Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Quantitative Analysis And Visualization Of Nfl Passing Routes, Sandeep Chitturi

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The strategic planning of offensive passing plays in the NFL incorporates numerous variables, including defensive coverages, player positioning, historical data, etc. This project develops an application using an analytical framework and an interactive model to simulate and visualize an NFL offense's passing strategy under varying conditions. Using R-programming and data management, the model dynamically represents potential passing routes in response to different defensive schemes. The system architecture integrates data from historical NFL league years to generate quantified route scores through designed mathematical equations. This allows for the prediction of potential passing routes for offensive skill players in response to the …

Visualized Algorithm Engineering On Two Graph Partitioning Problems, Zizhen Chen

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Concepts of graph theory are frequently used by computer scientists as abstractions when modeling a problem. Partitioning a graph (or a network) into smaller parts is one of the fundamental algorithmic operations that plays a key role in classifying and clustering. Since the early 1970s, graph partitioning rapidly expanded for applications in wide areas. It applies in both engineering applications, as well as research. Current technology generates massive data (“Big Data”) from business interactions and social exchanges, so high-performance algorithms of partitioning graphs are a critical need.

This dissertation presents engineering models for two graph partitioning problems arising from completely …

Procedural Level Generation For A Top-Down Roguelike Game, Kieran Ahn, Tyler Edmiston

Honors Thesis

In this file, I present a sequence of algorithms that handle procedural level generation for the game Fragment, a game designed for CMSI 4071 and CMSI 4071 in collaboration with students from the LMU Animation department. I use algorithms inspired by graph theory and implementing best practices to the best of my ability. The full level generation sequence is comprised of four algorithms: the terrain generation, boss room placement, player spawn point selection, and enemy population. The terrain generation algorithm takes advantage of tree traversal methods to create a connected graph of walkable tiles. The boss room placement algorithm randomly …

A Unified Approach To Regression Testing For Mobile Apps, Zeinab Saad Abdalla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mobile Applications have been widely used in recent years daily all over the world and are essential in our personal lives and at work. Because Mobile Applications update frequently, it is important that developers perform regression testing to ensure their quality. In addition, the Mobile Applications market has been growing rapidly, allowing anyone to write and publish an application without appropriate validation. A need for regression testing has arisen with the growth of different Mobile Apps and the added functionalities and complexities. In this dissertation, we adapted the FSMWeb [14] approach for selective regression testing to allow for selective regression …

A Symbolic Music Transformer For Real-Time Expressive Performance And Improvisation, Arnav Shirodkar

Senior Projects Fall 2023

With the widespread proliferation of AI technology, deep architectures — many of which are based on neural networks — have been incredibly successful in a variety of different research areas and applications. Within the relatively new domain of Music Information Retrieval (MIR), deep neural networks have also been successful for a variety of tasks, including tempo estimation, beat detection, genre classification, and more. Drawing inspiration from projects like George E. Lewis's Voyager and Al Biles's GenJam, two pioneering endeavors in human-computer interaction, this project attempts to tackle the problem of expressive music generation and seeks to create a Symbolic Music …

The Future Between Quantum Computing And Cybersecurity, Daniel Dorazio

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Quantum computing, a novel branch of technology based on quantum theory, processes information in ways beyond the capabilities of classical computers. Traditional computers use binary digits [bits], but quantum computers use quantum binary digits [qubits] that can exist in multiple states simultaneously. Since developing the first two-qubit quantum computer in 1998, the quantum computing field has experienced rapid growth.

Cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC, essential for internet security, rely on the difficulty of complex math problems that classical computers can’t solve. However, the advancement of quantum technology threatens these encryption systems. Algorithms, such as Shor’s, leverage the power …

Hybrid Life Cycles In Software Development, Eric Vincent Schoenborn

Culminating Experience Projects

This project applied software specification gathering, architecture, work planning, and development to a real-world development effort for a local business. This project began with a feasibility meeting with the owner of Zeal Aerial Fitness. After feasibility was assessed the intended users, needed functionality, and expected user restrictions were identified with the stakeholders. A hybrid software lifecycle was selected to allow a focus on base functionality up front followed by an iterative development of expectations of the stakeholders. I was able to create various specification diagrams that express the end projects goals to both developers and non-tech individuals using a standard …

