NEWCHANGE BOOKS: SNAKES AND LADDERS: WINDOW-CLEANER PROPOGANDA OF 1940'S

Remarkable research from our School reveals that the much-loved game of Snakes and Ladders was created by a humble window cleaner, Murk E. Payne Esq. in 1945. Mr Payne invented the game as a "last shot" means of overcoming the bad imagery of the ladder created by housewives in 1930's. As Professor Mihgeked explains,

Housewives disseminated the idea that walking under ladders would bring the under-ladder walker certain ill-fortune and woe - the economic impact of this was that fewer people wanted their windows cleaned - they just didn't want to increase the risk of walking under ladders, and this hit the window-cleaning business hard. Murk E. Payne Esquire, who had been bitten by a snake on a field trip to South Africa, did not find it difficult to identify what might be a more concrete and altogether worse risk - the mighty snake. And the game of snakes and ladders was his way of giving the ladder (and indeed, by extension, the window cleaner) a really positive counter-image. And it worked: following the publication of the game of Snakes and Ladders, window cleaners experienced a 2000% increase in demand for window cleaning.

This is but one insight into the fascinating research findings of Professor Mihgeked's exploration into the history, economics and sociology of Children's Games. His research findings are to be found in his best-selling book, Games we Play, and Why we Play them (Perky Press, 2008) . This is currently available in bookshops across the UK and is retailing at £20.00.

MOBILE PHONE COMPANIES SET TO USE SOCIAL GPS TO INCREASE PHONE USAGE

Leading researchers in the School of Experimental Science and Social Science (formerly the school of experimental social science) at Newchange alongside the School of Applied Life Technology and the Department of Social Pscychology have created a technology that makes you talk more. Described as a form of "social GPS", "hollistic lifestyle management" and as leading the way into the 3rd generation of knowledge management', the software device called Talkmore, tracks the conversational patterns of telephone subjects, 'tags' subjects of general and specific interest, and maps personal links between different phone users.

Harry Moreland, our scientific features editor at Newchange, tested the software across a two month period and said that the results were "stunning, even if the process initially felt somewhat intrusive".

"The software has revolutionalised my life and improved my social links and bonds - no doubt about it."

As he explains, 'I just made normal calls across two months, to colleagues, business contacts, friends and family. In the course of those calls, people might convey important dates, or tell me what is going on in their lives - for example, that their wife is 3 months pregnant, or whatever - or I might agree to do something, like grab a bottle of wine for a party tomorrow night - Talkmore picks all this up. It picks everything up that you and the person in phone conversation say. To Talkmore, all that information is important. Alongside an online 'life mapping' categorisation tool, where you can flesh out/add further information, create links between the different people you call (e.g. you can clarify who is related, where you met those people, dates of birth, etc), it is a tremendous technology that achieves amazing results.

It wasn't apparent to me until repeat calls how effective Talkmore was - but the second call I made to my cousin, Bertrand, demonstrated the power of this software. At the point of selecting his mobile number, Talkmore provided a vocal 'list' of relevant information, with suggestions as to what kinds of topics I might pursue:-

1. The last time you spoke to Bertrand was on 14th February 2008 at 1423 - the phone call lasted for 21 minutes and silence time on the telephone was approximately 14% (by comparison with a call on 17th April 2005, this is up from 11%). You spoke to Bertrand about his butterfly collection, and the car crash in which you had been involved. What has happened since mid-February?
2. You spoke to Bertrand's friend Peter last week - Peter is off to Hong Kong for 3 months. This may be something which you want to discuss.
3. Bertrand's mother/your aunt, has had her dog placed in quarrantine - this may be something you wish to laugh about.
4. Other possible subjects you may wish to discuss: the temperature in London today is 25C; you are unhappy in your current employment; your line manager is having an affair with a high profile politician; you are about to leave your wife; you have developed an interest in pre-raphaelite art; you have taken up golf - does Bertrand play golf? Bertrand's football team is Chelsea - Chelsea beat MU yesterday, 2-0 - did he watch the game? Your living room is infested with ants - can Bertrand suggest how to deal with ant infestation?

