Note: Articles posted in this blog are clips from other sources (e.g. newspapers) and are not the words or the views of the submitter or of Kypros-Net Inc.

Tuesday 10 March 2015

Online MSc in Interaction Design (http://idmaster.eu/)

Online MSc in Interaction Design (http://idmaster.eu/)

We are recruiting students for September 2015,
and the deadline for applications is the 1st of July 2015.

The online MSc in Interaction Design allows learners to combine theory
with practice towards the design and evaluation of interactive
computing systems with a strong emphasis in the human aspects of
design (http://idmaster.eu/ ).

The programme targets learning outcomes based on international
standards, and builds upon the extensive experience of academics at
Tallinn University and Cyprus University of Technology in the field of
Human Computer Interaction and Interaction Design.

Among others, the program includes subjects such as design theory and
methodology, foundation of human-computer interaction, the development
of interactive systems, the evaluation of user experience and
ubiquitous computing.

We offer an innovative online program, designed for learners who have
a strong interest in the human aspects of designing interactive
computing systems and a first degree in or related to Informatics,
Design, Social Sciences and Instructional/Educational Technology.

This programme comprises of four semesters (30 ECTS per semester), and
is structured based on a standard plan of study; it is delivered fully
online as distance learning. For the completion of the MSc degree,
students will undertake a thesis allowing them to develop their
capabilities based on independent research and will apply their
studies to a field of specialization.

The cost is 4,100 euro for the whole program.

For more info: http://www.idmaster.eu

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/idmaster.eu

For further information please contact: info@idmaster.eu

Friday 3 January 2014

The Cyprus Interaction Lab - Cyprus University of Technology

Happy new year...

I bring to your attention the establishment of the Cyprus Interaction
Lab (http://www.cyprusinteractionlab.com) a research lab in Cyprus
specialising in HCI and Instructional Technology.

I also take this opportunity to express our interest for research
collaborations that match our research interests.

The lab runs a number of national and international projects and has
13 members (academics, researchers and PhD students).

The Cyprus Interaction Lab of the Department of Multimedia and Graphic
Arts of the Cyprus University of Technology studies the interaction of
people with technology in various fields. The lab aims to understand
and enhance users' experience and interaction with technology.

Research in the Cyprus Interaction Lab revolves around two main
research themes: 1) Human Computer Interaction and Inclusive Design
and 2) Instructional Technology and Social Computing.

Research topics include:

* Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
* Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)
* Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)
* Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)
* Inclusive Design/Accessibility
* Social Aspects of Computing
* Computer Games and their social and pedagogical dimensions
* Technology-enhanced learning
* Technology integration in K-20

The lab has a specially equipped usability laboratory designed for
running user evaluations in a comfortable environment which is
configured with state-of-the-art equipment.

The laboratory is well equipped with technologies such as interactive
white boards, high end tablets and mobile devices, multi-touch
interactive tabletops, PCs, iMacs, laser printers, eye trackers,
observational equipment etc. Overall, the Cyprus Interaction Lab is
well equipped for the support of existing and emerging areas of
research in the area of technology-enhanced learning and
national/international collaborations.

More information:
Lab website - http://www.cyprusinteractionlab.com/

--
Prof. Panayiotis Zaphiris
Dean of School of Fine and Applied Arts
Cyprus University of Technology
web: http://www.zaphiris.com
Cyprus Interaction Lab: http://cyprusinteractionlab.com/

Sunday 17 February 2008

Results

Obviously the polls failed to predict the result. We are sure there can be an analysis as to why that was the case.

Our prediction was fully based on the polls, since the polls failed to predict the outcome our prediction didn't succeed either.

Final results at http://www.ekloges.gov.cy

Saturday 9 February 2008

Our Prediction for Round 1

Today, one week before the first round of the Cyprus Presidential Elections cypruselections.org is doing something that nobody has attempted to do in the past.

Our focus has always been the objective presentation of all available polls and news about the upcoming elections. In this direction, we believe that objective and detail analysis and presentation of election results is of paramount importance.

In this direction, we are today releasing a prediction for the upcoming elections.

Our prediction (95% confidence) is that the final results of the election will be (in parenthesis the range based on our calculated margin of error - see below for explanation):

Tassos Papadopoulos 34.5% (33.5%-35.5%)

Dimitris Xristofias 32.9% (31.9%-33.9%)

Ioannis Kasoulidis 31.2% (30.2%-32.2%)

Matsakis ~ 1%

Themistokleous ~ 0.5%

Our prediction is not a poll, it is instead a scientific outcome of data analysis.

Our prediction is based on scientific meta analysis of 23 polls that have been published since 1st of January 2008.

