ReseaRch & InnovatIon · smarter searching with Wikipedia 13 ... augmented by automatic search and...
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ReseaRch & InnovatIon
Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study Research Case Study
Introducing Our Research
Research Case Study Research Case Study
1Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
ReseaRch case studIes 10
WeKa takes off 10
Libraries go digital with Greenstone 11
FLaX weaves a knowledge basket for language learners 12
smarter searching with Wikipedia 13
te Reo boosted by computer-aided translation 14
cyber security software a global winner 15
network measurement goes global 16
Keeping the internet running smoothly 17
engineers turn to formal methods to model complex systems 18
Making software reliability a reality 19
does colour influence digital readability? 20
unlocking the secrets of the sun’s energy 21
Key to puzzle poses mathematical conundrum 22
statistics proves secret weapon in fight against invasive species 23
Want to KnoW MoRe? 24
FRoM the dean 2
IntRoducInG ouR ReseaRch 4
digital libraries 5
Machine learning 6
network performance and dynamics 6
Formal methods 7
human-computer interaction 7
Information systems and databases 8
computer graphic design 8
Mathematics 9
statistics 9
Contents
Research Case Study Research Case Study
2 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
From The Dean
Recognised nationally and
internationally for our expertise, the
Faculty of Computing & Mathematical
Sciences conducts leading research
in several branches of computer
science, mathematics and statistics.
We have developed a strong track record and reputation
for our innovative research both in New Zealand and
internationally, attracting research funding worth around
$23 million over the last ten years.
Among the outputs of this research has been international
award-winning digital library and data mining software, and
network monitoring hardware that’s helped put New Zealand
on the map in the international cyber security industry.
Our research expertise also covers areas such as human-
computer interaction, and mathematical modelling for better
software testing, increasing data storage and monitoring
solar activity. The Faculty also has a thriving research
student programme.
We currently work with a wide range of industry, business
and government organisations, and we welcome enquiries
from other potential partners and from prospective research
students. This booklet will give you more information about
what we do, and what we can do for you.
Professor Geoff Holmes
Dean
Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study Research Case Study
3Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study Research Case Study
4 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
Introducing Our Research
The Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences has
six research groups in computer science, and also
supports active research in computer graphic design,
mathematics and statistics.
It is home to the Centre for Open Software Innovation (COSI),
the University’s flagship research centre for computer science
theory and practice. Established in 2009, COSI draws together
a range of research groups within the Faculty with the aim
of inspiring and extending open development practice in
computer science.
The Faculty’s researchers collaborate with leading-edge
organisations across the world, including Google, NASA and
UNESCO, and their research is behind some of New Zealand’s
biggest high-tech success stories.
The cyber security hardware sold worldwide by New Zealand
multi-million dollar company Endace was originally developed
at Waikato, while the Greenstone open source digital library
system has won international awards and is used in more
than 60 countries around the world. Another global success is
our WEKA data mining software, which now has more than a
million and a half users worldwide.
Other research teams are focussing on developing theories to
underpin the creation of a future generation of tools like these.
The Faculty has gained international recognition for work in the
field of sun spot activity (which can affect electrical systems
on Earth), combinatorial designs which will allow better data
storage and encryption, and complex mathematical models
that can be formally proven in order to test software even
before it has been written.
The Faculty’s research is also contributing in the social, cultural
and educational spheres. Greenstone researchers are exploring
ways to harness the power of digital libraries to help language
learners and open up access to valuable archive material. Other
groups are working on better human-computer interaction for
a variety of users, ranging from tourists to children learning to
read, while yet others are using statistical analysis of population
genetics to map migration patterns.
The Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
has an impressive track record in research ranging
from digital libraries to sun spot activity.
Research Case Study Research Case Study
5Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
The Digital Libraries Group develops software systems that
automatically impose structure on information, no matter
how anarchic or distributed its storage, and give information
consumers effective tools to find text, images and sounds. Its
flagship creation is Greenstone (www.greenstone.org), an
open source digital library system with users ranging from the
United Nations to the BBC. The group is also building digital
infrastructures to exploit huge informal knowledge structures
(such as Wikipedia), and vast lexical databases that reflect how
language is used in practice.