From a position where my phonecalls with Bertrand would indeed be less than fun-packed, with lots of awkward silences owing to not being able to think of subjects to talk about, my call this time lasted just short of an hour and we bonded much more. And Bertrand was indeed able to make good suggestions about how to deal with the ant infestation. Alongside this Talkmore makes occasional calls to me - which at first is a bit odd given that it is my voice speaking to me - for example, reminding me to buy that bottle of wine for the party tonight. The software has revolutionalised my life and improved my social links and bonds - no doubt about it."

Professors Scancht and Limely, the lead designers on the Talkmore project, commented that they are "incredibly excited" about the results. Professor Limely noted that the software would serve to remedy natural human deficits: "all of us, even those with the best memories, at some time forget things - things that really matter to people - forgetting to ask X how their examination went last week, or enquire after the health of Y - Talkmore means that you're memory will never let you down! Moreover, for those who lack social skills, Talkmore is an important life tool - talking is critical part of creating social bonds, and this social GPS, quite simply helps you to talk. "

The research team are currently exploring with relevant industry concerns how best to licence the software. As Professor Scancht noted, some caution is needed here because the technology opens up the danger of abuse: "Mobile phone companies stand to make a fortune on the basis of Talkmore - simply because this technology does encourage people to talk more. The results from our tests is that individual phone usage increases - and massively - though there is a choice about whether to follow up the conversational suggestions Talkmore provides, most feel obliged to follow up each one."

The research team, who literally stumbled upon this problem domain during a research away day when questioning their disciplinary boundaries, hope that the software will be licenced and available to the public by the end of 2009. Further details about the Talkmore project will be posted on this website in the future.

Please note that in light of this research and arguments over disciplinary boundaries, the School of Experimental Social Science will be renamed the School of Experimental Science and Social Science.

BREAKING RESEARCH: THE NEW CRISIS IN BRITAIN: POLITICIAN POVERTY

According to leading researchers at the School of Experimental Social Science (in conjunction with the School of Experimental Economics), a fresh economic crisis is hitting New Britain today: hundreds of our Members of Parliament are financially struggling to make ends meet. This new and worrying phenomenon, known as "politician poverty", Professor Pistaldatheim maintains should serve to cast a very different light on the debate over politician's expenses:

"While politicians are being castigated for "abusing" their expense accounts, our research sheds a very different light on this: politicians are "reliant" upon their expense accounts to survive. They are, thanks to expenses, just about managing to keep their heads above the politician poverty line - but only just."

The research team discovered that politicians are frequently found buying 'sale' and 'discounted' items at everyday UK stores such as Harvey Nichols, Fortnum & Mason, Liberty, Koh Samui, Prada and Timothy Everest in order to get their hands on the absolute basics needed to survive in society. "Without their expense accounts", Professor Pistaladatheim commented, "MPs would struggle to gain access to what we, normal people, can take for granted - such as food, clothing and simple amenities such as television sets and video recorders. We have shunned MPs for long enough - have a heart. We cannot expect them to live off nothing."

"...many MPs are having to rely upon handouts from the State"

Research from the School of Experimental Economics also backs up the observations of Professor Pistaladatheim; as Professors Mehnifonatin and Sheksfofwee discovered, the notion that MPs are living lavish lifestyles is blown apart when analysing the real spending habits of MPs. Typifying the changes in spending behaviour as "a critical and sudden luxury to necessity shift", the Professors revealed that, "Many MPs are having to forego the luxuries in life, such as first-rate champagne, caviar, and three to four cars per household, for second-rate champagne and caviar, and few MPs have as many as four cars per household these days. Indeed many MPs are having to rely upon handouts from the State, in the form of John Lewis accounts, to get their hands on the very basics like television sets. It is so worrisome."

The phenomenon of politician poverty, these Professors suggest, is reaching crisis point - while the Government has stated its commitment to eliminating child poverty, the findings of this research team suggest that additional resources also need to be made available to target politician poverty: "for years we have assumed that politicians lead a rather nice and comfortable life, but our research reveals that they are living on the edge. We are finding that MPs are now typically shopping in ordinary stores that ordinary citizens shop, and that is a really concerning trend which needs to be reversed, urgently."