Developing A Virtual Modular Synthesizer For Sound Waves And Midi, Margaret Jagger

Senior Independent Study Theses

Modular synthesis involves the alteration and modification of digital sound signals. Thus, this modular synthesizer allows a user the option of supplying their own MIDI-compatible controller to serve as an input source, or to use the built-in pure sound waves instead. Either input will be fed into the domain-specific language SuperCollider and altered, with specific sound modifications dependent on the input source used. Using theoretical knowledge of the physics behind the motion of sound waves, various modules and functionalities are created. Then, with SuperCollider, these modules are implemented into a synthesizer which accepts either pure sound waves or MIDI as …

Model-Based Testing Of Smart Home Systems Using Efsm, Cefsm, And Fsmapp, Afnan Mohammed Albahli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Smart Home Systems (SHS) are some of the most popular Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In 2021, there were 52.22 million smart homes in the United States and they are expected to grow to 77.1 million in 2025 [71]. According to MediaPost [74], 69 percent of American households have at least one smart home device. The number of smart home systems poses a challenge for software testers to find the right approach to test these systems. This dissertation employs Extended Finite State Machines (EFSMs) [6, 24, 105], Communicating Extended Finite State Machines (EFSMs) [68] and FSMApp [10] to generate reusable …

Proximity-Based Video Communication With Cocktailparty, Addison Fabry, William Heffernan, Andrew Shroyer

Senior Theses

CocktailParty is a video communication application designed to uniquely and efficiently solve the problems faced by traditional online video communication. The proposal for this start-up project was accepted in August 2020. CocktailParty enables users to join a video chat room overlayed on top of a virtual house, in which each user can move their own video feed around the house. Each room in each house layout hosts a different video call, allowing users to easily host large virtual gatherings that facilitate multiple conversations taking place simultaneously. This functionality makes important steps towards effective simulation of the real-life gathering experience.

Change Request Prediction And Effort Estimation In An Evolving Software System, Lamees Abdullah Alhazzaa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prediction of software defects has been the focus of many researchers in empirical software engineering and software maintenance because of its significance in providing quality estimates from the project management perspective for an evolving legacy system. Software Reliability Growth Models (SRGM) have been used to predict future defects in a software release. Modern software engineering databases contain Change Requests (CR), which include both defects and other maintenance requests. Our goal is to use defect prediction methods to help predict CRs in an evolving legacy system.

Limited research has been done in defect prediction using curve-fitting methods evolving software systems, with …

Analysis Of Github Pull Requests, Canon Ellis

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of the software repository site GitHub has created a rise in the Pull Based Development Models' use. An essential portion of pull-based development is the creation of Pull Requests. Pull Requests often have to be reviewed by an individual to be approved and accepted into the Master branch of a software repository. The reviewing process can often be time-consuming and introduce a relatively high level of lost development time. This paper examines thousands of pull requests to understand the most valuable metadata of pull requests. We then introduce metrics in comparing the metadata of pull requests to understand …

Analyzing Performance, Energy Consumption, And Reliability Of Mobile Applications, Osama Barack

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Mobile applications have become a high priority for software developers. Researchers and practitioners are working toward improving and optimizing the energy efficiency and performance of mobile applications due to the capacity limitation of mobile device processors and batteries. In addition, mobile applications have become popular among end-users, developers have introduced a wide range of features that increase the complexity of application code.

To improve and enhance the maintainability, extensibility, and understandability of application code, refactoring techniques were introduced. However, implementing such techniques to mobile applications affects energy efficiency and performance. To evaluate and categorize software implementation and optimization efficiency, several …

The Prom Problem: Fair And Privacy-Enhanced Matchmaking With Identity Linked Wishes, Dwight Horne

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

In the Prom Problem (TPP), Alice wishes to attend a school dance with Bob and needs a risk-free, privacy preserving way to find out whether Bob shares that same wish. If not, no one should know that she inquired about it, not even Bob. TPP represents a special class of matchmaking challenges, augmenting the properties of privacy-enhanced matchmaking, further requiring fairness and support for identity linked wishes (ILW) – wishes involving specific identities that are only valid if all involved parties have those same wishes.

