Mathematical-Statistical Models and Qualitative Theories for Economic and Social Sciences

The expenditure which Ministry of Defence of the Slovak Republic spends on Armed Forces members’ participation in peace support operations led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is dependent on many factors. The main aim of this chapter is to find out the dependence level of this parameter from two selected factors, namely the level of defence expenditure and the GDP of the Slovak Republic. For this purpose the multifactor single-equation econometric model is created and tested. Based on the tests results, conclusions and proposals for further examination are formulated.

The chapter concentrates on the health risk assessment of selected pollutants derived from residential fire simulated in fire container. The key interest is dedicated to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and their toxicity and harmful effects on the health of firefighters, whose protection by breathing apparatus is insufficient. The final evaluation suggests measurements regarding the issue of the protection of people dealing with fire.

This contribution deals with the qualitative and quantitative comparison of the entrance draft tests and the entrance tests in mathematics for the bachelor and master study applicants at the Faculty of Military Technology at the University of Defence in Brno. These tests have been organized by the Department of Mathematics and Physics since 2010. The chapter focuses on the results and the rates of 353 individuals applying for the study as well as the future students’ results obtained at the entrance examinations and proceeding voluntary draft tests within the period of the last six years 2010–2015. The results of the Military secondary school and secondary civilian schools applicants are compared and evaluated from the qualitative and quantitative points of view.

The ethnography is a non-standard methodology utilized to study the culture and the interactions of social actors in a cultural context. With the development of the Web were born the first ethnographic applications to the cyberspace and currently this methodology has not yet defined a methodological framework and has taken different labels: Virtual Ethnography, Ethnography Network, Ethnography digital (Murthy, Sociology 42:837–855, 2008) and Netnography (Kosinets, Netnography: The Marketer’s Secret Weapon. How Social Media Understanding Drives Innovation, 2010). The aim of this chapter is to define the boundaries of digital ethnography. Finally, with the help of the comparison between empirical cases we will try to understand which are critical points, limits and research prospects for digital ethnographers.

Negativity in media and emphasis on personal side of politics are often cited as a common journalist practice which is harmful to democratic processes. Journalists and media houses are often held accountable for these phenomena because they prioritize profit over the quality of content. However, we offer an analysis focused on demand side of both negativity and privatization of political news. Using the Dynamic Process Tracing Environment (DPTE), we test the assumption that both of these features of political media coverage may be driven by audience demand for negative and personal news. According to the available literature, personal news can serve as a useful heuristics in citizens’ political judgment. We have confirmed a negativity bias; however, a tendency to select news about politicians’ private affairs was not confirmed. Even thought respondents preferred political news, personal news showed to be more memorable, which might have further implications for formation of political attitudes.

Modeling and simulation represent a common part of most human activities. Development of computer technology causes a massive advancement of computer simulation. Computer simulation offers many new views on the modeling and simulation while allowing penetration of simulation into other disciplines. Simulation has an irreplaceable role in the fields of training and education for centuries. Its application and development are largely associated with its use in the military. There is an analogous situation with constructive simulation, which is used as a tool for training of commanders and staffs of military units. The benefits of simulation for a higher quality of training are beyond doubt. Therefore, constructive simulation gradually penetrates into other spheres such as the training of emergency staff. However, relevant studies about the economic benefits of the use of constructive simulation for training are relatively rare. The presented cost comparison of the exercises is based on the authors’ experience gained during the implementation of various types of exercise at the Center of Simulation and Training Technologies Brno with the use of constructive simulation OneSAF.

The present chapter illustrates specific cases of the teaching experience in a primary school and the application of theories regarding the choice of teaching methods in this particular context. In order to decide the most appropriate intervention strategies, both in terms of teaching and for an efficient management of relationships within the class and with the students’ families, the first step was to discover the students’ social and environmental background. The experience described herein is at the basis of the final proposal on how to concretely implement some decisional procedures at school, as for instance those linked to the limited rationality and the Analytic Hierarchy Process theorized by Saaty.