Current researCh:
» Techniques for creating, managing and maintaining
collections; processing multimedia content, and extracting
metadata from legacy documents.
» FLAX allows language teachers to provide students with
a structured exposure to language based on material they
collect and databases of phrases culled from the web.
» Wikipedia Miner automatically enhances ordinary
documents with explanatory links to Wikipedia articles.
» Novel display mechanisms that emulate real books,
augmented by automatic search and browse facilities
(this document is available in virtual book format at
www.scms.waikato.ac.nz).
Digital libraries http://cosi.cms.waikato.ac.nz/projects
“As a geographically isolated but technologically advanced nation, New Zealand stands to gain markedly from effective deployment of information resources that are freely available on international computer networks.”
Professor Ian WItten
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Introducing Our Research
The WAND group is the University’s Computer Networks
research group. The group has a protocols and measurement
focus and is widely known for its public internet data sets
and measurement tools. Areas of interest include discovery
of the internet’s macroscopic topology, event detection,
fine grained and internet scale simulation, operating systems
for wireless sensor networks, cyber security and network
traffic visualisation.
Current researCh:
» Autonomous (self managing) networks including machine learning and statistically based performance and intrusion anomaly detection systems.
» Architectures for massive scale internet measurement (up to 100,000 measurement devices).
» Distributed operating systems for very small wireless devices.
network performance and dynamics www.wand.net.nz
“In researching the Internet’s behaviour and
performance, WAND has shown YouTube
how to deliver content faster and with less
impact on other users. We gave millions of
users a few seconds each and that adds up to
whole lifetimes saved.”
Professor tony McGreGor
The Machine Learning Group develops programs to
automatically extract useful information from data. The aim
is to identify patterns that can be used to automatically make
future predictions or to help people make decisions faster
and more accurately. The group has developed the WEKA
software ‘workbench’ which uses machine learning to derive
useful knowledge from databases that are too large to be
analysed by hand. WEKA has been used to analyse genetic data,
supermarket transactions, soil samples and natural language.
Current researCh:
» MOA (Massive Online Analysis), a software tool which
enables users to analyse large, continuous data sources.
» Developing new machine learning algorithms in WEKA.
» Developing tools for generating and documenting
applications involving machine learning.
Machine learning www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml
“Every two days we create as much data
as we did from the dawn of civilization up
until 2003. It is our aim to develop software
that can turn this quantity of data into
useful information.”
Professor Geoff HolMes
Research Case Study Research Case Study
7Faculty of Computing & Mathematics Sciences
The HCI Group is researching how computing technology can
better fit user needs, and provides theories and tools to assist
developers to make useful and usable systems which offer
intuitive, appealing and appropriate interaction.
Current researCh:
» Interaction techniques and technologies for small
screen devices, including information retrieval, navigation
and entertainment.
» Information visualisation, interaction techniques and
technology for better managing energy use in the home.
human-computer interaction www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/hci
Just as other engineering disciplines use mathematical models
to test and improve their designs, so the Formal Methods Group
uses the machinery of mathematics to design software that is
reliable, to specification, ‘right first time’ and usable. The group
is developing languages and tools for modelling systems and
transforming them into dependable code. This is of particular
interest in critical applications such as aerospace and transport,
or where there are very large costs associated with mistakes
and delays, such as in bespoke industrial-scale applications.
Current researCh:
» Tools to support precise modelling of critical systems.
» Further development of languages and theory underlying
software development for critical systems.
Formal methods www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/Research/fm
“Software development should be as
high-quality and dependable as all other
engineering disciplines – currently it isn’t,
but we aim to make it so.”
Professor steve reeves
“As computer-based technology becomes
more and more pervasive in our everyday
activities, we need to maximise its
usefulness, minimise its intrusion, and ensure
that it enhances rather than overwhelms
our lives. Our research in human-computer
interaction is aimed at these goals.”
Professor Mark aPPerley
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Introducing Our Research
Researchers are involved in a diverse range of projects relating
to visual communication and interactivity. Applications include
typography for children’s on-screen reading, user interfaces for
large information stores, image selection in a design context,
pattern making and typography.
Computer graphic design www.cgd.waikato.ac.nz
“Visual Communication Design is purposeful
creativity that touches everything in our
visual world. Computer Graphic Design
research extends and exploits technology
in order to enhance accessibility and
effectively communicate messages that may
inform, persuade, enlighten and entertain.”
