Included are eleven short articles on various aspects of mathematics. (FL)

Discusses the empirical importance of Shannon's Information Theory and its impact on information science, and investigates the principle of least effort as a means of broadening the empirical foundation of Information Theory. Listed are 14 sources. (Author/RBF)

A formal framework is presented for determining which of the distractors of multiple-choice test items has a small probability of being chosen by a typical examinee. The framework is based on a procedure similar to an indifference zone formulation of a ranking and election problem. (Author/BW)

The use of a quasi-equiprobability model in the measurement of observer agreement involving dichotomous coding categories is described. A measure of agreement is presented which gives the probability of agreement under the assumption that observation pairs reflecting disagreement will be equally probable. (Author/JKS)

Describes success-breeds-success phenomenon by single and multiple-urn models, and shows that these models lead to a negative binomial distribution for the total number of successes and to a Zipf-Mandelbrot law for the number of sources contributing a specified number of successes. Ten references are cited. (FM)

Discusses a 1976 survey of Comprehensive Employment and Training Act participants and factors affecting the success or failure of employment programs. (JOW)

Genetic algorithms, a class of nondeterministic algorithms in which the role of chance makes the precise nature of a solution impossible to guarantee, seem to be well suited to combinatorial-optimization problems in information retrieval. Provides an introduction to techniques and characteristics of genetic algorithms and illustrates their…

Discusses the relative effects of sample size and proportion in the use of sampling to investigate a population. Concludes that the nature of probability and statistics is such that in many situations, the reality is counterintuitive to many generally well-educated people who are not statistically trained. Discusses implications for educators.…

An integration of two different approaches to the psychology of causal induction is proposed that overcomes the problems associated with each. The proposal results in a causal power theory of the probabilistic contrast model of P. W. Cheng and L. R. Novick (1990). (SLD)

A FORTRAN subroutine is presented to calculate a generalized measure of agreement between multiple raters and a set of correct responses at any level of measurement and among multiple responses, along with the associated probability value, under the null hypothesis. (Author)

Examines query expansion during query translation in cross language information retrieval and develops a general framework for inferential information retrieval in two particular contexts: using fuzzy logic and probability theory. Obtains evaluation formulas that are shown to strongly correspond to those used in other information retrieval models.…