This chapter proposes a path for the teaching of geometry in Italy that reflects the development, which took place over the past two centuries; specifically, it emphasizes the expansion of the Euclidean plane to the projective plane. Moreover, we highlight the social aspects of a teaching based on the graphical visualization as required by the projective geometry.

Leadership is of overriding importance in the military sphere since the foundation for leading a unit consists in influence, motivation and soldiers’ inspiration by the leader’s personal example. The Lithuanian Army seeks to develop a military leadership identity as a way to promote mission success. This study is sought to identify the effective leadership style, which is appreciated by soldiers in the Lithuanian Armed Forces. The behavior of the leader was measured using the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), which was developed and adapted by Andrew W. Halpin at the Ohio State University. The 204 participants were selected on an easy sample basis. The data collected from military personnel holding different ranks and doing their professional military service of all the units of the Lithuanian Armed Forces were analyzed using the structural equation modelling (SEM). Moreover, the findings from statistically significant modified model showed the strongest leadership style indicators.

Cartography and geoinformatics are technical-based which deal with modelling and visualization of landscape in the form of a map. For the given subjects, mathematics is necessary for understanding of many procedures that are connected to modelling of the Earth as a celestial body, to ways of its projection into a plane, to methods and procedures of modelling of landscape and phenomena in society and visualization of these models in the form of electronic as well as classic paper maps. Not only general mathematics, but also its extension of differential geometry of curves and surfaces, ways of approximation of lines and surfaces of functional surfaces, mathematical statistics and multi-criterial analyses seem to be suitable and needful. Underestimation of the significance of mathematical education in cartography and geoinformatics is inappropriate and lowers competences of cartographers and geoinformaticians to solve problems.

Interpretation of image data (one of the basic geographic skills—Řezníčková et al., Standards and research in geography education. Current trends and international issues, pp 37–49, 2014) is a complex of complicated intellectual operations, which is based on visual perception (for example, when working with a map, then we can talk about mapping skills—Hanus and Marada, Geografie 119(4):406–422, 2014). The theoretical part of the study summarizes the scientific knowledge of processes of visual perception applied in the process of visual interpretation of satellite, aircraft and map image data. The author presents partial phases of image data interpreting process: from the initial recording of the image to detection, identification and objects classification. The complexity of the cognitive process with regard to biological and psychological characteristics of the individual are highlighted. The research section presents the results of image data interpretation research according to gender of individuals/research respondents. The research results show (1) a consistent success rate and (2) a consistent speed of problem solving when dealing with image data of aerial and satellite images. The results were slightly surprising with respect to research results concerning map interpretation where respondents attain different degrees of success rate depending on gender.

Academic integrity is one of the fundamental values of being honest. The present study is aimed at finding out citation understandings of Czech (n = 283) and Turkish (n = 182) secondary and high school students (13–20-year old). Except for a few students, secondary and high school students have misconceptions concerning providing citations. Students are unintentionally vulnerable to plagiarize while reporting. The study showed that only secondary and high school education is not enough for implementing honesty regarding citation and we will face a significant risk for future scientific research, unless we treat, educate and inform our secondary and high school students properly and continuously about honesty in research and plagiarism.

Between both learning and teaching processes, there is an ongoing relationship showing specific teaching and bidirectional relationships between teachers and their students. The teachers can influence their communication and interactions with students in a very favourable or, on the contrary, unfavourable way. Speaking about the area of attitudes and values shaping the relationship between teachers and their pupils, the article focuses on the part of subjective assumptions concerning pupils’ progress when working with specific materials—aerial and satellite image and map interpretation. The survey respondents were primary school teachers and primary school students aged 11 and 15. Teachers and pupils’ subjective assumptions were mutually compared; subjective assumptions were compared with objective data—the test results concerning pupils’ work with image data. The survey has proved that (1) there is a strong correlation between the teachers’ assumptions concerning the difficulty to interpret an image by themselves and the assumption concerning the difficulties encountered by their pupils; (2) the pupils’ assumption concerning the difficulty when working with some material (satellite images in false colours) significantly differs from the objective success rate: students expect very difficult tasks whereas they are actually very successful; (3) the teachers and students differ about their opinion concerning the use of satellite and aerial images during the teaching process; the teachers declare a higher level of significance than students; (4) the teachers expect the satellite and aerial image data to be far more attractive than the pupils expect.