Ms Polly cantlon
The Information Systems and Databases Group specialises in
software infrastructure that enables the interaction of services
and applications to deliver personalised information specific
to locations and events. Context aware software services can
enhance user experiences of ‘real world’ offerings through
‘virtual’ augmented services.
Current researCh:
» A mobile tourist information system that provides
travellers with up-to-date information and
recommendations about what to do and where to go,
» An electronic parrot – a personalised extension of your
memory that will make it easier to remember people,
events, and data.
Information systems and databases http://isdb.cs.waikato.ac.nz/
“We aim to design effective mobile systems
that empower human users anytime,
anywhere – from natural disaster warning and
mobile health care support, to smart travel
navigation and augmented human memory.”
Dr annIka HInze
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9Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Mathematics www.math.waikato.ac.nz
Researchers in the Department of Mathematics have expertise
in number theory, general combinatorics, group theory, lattice
rules, astrophysics, magnetohydrodynamics, general relativity,
quantum mechanics and algebraic systems. Applications
include predicting solar activity, optimal stock market portfolio
selection, cryptographic systems and data storage.
statistics www.stats.waikato.ac.nz
The Department of Statistics offers expertise in Bayesian
statistics, mixture models, biometrics, robust statistics,
industrial statistics, statistical modelling, statistical ecology
and population genetics. Applications include the development
of new statistical tools to analyse large data sets, data sets
with missing values, multivariate data sets, and other complex
data sets and processes. The Department is also home to the
Waikato Centre for Applied Statistics, which offers research and
consultancy services.
“Apart from providing an endless source
of fascinating ideas and problems,
mathematics is an enabling science
having applications in industry, weather
forecasting, financial modelling,
cryptography, astrophysics and many
other areas. Both theoretical and applied
aspects of mathematics are investigated by
researchers at Waikato.”
Dr Ian HaWtHorn
“Statistics has many valuable applications.
I work with medical researchers to find
ways to predict whether a patient’s Type 2
diabetes will resolve following stomach
stapling. We use statistical techniques
to identify the attributes that are the
important predictors of success.”
Dr lyn Hunt
Research Case Study
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It may be named after a flightless bird native to New Zealand,
but the WEKA data mining software workbench created
at the Centre for Open Software Innovation (COSI) has
certainly taken off.
Developed by the Machine Learning Group in the mid-1990s,
the award-winning open-source software has been downloaded
by more than one and a half million users worldwide.
“It’s been hugely influential,” says Professor Geoff Holmes.
“It’s been used in novel applications in areas including signal
processing, computer games, graphics, human computer
interaction and computer networks.”
WEKA was developed to analyse large datasets, and commercial
spin-offs from the project have been used to analyse soil
samples and gas chromatography. One key commercial user is
Netherlands-based agriculture and horticulture laboratory BLGG
Agroxpertus, which has processed more than one million soil
and plant samples using specially-adapted software.
Professor Holmes, Associate Professor Bernhard Pfahringer
and post-doctoral fellow Dr Albert Bifet are now working on
software that will allow incremental learning.
“Incremental learning allows users to model data streams,
rather than data sets,” says Professor Holmes. “This gets round
the problem of storing very large amounts of data in memory,
and also allows real time monitoring for detecting and adapting
to changes in the data.”
The project is known as MOA (Massive Online Analysis) and
possible applications include sentiment analysis by monitoring,
for example, Twitter streams for customer feedback on
products. It could also be used to detect outbreaks of crop
diseases. “For example, you could have cameras in a kiwifruit
orchard and monitor the leaves for signs of the vine-killing
bacteria PSA.”
Supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the Royal
Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund.
www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka
WEKA was developed to analyse
large datasets, and commercial
spin-offs from the project have
been used to analyse soil samples
and gas chromatography.
WEKA takes off
11Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study
Created at the University of Waikato, Greenstone Digital Library
software is used by organisations in more than 60 countries
and available to speakers of 35 languages.
Greenstone Digital Library software created at the University
of Waikato has achieved truly global reach. The international
award-winning tool for creating and distributing digital
library collections is used in more than 60 countries and
available to speakers of 35 languages.
Developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO for
humanitarian purposes, this open-source software allows users
of different computer operating systems to create their own
libraries in electronic format for web publication or distribution
on CD or DVD.
Greenstone software has been used to collate information
for disaster relief operations in Latin America, for combating
AIDS in Africa, and for development project work in French
sub-Saharan Africa.
Organisations wanting to collate and preserve libraries of
social, cultural and historical significance are also turning
to Greenstone, such as Kabul University’s Greenstone-based
library of 37,000 documents preserving Afghani literature,
music and cultural heritage, and Chicago University Library’s
significant collection of early edition works by Chopin.
Hamilton-based spin-off company DL Consulting has
customised Greenstone to create Papers Past at the National
Library of New Zealand, a flagship collection of more than
one million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and
periodicals covering the period 1839-1945. The commercially-
licensed system, called Veridian, is also being used in Singapore
and the United States.
The Digital Library project team is led by Professor Ian Witten
and Associate Professor David Bainbridge at the Centre for
Open Software Innovation (COSI).
Supported by the NZ Lotteries Board,the Ministry of Science and
Innovation, the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund, the Ministry
of Education, UNESCO, Google Inc and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.
www.greenstone.org
http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast
www.dlconsulting.com
Libraries go digital with Greenstone
12 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
Research Case Study
The internet offers a virtually unlimited source of teaching
and learning resources, but harnessing those resources can be
daunting. An innovative education tool developed by the Digital
Libraries group at the University of Waikato allows language
teachers to create a variety of practice exercises from ‘real’
language texts and multimedia available through digital libraries.
Flexible Language Acquisition – or FLAX – is an easy-to-use
open-source software tool for language teachers and students.
Teachers design structured exercises for individual or group
work to match the students’ learning goals. Existing digital
library collections can be used as the source of language
material, or teachers can easily build their own.
FLAX is supported by the University’s Greenstone Digital Library
Software, an award-winning digital library system used across
the world. It has been developed in conjunction with University
of Waikato language teaching experts and extensively trialled
in New Zealand, Japan and Timor Leste.
Project leader Professor Ian Witten says FLAX has been
designed to work on Linux, Windows and Mac. “Wherever you
are in the world, whatever kind of computer you use, as long
as you have access to a web browser you can install FLAX
and use it locally – even if you’re not on the internet.”
The research team is currently working on ways to extract
phrases and collocations from a corpus supplied by Google
with the aim of helping students improve vocabulary
acquisition and writing skills.
Supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund
and the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
http://flax.nzdl.org
www.greenstone.org
The internet offers a virtually unlimited
source of teaching and learning resources.
FLAX helps teachers to harness those resources.
FLAX weaves a knowledge basket for language learners
13Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study
Looking for information on the web can be like looking for a
needle in a haystack – particularly if you don’t know exactly
what you are looking for. That might be a hotel in a city
you don’t know, or a potential overseas distributor for your
products. Now imagine being able to funnel the resources
of the open encyclopedia Wikipedia into the search for the
information you need.
Wikipedia Miner does just that. The software tool, developed
by PhD student David Milne and Professor Ian Witten of the
University of Waikato’s Digital Libraries Group at the Centre
for Open Software Innovation (COSI), allows users to use
Wikipedia as a gigantic thesaurus, and also to compare terms
and concepts to measure how strongly they are related
to each other.
Wikipedia Miner can even ‘wikify’ text by automatically
detecting topics in the document and creating links to the
appropriate Wikipedia articles. The researchers have been
using existing Wikipedia articles to ‘train’ the program to
make the same decisions as humans regarding what’s
important in any document.
“Wikipedia is the largest and most visited encyclopaedia
in existence,” says Milne, “and it’s also densely structured.
There are literally hundreds of millions of links which allow
you to encounter information you might never have thought
of searching for. What we’re trying to do is bring the same
explanatory links to all documents on the web.”
The software is still at the prototype stage and is being trialled
in the University of Waikato Faculty of Education’s Science
Learning Hub website.
Supported by a Tertiary Education Commission Top Achiever
Doctoral Scholarship.
http://wikipedia-miner.sourceforge.net/index.htm
www.nzdl.org/wikification/about.html
Looking for information on the web can
be like looking for a needle in a haystack –
particularly if you don’t know
exactly what you are looking for.
