquisition and organisation of scientific knowledge. It is also generally accepted that most models represent their target systems in one way or another. But what does it mean for a model to represent its target system. Surprisingly, this issue has hardly been recognised, much less seriously discussed. In the first part, I introduce the problem of scientific representation and argue for its importance. In the second part, I provide a critique of the current orthodoxy, the semantic view of theories. Though writers in this tradition do not explicitly address the issue of scientific representation, the semantic view implies that a model represents by being isomorphic or, in another version, similar to its target. I argue that this view faces insurmountable problems because both isomorphism and similarity are notions too weak to endow a model with representational power. In the third part, I develop a theory of representation that overcomes the shortcomings of the semantic view. The leading idea consists in taking representation to be explained in terms of three relations: denotation, display and designation. A model denotes its target system in roughly the same way in which a name denotes its bearer. At the same time it displays certain aspects, that is, it possesses these aspects and a user of the model thematises them. Finally, an aspect of the model designates an aspect of the target if the former stands for the latter and a specification of how exactly the two relate is provided.

n this thesis the triangulation is treated as a general-purpose visual representation by investigation of various domain-specific methods such as triangulation interpolation, mesh flows, vertex neighborhood feature measures and re-triangulation for spatial transformations. Suggested new methods include an effective cost for image interpolation based on work by Sederberg et al. and a ridge-edge measure related to the Harris edge detector.

De nombreux algorithmes d'Apprentissage automatique ont été proposés afin de résoudre les différentes tâches pouvant être extraites des problèmes de prédiction issus d'un contexte réel. Pour résoudre les différentes tâches pouvant être extraites, la plupart des algorithmes d'Apprentissage automatique se basent d'une manière ou d'une autre sur des relations liant les instances. Les relations entre paires d'instances peuvent être définies en calculant une distance entre les représentations vectorielles des instances. En se basant sur la représentation vectorielle des données, aucune des distances parmi celles communément utilisées n'est assurée d'être représentative de la tâche à résoudre. Dans ce document, nous étudions l'intérêt d'adapter la représentation vectorielle des données à la distance utilisée pour une meilleure résolution de la tâche. Nous nous concentrons plus précisément sur l'algorithme existant résolvant une tâche de classification en se basant sur un graphe. Nous décrivons d'abord un algorithme apprenant une projection des données dans un espace de représentation permettant une résolution, basée sur un graphe, optimale de la classification. En projetant les données dans un espace de représentation dans lequel une distance préalablement définie est représentative de la tâche, nous pouvons surpasser la représentation vectorielle des données lors de la résolution de la tâche. Une analyse théorique de l'algorithme décrit est développée afin de définir les conditions assurant une classification optimale. Un ensemble d'expériences nous permet finalement d'évaluer l'intérêt de l'approche introduite et de nuancer l'analyse théorique
Machine learning proposes numerous algorithms to solve the different tasks that can be extracted from real world prediction problems. To solve the different concerned tasks, most Machine learning algorithms somehow rely on relationships between instances. Pairwise instances relationships can be obtained by computing a distance between the vectorial representations of the instances. Considering the available vectorial representation of the data, none of the commonly used distances is ensured to be representative of the task that aims at being solved. In this work, we investigate the gain of tuning the vectorial representation of the data to the distance to more optimally solve the task. We more particularly focus on an existing graph-based algorithm for classification task. An algorithm to learn a mapping of the data in a representation space which allows an optimal graph-based classification is first introduced. By projecting the data in a representation space in which the predefined distance is representative of the task, we aim at outperforming the initial vectorial representation of the data when solving the task. A theoretical analysis of the introduced algorithm is performed to define the conditions ensuring an optimal classification. A set of empirical experiments allows us to evaluate the gain of the introduced approach and to temper the theoretical analysis