This study analyses the external antecedents of board diversity. We use the resource-based view and the agency theory to investigate the impact of institutional and foreign shareholders on national board diversity. Because we highlight that the most used diversity indices neglect the multidimensional aspect of diversity, we refer to diversity profiles and suggest the functional data analysis approach for diversity assessment in corporate governance studies. Specifically, we use the parametric functional analysis of variance in analysing the influence exerted by institutional and foreign shareholders on national board diversity. Focusing on a sample of 1,230 Italian medium-large firms, our results show that institutional shareholders do not influence national board diversity, while foreign shareholders strongly affect it, especially when they hold more than 50% of shares. Thus, we address the research gap on the determinants of national board diversity and enrich comparative European research on this topic.

The indices of deprivation are a valuable tool to measure the socioeconomic disadvantage in certain geographical areas of interest. This study aims to compare inequalities between the provinces of Abruzzo over the last two decades suggesting some indices of deprivation to capture the key aspects of the great wealth of information relating to population census. Specifically, we propose three indices of deprivation to measure the material and social disadvantage. Moreover, a principal component analysis is performed using the most know indicators of deprivation. Using these methods, we observe an increase in the proportion of disadvantaged areas in the Abruzzo region from 1991 to 2011 in its four provinces.

The aim of this chapter is the development of three approaches for obtaining the value of an n-payment annuity, with payments of 1 unit each, when the interest rate is random. To calculate the value of these annuities, we are going to assume that only some non-central moments of the capitalization factor are known. The first technique consists in using a tetraparametric function which depends on the arctangent function. The second expression is derived from the so-called quadratic discounting whereas the third approach is based on the approximation of the mathematical expectation of the ratio of two random variables by Mood et al. (1974). A comparison of these methodologies through an application, using the R statistical software, shows that all of them lead to different results.

Some methodologies for practicing counseling are deepen in. The aim of the counseling is in helping a person to assume his/her autonomous decisions and then rational actions for the life choices problems, coherent with own identity and objectives. The counseling procedure is considered as a dynamical decision making problem, where the awareness of alternatives and objectives and their evaluations are maieutically induced by the Counselor. After presenting some relevant practices of counseling and related decision-making procedures, this study shows the use of the mathematical theory of decisions for a formalization of the counseling methods, in order to model, clarify, and make rigorous procedures of decision. Finally it is shown that fuzzy reasoning can give a useful formal help to the task of the Counselor, because of its flexibility and closeness to human reasoning.

This chapter is dealing with migration problems in general, in particular with the immigration, and is covering two territories, Andalusia (Spain) and the Czech Republic. The problem is described in a pre-case study, which covers results concerning citizens’ approach to an urgent social topic, i.e., migration and immigration and risks related to these questions. First, there is given a summary about the history of migrations in both regions; next, the current situation in those regions is characterized; after that, the questionnaire was prepared with the idea of how people feel this phenomenon, and survey was made. Finally, based on the results obtained, possible risks are presented and some strategies how to deal with inconvenient situation, which might arise, are suggested. Since the pre-case study showed highly different approaches of both nationalities, the authors concluded to continue this study, expand the number of respondents so that results obtained later on could be considered significant.

In this article, we are going to talk about the social aspect of elderly people in urban areas, especially about disabled elderly people and how disability affects their socialization. With the aim to cover this topic we have done research which involves a survey, an interview and a discussion group, with the idea to collect all relevant information, we have compared the results of these three techniques and made a complete evaluation of these findings.

The chapter that follows, tries to highlight the reasons why educational institutions should be considered complex systemic organizations. The multidisciplinary approach suggested tends to make use, on one hand, of different lenses, in order to appreciate the organizational phenomenon taken into consideration, on the other, it is an effort to join different epistemes for practical purposes. It is itself the expression of the contemporary man’s attitude toward complexity. Since this is showed through circles of relations and interactions among the component parts of phenomena and accidents, the suggestion is to develop a cognitive method to stay with it side by side, in order to manage it, without being entrapped by it. This possibility lies in a new system of thought, critical and systemic that acknowledges what is happening and the same problematic nature of reality in terms of dynamism and probability, instead of linearity and consequentiality.