Our analysis of the 23 polls is based on the following methodology/assumptions:
  • We believe in the objectivity of all 23 polls. A lot has been written in the Cyprus press about the subjectivity of some polls. We want to believe that all polling companies completed their polls in a scientific way. In any case, given the large number of polls we believe that small errors average out when all polls are taken into account together. This is one extra reason why we believe that the meta analysis we present here is stronger than a single poll.
  • The sample of all 23 polls was added together, giving us a total of 26,500 ballots.
  • We are treating all 23 polls as a unified single poll running from 7 January to 8 February with a sample size of 26,500 ballots. We believe that this is a short enough period of time to justify the application of this methodology.
  • For such a large sample (26,500 ballots) the margin of error is quite small. The margin of error was calculated using an established methodology (used in USA elections, see: http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/polling/margin-of-error.html)
  • We used 95% confidence to calculate a margin of error for this sample (Margin of error at 95% confidence \approx 0.98/\sqrt{n}\,= 0.6%, where n=26,500). Therefore our margin of error is +- 0.6%
  • It should be noted that this is based on analysis of polls published up to the 10th of Feb. Unfortunately the Cyprus law does not allow for poll results to be released after that day. Given this we have increased our margin of error to 1% to account for small changes that might happen during the last week of the election campaign. Given the trends from the polls (see graphs in next blog entry) in the last month, we believe this is a realistic margin.
  • We are happy to receive comments/criticism/be-challenged on this analysis. Use the comment feature of this blog to leave your message.
Answers to visitors' questions/comments:

  • Antonis points out that summing up 23 polls might be a bit risky given that people surveyed might have changed their mind. The truth is that the 23 polls we have included in this analysis are from a short period of time (a month) and also all polls seem to more or less agree in their results (the fluctuation is small). To prove this point and provide Antonis' with some additional information we went ahead and did some additional analysis of these 23 polls. First we provide below in a table the range of scores (the average % and the single polls that gave the top and lowest % for each candidate) for each candidate in these 23 polls. As can be seen in the table the range of all polls is quite small, proving that all polls are quite in agreement.

    • Papadopoulos

      Xristofias

      Kasoulidis

      Average %

      34.5%

      32.9%

      31.2%

      Top %

      35.4%

      33.6%

      33.1%

      Lowest %

      32.8%

      31.6%

      29.6%

  • To further address Antonis' point we went ahead and analysed the 23 polls in a longitudinal way. We divided the polls into three periods (a) polls conducted between 1-15 January, (b) polls conducted from 16-31 January, (c) polls conducted between 1-10 February. This as you will agree gives us additional indication as to whether there were any big fluctuations of candidates' share during those three time periods. We provide below our findings:


  • # polls

    Sample

    Papadopoulos

    Xristofias

    Kasoulidis

    1-15 January

    6

    7340

    34.6%

    32.8%

    31.2%

    16-31 January

    8

    8507

    34.3%

    33.1%

    30.9%

    1 – 10 Feb

    9

    10686

    34.6%

    32.9%

    31.4%

    TOTAL/Average

    23

    26533

    34.5%

    32.9%

    31.2%


  • As can be seen there is very very small fluctuation in the average % of each candidate in these three periods. In our view this shows that the public's opinions is quite stabilized and unlikely to dramatically change in the next week. This is further supported by the low standard deviation of the % of all 3 candidates when calculated across all 23 polls. The standard deviation for Papadopoulos is 0.6%, for Christofias 0.7% and for Kasoulidis 0.8%.
  • As we said in our analysis we gave a 1% margin of error to our prediction to account for any additional small fluctuations in the week to come. But, we actually believe that a 0.6% margin of error as originally calculated is more than adequate for this type of small fluctuations as shown in the tables above.
  • So to answer Antonis' questions: We believe the polls show that people have not changed their minds that much in the last month. We also believe the sample size is too large, so the effect of any minimal double counting (people participating in more than one poll) is insignificant, if at all present.
  • We also received some questions as to whether our prediction takes into account the fact that around 15,000-20,000 Cypriot voters from overseas will be voting in this election. The answer is yes. All polls are conducted taking into account the official distribution of age and gender as per the official electorate register (i.e. in their samples they have included the appropriate percentage of all age groups and genders, a percentage that takes into account all registered voters irrespective of where they reside). Ofcourse, polls released only collected data from the residents in Cyprus. In our view, the only possibility of an effect from the overseas vote is if one was to assume that on average the 18-25 year olds who are residents in Cyprus and have participated in all 23 polls will vote significantly different than the 18-25 year olds who are studying overseas and will be travelling to Cyprus to vote. We don't believe that such a significant difference between the way these two groups will vote exists.
  • aceras asks whether our data shows any distinct differences between ballot box based polls and telephone based polls. Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of the polls released in this election are telephone based so any meaningful comparison between these two types of polls is not possible with the available data. The only poll that was ballot box based is the one by CyBC. It should be though noted that the CyBC poll's results (when excluding the undecided vote) is within our predictions' margin of error. More specifically the CybC poll showed Papadopoulos at 34.03%, Christofias at 33.48% and Kasoulidis at 30.19%.
  • If anyone has access to 2006 parliamentary election polls please contact us.
  • Thanks for your interest in this analysis. We will continue to respond and provide additional analysis as requested. Feel free to point out additional requests in the comments. The whole goal here is to help all of us get a better understanding of the published polls.