Smarter searching with Wikipedia
Research Case Study
14 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
“Automatic translation is a key
way to increase the visibility
of minority languages.”
Dr Te Taka Keegan
The University of Waikato’s Dr Te Taka Keegan is on a mission to
revitalise Te Reo Māori – and to do it, he’s harnessing the
power of the internet.
Dr Keegan has worked with Google to research how computer
aided translation tools can be used to revive minority languages
such as Māori, and he’s used the Google Translator Toolkit to
upload Māori translations of English texts for anyone to access.
“With this tool, we can actually uplift our language,” says
Dr Keegan. “For us, it is about saving our language from
extinction. We are trying to help our culture survive.”
At the same time, Dr Keegan’s work is helping to develop the
Translator Toolkit to increase the number of languages that
Google can translate automatically. Thanks to his efforts,
Te Reo Māori is now one of those languages.
“Automatic translation is a key way to increase the visibility
of minority languages,” says Dr Keegan. “Because computer-
aided translation can improve translation speed and quality,
translators become more productive. These human translations
in turn feed into improving the automatic translation
algorithms, creating a virtuous circle.”
Dr Keegan has also been involved in a project to put online an
historical collection of Māori language newspapers using the
Greenstone Digital Library software developed at Waikato.
Supported by the Google Visiting Faculty Program.
Te Reo boosted by computer-aided translation
15Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study
Cyber security is big business these days, and one of
the University of Waikato’s top commercialisation
success stories is a global leader in the field.
Cyber security is big business these days, and one of the
University of Waikato’s top commercialisation success stories
is a global leader in the field.
Endace provides high-performance network security, traffic
analysis, latency measurement and application acceleration
solutions that capture, inspect and report on every single
data packet.
Since its launch in 2001, the company has built up an elite
worldwide client base of blue chip corporations, government
agencies and telecommunications providers that rely on their
data networks to do business. It was the first New Zealand
company to list on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of
the London Stock Exchange in 2005, and features in the TIN100
list of leading technology businesses.
Endace’s core technology for ‘listening in’ to computer
networks was initially developed by a Waikato research team
led by Professor Ian Graham in the Department of Computer
Science between 1995 and 2001. Waikato PhD graduates
continue to make up a sizeable proportion of the company’s
Hamilton-based crack R&D team.
Endace has celebrated its tenth anniversary having secured nearly
$11 million in government development funding from Technology
NZ and through a three-year Technology Development Grant,
a new government initiative to increase business investment in
R&D in the high-value manufacturing sector.
The funding will enable Endace to further develop its ultra-high
performance packet capture and analysis systems, designed to
give its customers the ‘power to see all’.
www.endace.com
Cyber security software a global winner
16 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
Research Case Study
Global collaboration
is at the heart of the
WAND Network
Research Group.
Collaborative work is at the heart of the WAND Network
Research Group at the University of Waikato.
WAND works closely with a range of international partners,
including the network measurement group CAIDA (Cooperative
Association for Internet Data Analysis), based at the San Diego
Supercomputer Centre at the University of California San Diego.
Work with CAIDA has led to the development of a series of
DAG network measurement cards, the original technology
behind WAND’s highly successful commercial spin-off Endace.
WAND also hosts one of the few active measurement systems
outside of the US mainland on CAIDA’s behalf, and has
significantly developed the system for use in New Zealand.
Another major collaboration is with the Amsterdam-based RIPE
Network Coordination Centre. Professor Tony McGregor and
Dr Richard Nelson are working with researchers there on the
Test Traffic Measurements project which delivers data on
internet traffic flow on a daily basis.
WAND hosts one of about 50 systems currently in the field,
and provides research access to commercial internet traffic
data through the Waikato Internet Traffic Storage archives.
Supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation.
http://wand.cs.waikato.ac.nz/wand/wits/index.html
Network measurement goes global
17Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study
They’ve been described as the telephone numbers of the
internet, but the original stock of more than four billion unique
Internet Protocol (IP) addresses has now run out.
They’ve been described as the telephone numbers of the
internet, but the original stock of more than four billion unique
Internet Protocol (IP) addresses has now run out.
