Design A Lighting Point Calculator System For Residential Houses Using Microsoft Visual Basic

Lighting point calculation plays an important feature in developing a new residential house. This enables people inside the house will have enough of light to perform tasks efficiently. Currently, consulting electrical engineers use rules of thumb to forecast the quantity of lighting points, however these rules are inaccurate. It does not take into account the lux required based on Malaysian Standard MS1525. Furthermore, good lighting can save money and provide visual comfort to the occupants. However, numerous parameters such as room index, utilisation factor and illuminance used for each space or room inside the house must be considered when determining the quantity of lighting point for a residential property. Three types of residential houses are considered which are: single storey house, double storey house and condominium house. This paper presents the development of lighting point calculator system for residential houses using Microsoft Visual Basic and comparison of quantity of lighting point using manual calculation using Microsoft Excel and simulation calculation using Microsoft Visual Basic.

Resource allocation procedures for unknown sales response functions with additive disturbances

We develop a modified exploration–exploitation algorithm which allocates a fixed resource (e.g., a fixed budget) to several units with the objective to attain maximum sales. This algorithm does not require knowledge of the form and the parameters of sales response functions and is able to cope with additive random disturbances. Note that additive random disturbances, as a rule, are a component of sales response functions estimated by econometric methods. We compare the developed algorithm to three rules of thumb which in practice are often used to solve this allocation problem. The comparison is based on a Monte Carlo simulation for 384 experimental constellations, which are obtained from four function types, four procedures (including our algorithm), similar/varied elasticities, similar/varied saturations, high/low budgets, and three disturbance levels. A statistical analysis of the simulation results shows that across a multi-period planning horizon the algorithm performs better than the rules of thumb considered with respect to two sales-related criteria.

Wettability of Carbonate Reservoir Rocks: A Comparative Analysis

Various methods have been proposed for the evaluation of reservoir rock wettability. Among them, Amott–Harvey and USBM are the most commonly used approaches in industry. Some other methods, such as the Lak and modified Lak indices, the normalized water fractional flow curve, Craig’s triple rules of thumb, and the modified Craig’s second rule are based on relative permeability data. In this study, a set of capillary pressure curves and relative permeability experiments was conducted on 19 core plug samples from a carbonate reservoir to evaluate and compare different quantitative and qualitative wettability indicators. We found that the results of relative permeability-based approaches were consistent with those of Amott–Harvey and USBM methods. We also investigated the relationship between wettability indices and rock quality indicators RQI, FZI, and Winland R35. Results showed that as the rock quality indicators increased, the samples became more oil-wet.

Test-Wiseness and Multiple-Choice Accounting Questions: Implications for Instructors

This study examines “test-wiseness” rules-of-thumb accounting students may use when they cannot answer a multiple-choice question. The effectiveness of the rules is poorly understood, but they rely largely on preventable flaws in question design. After identifying eleven relevant rules, we had graduate research assistants employ the rules on unfamiliar material, to test whether the rules can be effective when used by capable students who have not studied the material. Three of the rules demonstrate positive results, and participants are able to recognize the more valuable ones. Additionally, we survey accounting majors at two universities to assess general familiarity and belief in the rules. We find that they have well-formed ideas of the relative usefulness, which are consistent between universities. The results provide some insights into the issues question writers should consider, so as to avoid vulnerability to test-wiseness or even turn the rules to their advantage when composing questions.

Blade Envelopes Part I: Concept and Methodology

Blades manufactured through flank and point milling will likely exhibit geometric variability. Gauging the aerodynamic repercussions of such variability, prior to manufacturing a component, is challenging enough, let alone trying to predict what the amplified impact of any in-service degradation will be. While rules of thumb that govern the tolerance band can be devised based on expected boundary layer characteristics at known regions and levels of degradation, it remains a challenge to translate these insights into quantitative bounds for manufacturing. In this work, we tackle this challenge by leveraging ideas from dimension reduction to construct low-dimensional representations of aerodynamic performance metrics. These low-dimensional models can identify a subspace which contains designs that are invariant in performance -- the inactive subspace. By sampling within this subspace, we design techniques for drafting manufacturing tolerances and for quantifying whether a scanned component should be used or scrapped. We introduce the blade envelope as a computational manufacturing guide for a blade. In this paper, the first of two parts, we discuss its underlying concept and detail its computational methodology, assuming one is interested only in the single objective of ensuring that the loss of all manufactured blades remains constant. To demonstrate the utility of our ideas we devise a series of computational experiments with the Von Karman Institute's LS89 turbine blade.

Minimizing the Cost of PHEV Usage with Price Sensitive Charging Strategies

Electric cars sales have been rising almost steadily over the past decade. Uncontrolled charging has recently emerged as the main detrimental factor to this otherwise environmentally friendly and paradigm shifting technology due to the incurred impact on the energy grid. In addition, people are usually hesitant in allowing their vehicles to be controlled by external units; therefore, controlled charging strategies that offer users the option to have some control over their vehicles seems to be a sensible choice moving towards a gasoline-free vehicles market. This work investigated two price-sensitive charging strategies that allowed users to control the charging of their vehicle in order to receive cost benefits. These strategies were of a parametric nature; thus, the analysis focused on providing useful rules of thumb to guide users in choosing the most suitable strategy and the relevant parameters according to their driving profiles. The results show that when driving less than 40 km/h on average and employing a price-sensitive charging strategy with the proposed optimized parameters, electric car users may obtain 30–40% of the running cost reduction.

Rules of Thumb and Attention Elasticities: Evidence from Under- and Overreaction to Taxes

This paper tests costly attention models of consumers’ misreaction to opaque taxes. We report an online shopping experiment that involves shrouded sales taxes that are exogenously varied within consumer over time. Some consumers systematically underreact to sales taxes while others systematically overreact, but higher stakes decrease both under- and overreaction. This is consistent with consumers using heterogeneous rules of thumb to compute the opaque tax when the stakes are low, but using costly mental effort at higher stakes. The results allow us to differentiate between various theories of limited attention. We also develop novel econometric techniques for quantifying individual differences.