Election Polls since January 2008

A total of 23 Polls took place since 1st January 2008. A complete list is provided below:

  1. Simerini (to be published sunday 10 Feb)
  2. Politis 1000 people, 2-7 Feb
  3. ANT1 1356 people, 31 Jan - 8 Feb
  4. Phileleftheros 1112 people, 1-7 Feb
  5. SIGMA 1000 people, 21 Jan - 5 Feb
  6. Haravgi 2055 people, 24 Jan - 3 Feb
  7. TV Plus 2000 people, 31 Jan -2 Feb
  8. Simerini 800 people, -1 Feb
  9. MEGA 1495, 28 Jan-1 Feb
  10. ANT1 1661, 17-30 Jan
  11. Symmetron 1200, 30 Jan
  12. CyBC 1600 people, 19-29 Jan
  13. Simerini 800 people, -25 Jan
  14. Politis 800 people, 19-23 Jan
  15. PA College 1298 people, 15-21 Jan
  16. Simerini 800 people, -18 Jan
  17. Phileleftheros 1004 people, 10-17 Jan
  18. Symmetron 1200 people, 7-15 Jan
  19. SIGMA 1002 people, 7-14 Jan
  20. ANT1 2130 people, 17 Dec - 14 Jan
  21. Simerini 800 people, -13 Jan
  22. Politis 800 people, 7-11 Jan
  23. TV Plus 2000 people, 9-11 Jan
Below you can find the trends of the polls for round 1. In calculating these trends the following steps were followed:

  • Simerini was running a poll every 2 days. As their sample between polls was overlapping, we only took into account the polls that they published every Sunday to eliminate this problem.
  • The date of the poll is the last day of its data collection. For example if a poll was run from 10-15 of June then the date of poll displayed on the graphs is 15th of June.
  • Undecided vote was distributed to each of the four candidates as a share of their decided vote.

Sunday 23 December 2007

Από μηδενική βάση οι τρεις υποψήφιοι

Simerini: Από μηδενική βάση οι τρεις υποψήφιοι
"Από μηδενική βάση αρχίζουν την κούρσα των επερχόμενων προεδρικών εκλογών οι τρεις βασικοί υποψήφιοι για την Προεδρία της Δημοκρατίας, Τάσσος Παπαδόπουλος, Δημήτρης Χριστόφιας και Ιωάννης Κασουλίδης.
Το πιο πάνω συμπέρασμα εξάγεται μέσα από το αποτέλεσμα δημοσκόπησης που διενήργησε για λογαριασμό του εκλογικού επιτελείου του Ιωάννη Κασουλίδη η εταιρεία «Insights Market Research»....."

Saturday 15 December 2007

Επιδείξεις εντυπώσεων από τα επιτελεία Τάσσου-Χριστόφια

Phileleftheros
"Στην παράσταση νίκης επενδύουν τα πάντα στο επιτελείο Παπαδόπουλου. Αυτό είναι και το στοιχείο που αναδεικνύουν στη νέα δημοσκόπηση που παρουσίασαν χθες. Οι συνεργάτες του Τάσσου Παπαδόπουλου μιλούν για μια σταθερή υποψηφιότητα μέσα στην κοινή γνώμη και για αναμενόμενη άνοδο των δύο βασικών ανθυποψηφίων του που δεν δημιουργεί ανησυχίες στο προεδρικό στρατόπεδο. Η νέα έρευνα, που έγινε με δείγμα 1200 άτομα, από την εταιρεία Symetron για λογαριασμό του επιτελείου Παπαδόπουλου, δίνει υπεροχή στον Πρόεδρο στην παράσταση νίκης με 40,3% έναντι 31,5% του Δημήτρη Χριστόφια και 15,2% του Ιωάννη Κασουλίδη. Στον πρώτο γύρο οι Χριστόφιας και Κασουλίδης παρουσιάζονται με ανεβασμένα τα ποσοστά, 30,2% και 28,3% αντίστοιχα αλλά η πρωτιά παραμένει στον Τάσσο Παπαδόπουλο με 32,6%. Και στον δεύτερο γύρο ο Παπαδόπουλος επικρατεί των ανθυποψηφίων του. Με ανθυποψήφιο τον Ιωάννη Κασουλίδη εξασφαλίζει 45% έναντι 34,2%. Η ψαλίδα κλείνει όταν έχει απέναντί του τον Δημήτρη Χριστόφια με 40,4% να καταλήγει στον Τάσσο και 39,1% στον ανθυποψήφιο του. Στο σενάριο με ανθυποψηφίους τους Χριστόφια- Κασουλίδη επικρατεί ο πρώτος με 41,5% έναντι 35,4%."