This thesis is devoted to the study of higher representation theory as introduced in [Rou4]. As this theory is in its early days, it is essential to seek out modules that can rightfully be named building blocks and allow one to express as much of the structure of arbitrary modules as possible in their terms. We contribute towards this undertaking in the case of additive higher representation theory. Inspiration is drawn from Soergel bimodules which categorify the Hecke algebra. We introduce functorially cyclic modules as well as (strongly) universal cell modules. Examples include the minimal categorifications of [Rou4]. Properties of such modules are discussed and universal properties in terms of representable 2-functors are established. This leads to constructions and classifications in terms of split Frobenius objects, using a new variant of the Barr-Beck theorem for additive categories. Furthermore, we encounter a new class of modules so called coinvariant modules which arise from automorphism group actions. We also construct canonical cofiltrations and demonstrate why the Jordan-Hölder theory of [Rou4] does not readily generalise. Throughout, we comment on the succession [MaMi1]-[MaMi5] that tackles the same questions, however arrives at different conclusions. As applications, we first show that the 2-category of singular Soergel bimodules of [Wi2] arises naturally within the additive higher representation theory of Soergel bimodules. Second, we establish (weak) equivalences between certain associated universal cell modules together with a categorification of cell module homomorphisms of the Hecke algebra. Third, we show that singular Soergel bimodules constructed with a faithful representation categorify the Schur algebroid, generalising the main result of [Li]. Fourth given a group and a subgroup, we recover the additive monoidal category of representations of the subgroup from the corresponding category for the group without invoking Tannakian formalism.

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2017.
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 41-44).
This work introduces methods for learning distributed, vector representations of cooking recipes. The individual components of a recipe -- the images, instructions, and ingredients -- are first treated individually. These representations are learned from a large, multi-modal dataset collected -- and publicly released -- as part of this work. Their representations are then embedded in a joint vector space using a novel neural network model. Experiments on cross-modal retrieval and vector space arithmetic demonstrate the utility and generalizability of both the per-component and joint embeddings.
by Nick Hynes.
M. Eng.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2006.
Includes bibliographical references.
The central goal of this dissertation is to contribute to our understanding of the link between political representation and policy outcomes. In particular, this collection of essays examines how the institutional arrangements and formal processes that precede and initiate political representation either promote or hinder the representation of various interests in society and thus determine whose interests shape public policies. The first chapter studies the relationship between descriptive representation of traditionally underrepresented minority groups and substantive representation of their interests. Examining the impact of increased African American representation from the early 1970s to the late 1990s, the chapter demonstrates that legislative representation of historically marginalized groups can lead to tangible changes in public policies. The second chapter attempts to understand why legislative representation of minority groups in American society remains low, even to this day. This chapter disentangles the impact of candidates' race on voting decisions from that of candidates' ideology, by focusing on the case of the representation of African Americans.
(cont.) Using extensive individual-level voting data as well as a unique data set on candidates' ideological positions, the chapter shows that minority candidates' race negatively influences voting decisions of white voters only when partisan and ideological cues are absent. The third chapter analyzes the impact of electoral institutions on political representation and policy outcomes. It provides empirical evidence that political units receive larger intergovernmental transfers, when represented by at-large delegations than when represented by delegations elected from single-member districts.
by Michiko Ueda.
Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M. in Computational Neuroscience)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-80).
This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.
This thesis describes a representation for objects and scenes that is stable against variations in image intensity caused by illumination changes and tolerant to image degradations such as sensor noise. The representation, called a ratio-template, uses low-resolution ordinal contrast relationships as its matching primitives. The choice of these primitives was inspired not only by considerations of computational simplicity and robustness, but also by current knowledge of the early stages of visual processing in the primate brain. The resulting representation is biologically plausible, although there is currently no evidence to suggest that the representation is actually used by the primate visual system. Constructed manually at first, the ratio-template can be learned automatically from a set of examples. Two applications--face detection and scene indexing--are described. The ratio-template achieves detection rates higher than 90% and can process a 320×280 pixel image in 2.6 seconds at multiple scales.
by Keith John Thoresz.
S.M.in Computational Neuroscience