The Future of the RAE: Alternative Assessment Techniques Proposed

Following a series of seminars on the difficulties of determining what method of evaluating "quality" of research would be appropriate for the next Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), leading researchers at the University of Newchange believe that they have found the answer to the dilemma. Or, rather, three answers: for as Professor Grewsoum notes, 'in the School of Experimental Social Science we have proposed not just one solution, but two - while economists, doing what they so often do - things with numbers and algorithms, have proposed a third, albeit, ill-conceived solution, to directly rival ours'.

Professor Grewsoum and two PhD students have developed and successfully trialled two alternative assessment techniques across the entire staff body of the University of Newchange. The first system called Self-Assessment Practice (SAP) is based on self-assessment - whereby an academic is entitled to take a view of their own research and its quality, rating all of their submittable individual scholarly work on a scale of 1-10 (i.e. 1 = this piece of work is very poor, is probably not worth reading and has virtually no impact; 10 = my work is the product of genius, should constitute compulsory reading and the majority of my academic friends working within the field have cited it, or are likely to do so). The second system is called the Buttered-Side Down System (BSDS) where all submissions for a particular field are placed into a large canon and fired into the air; those articles which land, apparently statistically against the odds (as leading researchers in the field of paper dynamics in the Department of Applied Mathematics maintain), ink-side up (i.e. with the author's name and the title of the article face up - hence, "butter-side" up/down) would constitute those evaluated as offering high quality of research output. All others would be adjudged as having nothing to offer in terms of quality.

These individual techniques, Professor Grewsoum maintains, could be used in conjunction with one another to ensure that there is some kind of check. However, Professor Grewsoum and his researchers are nevertheless aware of the possible criticisms that might be lodged against the possible implementation of these systems: 'True it is that these are pretty arbitrary systems, however, in our view, they are just as arbitrary as existing methods, and just as unfair as proposed systems, such as metrics'. The benefit, Professor Grewsoum contends, is that the systems they have come up with are 'far more straightforward, non-labour intensive and cheap'.

Economists at Newchange, however, are deeply critical of these 'solutions'. Professor Nimble said: 'these systems are arbitrary and unfair'. Instead, Nimble and his team have suggested an alternative, one which would greatly improve upon 'the proposed metrics system which has caused deep divides and grave doubts within the academy'. Professor Nimble and his team have produced a 172 page document entitled, 'RAE rethought: from metrics to symmetrics'. Within this document they propose the following algorithm by which to adjuge 'quality' in individual pieces of scholary work:



Values deployed within algorithm:

q = quality;
wc = word count;
paper = paper type (the work in question is afforded a relative weighting depending on whether it is a book, article, edited chapter or other kinds of work);
c = citations already received (if any);
r = readability (based on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and the Flesch Reading Ease score);
a = author name (if author has a double-barrelled name, the algorithm affords a higher weighting based on insights from psychology (Gerry-Fielding et al, 1932) that greater weight is afforded to the paper by the reader under such circumstances);
p = personability/friendliness of the author as adjuged by computer tracking methods which monitor 'the presence or absence of friendly-language'.

Casting aside criticisms as to the algorithm being 'ill-conceived', Professor Nimble regards the algorithm as offering an 'objective and neutral system of assessing quality'. Moreover, he suggests that this algorithm offers something which no other assessment tool is able to boast: reliable predictive powers. This algorithm, claims Professor Nimble, is the product of extensive empirical research, and 'quite simply, it allows us to predict - even the second a piece of work has been accepted for publication - and possibly even before that point - the likelihood of the piece being successful, cited, and even read by others within the field". He suggests that the algorithm offers the most reliable method of assessing the inherent quality of scholarly work.

References: B Gerry-Fielding, R Class-Grots, P Lewis-Hingley and S Lewis-Hingley, 'Ensuring That Scholarly Work is Taken Seriously: The Advantage of the Double-Barrel' (1932) 4 Scholarly Studies Today 1-2.