The speed of change and the spread of ICT (Information and communications technology) in Education puts the entire educational system in the position of having to constantly think about new methods and redesign teaching models adapted to a globalized and interconnected society, where knowledge is distributed, easily accessible and constantly updated. The massive introduction of technology in learning environments has not given the expected improvement in teaching, in fact, there has been a misuse of technology with a deterioration in school performance. Education must therefore aim to develop certain skills to enable a student to work independently usefully and effectively. The new systems and teaching models must be designed so as to shift the focus on the student. It is therefore necessary to work on different directions that are represented by the intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, curiosity, favorable environment and distributed cognition.

This contribution deals with the concept of social distance. The physical and spatial aspects of social distance identified by Simmel disappeared from the theoretical setting when the issue was analyzed in America by the Chicago School. The approaches that combine the physical and relational dimensions, based on Italian and English sociologists of the last few years, have to be preferred. The main objective of the research on social distance is to go beyond Bauman’s paradigm of liquidity—without groping to reconstruct the social complexity—and think of society as the physical and symbolic place that comes to life and reproduces the social structure. The conclusions that can be drawn from the survey introduced in this chapter relate to (a) the perception of social distance with regard to some significant variables; (b) the social distance as propensity to get closer or farther away the other, especially the local Gypsies and foreigners in general; (c) the construction of complex indexes (index of innovation/traditionalism and index of social background) which allows to study the composition of the social structure of Pescara and the attitude that people seem to manifest.

We present the theoretical synthesis and the technical and methodological setting of a research, aimed to analyzing and evaluating the urban places and spaces of social life, where the human interactions take place and the city come to life.

Connections between intelligence studies and social sciences have been already underlined in different fields: anthropology and cultural intelligence; connections are found between social and cognitive psychology and the competences of the analyst of intelligence; social sciences methodologies and tools are used in intelligence as well. This work will focus on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), defined as the activity of discovering, discriminating, gathering, validating, analyzing and distributing information derived from sources which are open, public, accessible and unclassified (Fleisher in Inteligencia y Seguridad, 2008). Eight interviews on a sample of Italian OSINT analysts and experts revealed what is the common use of OSINT methods, how they are linked to the knowledge creation and knowledge management processes. Aim of the study is to explore the OSINT methods in a social psychology view and evaluating its relation with knowledge management in organizations.

Every cultural heritage object and its content has its unique character and calls for an individual approach considering safety, protection, security, risk-preparedness and further viable use. The public usually know about high-value losses of cultural property caused by burglary, fire of flood when the mass-media report them; however, physical care, including environmental and conservation control, property transfer and transport, personal access, thefts from exhibits during the day, incidents of smash bring about higher-cost internal losses, which are sometimes not reported at all. In case any disaster strikes, harm to cultural treasure is sometimes serious and losses irreplaceable unless relevant measures are taken in time.

In applied sociology, concepts, theories, models and patterns of explanation are used for the study of social phenomena; they provide a starting point to plan social policies. The methods of social research are designed to identify, describe and explain the social needs of individuals, groups and communities. Giving an “objective” definition of the social needs of people is difficult but necessary. Frequently, the planning of welfare services is not orientated towards the actual needs expressed by the citizens but follows a different course. The role of pre-evaluation is strongly emphasised in the planning and construction of the welfare system. In this chapter are described the methods of analysis of social needs and the models of local welfare in Italy. In the first section I describe the importance of the study of the social care needs of the population for the construction of the local welfare system. In the second section I describe some aspects of local welfare system in Italy.

In this study we will present some aspects of social life in Romanian villages in the interwar period. At the same time, we will describe the standard of living in rural areas, which varied depending on the ethnicity of the residents, using examples taken from the Dobrudja region.