The Horne-Nair (HN) protocol was proposed as a solution to TPP along with a …

Computer Vision Gesture Recognition For Rock Paper Scissors, Nicholas Hunter

Senior Independent Study Theses

This project implements a human versus computer game of rock-paper-scissors using machine learning and computer vision. Player’s hand gestures are detected using single images with the YOLOv3 object detection system. This provides a generalized detection method which can recognize player moves without the need for a special background or lighting setup. Additionally, past moves are examined in context to predict the most probable next move of the system’s opponent. In this way, the system achieves higher win rates against human opponents than by using a purely random strategy.

Managing Inventory: A Study Of Databases And Database Management Systems, Jemal M. Jemal

Senior Independent Study Theses

Databases play an important role in the storage and manipulation of data. Databases and database management systems allow for fast and efficient data querying that has recently become increasingly important in most companies and organizations. This paper introduces a few of the different types of database management systems that are in widespread use today. It introduces some important terminology related to databases and database management systems. This paper also briefly discusses web user interfaces, highlighting important user interface design principles. Finally, an inventory management system is implemented for a local stationery store and is integrated with a web application to …

Certification-Driven Testing Of Safety-Critical Systems, Aiman S. Gannous

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Safety-critical systems are those systems that when they fail they could cause loss of life or significant physical damages. Since software now is an essential component of these types of systems, failures caused by software faults could come from flaws in the software development life-cycle. As a result, challenges unfold in two directions. First, in verifying that the software will not put the system in an unsafe state, and identifying external failures and mitigate them properly. Second, in providing sufficient evidence for an efficient safety certification process. In this study, we propose an approach for testing safety-critical systems called Model-Combinatorial …

Renewable Energy Integration In Distribution System With Artificial Intelligence, Yi Gu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the increasing attention of renewable energy development in distribution power system, artificial intelligence (AI) can play an indispensiable role. In this thesis, a series of artificial intelligence based methods are studied and implemented to further enhance the performance of power system operation and control.

Due to the large volume of heterogeneous data provided by both the customer and the grid side, a big data visualization platform is built to feature out the hidden useful knowledge for smart grid (SG) operation, control and situation awareness. An open source cluster calculation framework with Apache Spark is used to discover big data …

Automating Software Changes Via Recommendation Systems, Xiaoyu Liu

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

As the complexity of software systems is growing tremendously, it came with increasingly sophisticated data provided during development. The systematic and large-scale accumulation of software engineering data opened up new opportunities that infer information appropriately can be helpful to software development in a given context. This type of intelligent software development tools came to be known as recommendation systems.

Recommendation Systems in Software Change (RSSCs) share commonalities with conventional recommendation systems: mainly in their usage model, the usual reliance on data mining, and in the predictive nature of their functionality. So a major challenge for designing RSSCs is to automatically …

Take Note: An Investigation Of The Impact Of Human Computer Interaction On The Line Note Taking Process In Theatre, Rene Borr

Computer Science

Most technology used in the theatre was not originally designed for use in a theatrical setting. A majority of technology that we see on the state has been adapted from another field -- be it music, lighting, or construction -- to fit the production's specifics needs. The very nature of the theatre is that every performance is unique, which established one of the main challenges when creating technology to be used in the theatrical setting. This paper discusses the design, creation, and testing of a program to help stage managers take line notes during rehearsal for a theatrical production. We …

Evaluating Software Testing Techniques: A Systematic Mapping Study, Mitchell Mayeda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Software testing techniques are crucial for detecting faults in software and reducing the risk of using it. As such, it is important that we have a good understanding of how to evaluate these techniques for their efficiency, scalability, applicability, and effectiveness at finding faults. This thesis enhances our understanding of testing technique evaluations by providing an overview of the state of the art in research. To accomplish this we utilize a systematic mapping study; structuring the field and identifying research gaps and publication trends. We then present a small case study demonstrating how our mapping study can be used to …

Cloud Service Reliability And Usability Measurement, Abdullah Bokhary

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Cloud computing has become a major resource for fulfilling people's computational and storage needs. Investing in these services requires measuring and assuring its quality in general, and reliability and usability are primary concerns. However, using traditional reliability models can be challenging because of the environmental constraints and limited data availability due to the heterogeneous environment and diverse stakeholders. Also, the quality of cloud service Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) has a direct impact on the usability and reliability of the service.

We developed a framework to measure reliability with alternative available information that most cloud providers offer in three stages: 1) …

Understanding Natural Keyboard Typing Using Convolutional Neural Networks On Mobile Sensor Data, Travis Siems

Computer Science and Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Mobile phones and other devices with embedded sensors are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. Audio and motion sensor data may be able to detect information that we did not think possible. Some researchers have created models that can predict computer keyboard typing from a nearby mobile device; however, certain limitations to their experiment setup and methods compelled us to be skeptical of the models’ realistic prediction capability. We investigate the possibility of understanding natural keyboard typing from mobile phones by performing a well-designed data collection experiment that encourages natural typing and interactions. This data collection helps capture realistic vulnerabilities of the security …

Motivations, Team Dynamics, Development Practices And How They Impact The Success Of Open Source Software: A Study Of Projects Of Code For America Brigades, Le Chang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Open data movement has nurtured the growth of civic open source software (OSS) in the recent decade. This emerging phenomenon has demonstrated a way that a community can collectively utilize technology to solve its problems.

This study is based on software projects in brigades of Code for America, which is a network of organizations that group volunteers to create digital solutions to community problems. In this study, we analyze the software engineering practices of current civic open source software development, participants' motivations and perceptions of the projects, and provide insights on the antecedents of success of the application development.

A …

Algorithmic Music Generation For Pedagogy Of Sight Reading, Ryan Stephen Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Autodeus is the name of the program that has been developed and was designed to aid guitar students in the attainment and betterment of musical notation sight reading skills. Its primary goal is to provide a very flexible tool that has the ability to generate virtually endless types of sight reading exercises at many various skill levels.

A complimentary 2 year-long comprehensive guitar sight-reading course syllabus can be implemented via Autodeus as it is capable of generating all the necessary exercises. It is able to generate these exercises quickly and efficiently through the use of a back tracking algorithm that …

Logic -> Proof -> Rest, Maxwell Taylor

Senior Independent Study Theses

REST is a common architecture for networked applications. Applications that adhere to the REST constraints enjoy significant scaling advantages over other architectures. But REST is not a panacea for the task of building correct software. Algebraic models of computation, particularly CSP, prove useful to describe the composition of applications using REST. CSP enables us to describe and verify the behavior of RESTful systems. The descriptions of each component can be used independently to verify that a system behaves as expected. This thesis demonstrates and develops CSP methodology to verify the behavior of RESTful applications.

Grasping The Void: Immersion Tactics Using Gesture Controlled Physics Interaction Systems In Virtual Reality, Avery Rapson

Senior Independent Study Theses

This thesis uses the HTC Vive in Unity to compare two different types of object interaction systems in order to determine the effectiveness of physics based interaction systems in a virtual environment. The research problem that motivates this project is the fact that there is no standardized method for defining successful object interaction techniques in VR. There are numerous interaction techniques in VR that fall short of simulating realistic object interaction. This project explores a physics based interaction system and examines how effective it is by comparing it to a non-physics based system. A model house with various interactable objects …

Context-Sensitive Auto-Sanitization For Php, Jared M. Smith, Richard J. Connor, David P. Cunningham, Kyle G. Bashour, Walter T. Work

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Locating Potential Aspect Interference Using Clustering Analysis, Brian Todd Bennett

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Software design continues to evolve from the structured programming paradigm of the 1970s and 1980s and the object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm of the 1980s and 1990s. The functional decomposition design methodology used in these paradigms reduced the prominence of non-functional requirements, which resulted in scattered and tangled code to address non-functional elements. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) allowed the removal of crosscutting concerns scattered throughout class code into single modules known as aspects. Aspectization resulted in increased modularity in class code, but introduced new types of problems that did not exist in OOP. One such problem was aspect interference, in which aspects …

The Future Of Ios Development: Evaluating The Swift Programming Language, Garrett Wells

CMC Senior Theses

Swift is a new programming language developed by Apple for creating iOS and Mac OS X applications. Intended to eventually replace Objective-C as Apple’s language of choice, Swift needs to convince developers to switch over to the new language. Apple has promised that Swift will be faster than Objective-C, as well as offer more modern language features, be very safe, and be easy to learn and use. In this thesis I test these claims by creating an iOS application entirely in Swift as well as benchmarking two different algorithms. I find that while Swift is faster than Objective-C, it does …