This means network operators will need to transition users from
the old IPv4 system to the new IPv6 system, which has a much
larger address space.
However, the two systems are largely incompatible at the
packet level, and translation between them faces a number of
practical difficulties which has slowed the introduction of IPv6.
The University of Waikato’s WAND Network Research Group
has been investigating ways to ensure the transition process
runs smoothly, and Honours graduate Ben Stasiewicz has come
up with a set of ground-breaking tests to show that it can.
For his Honours project, Ben looked at the reliability of Path
MTU Discovery (PMTUD), an essential ingredient in running the
new IPv6 process.
“Some organisations are already making the transition to IPv6 but
there are many people in the industry who think PMTUD in IPv6 is
unreliable,” says Ben, who worked under the direction of WAND’s
Dr Matthew Luckie. “I wrote some software that implemented
the protocol and conducted tests to many IPv6-enabled servers
around the world to assess whether this is the case.”
It’s the first time testing like this has been done with IPv6, and
there has been considerable international interest within the
industry in Ben’s findings which show the process is no less
reliable than with IPv4.
Keeping the internet running smoothly
18 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
Research Case Study
Control systems engineers are finding formal methods in
computer science a fruitful field for collaborative work on better
ways to verify the correct behaviour of complex systems.
Control systems engineers are finding formal methods in
computer science a fruitful field for collaborative work on
better ways to verify the correct behaviour of complex systems.
One such collaboration is between Dr Robi Malik of the Formal
Methods Group at the University of Waikato and researchers at
Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden.
The Chalmers team has created the Supremica software,
designed for modelling control functions for large-scale
manufacturing, while at the Waikato end Dr Malik and research
students have developed a front-end toolkit for Supremica, called
WATERS (Waikato Analysis Tool for Events in Reactive Systems).
“WATERS allows us to model complex finite-state machine
models for safety-critical operations,” says Dr Malik.
“It creates a graphical model of the software in action,
and allows push-button verification of the model.”
Supremica and WATERS are available to software developers
through the University of Waikato’s Centre for Open Software
Innovation, and the tools have been used in Sweden for
modelling manufacturing systems for Volvo and General Motors.
Engineers turn to formal methods to model complex systems
www.supremica.org
http://cosi.cms.waikato.ac.nz/projects/data/waters-the-waikato-analysis-tool-for-events-in-reactive-systems
19Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study
When complex
systems fail,
the impact can be
catastrophic.
When complex systems fail, the impact can be catastrophic.
Whether it’s a global airline booking system or a missile control
system, we have all come to expect reliable software. But in
fact very little of the software we currently use comes with
a fail-safe guarantee.
Researchers in the Formal Methods Group at the University of
Waikato are working on ways to make that guarantee a reality.
They work at the abstract end of computer science, creating
complex mathematical models that can be formally proven in
order to test software even before it has been written.
One project is focusing on new ways to test both the
underlying software and the user interface (UI), which are
traditionally treated as separate entities.
Dr Judy Bowen and Professor Steve Reeves have developed
Presentation Interaction Models (PIMs) which are particularly
useful for analysing web-based software where the UI drives
the content. The researchers have built an editing tool, PIMed,
which can be used to ‘reverse engineer’ a piece of software and
generate appropriate tests.
The tool has been trialled on telecoms software for registering
subscribers’ SIM cards. Using PIMed, the researchers identified
previously unknown errors, leading to an improved design.
The next step is to trial the tool on a larger software system.
Another project has the ambitious goal of developing a high-
level description, or metatheory, much easier.
“Computer hardware technology has raced ahead of software
technology,” says Dr David Streader. “The most commonly used
programming languages are state-based which means they
are good at handling complex data but they are not so good
for concurrent processes or for devices that respond to events,
such as mobile phones.”
Together with Professor Steve Reeves, Dr Streader is looking
at ways to synthesise and translate between the two systems,
and provide a robust yet flexible theoretical platform for new
programming languages which are able to handle and verify
both data and event-driven systems.
Supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and a
Tertiary Education Commission BuildIT Fellowship.
Making software reliability a reality
20 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
Research Case Study
In today’s digital world,
a screen-based learning
environment is becoming
increasingly common.
In today’s digital world, a screen-based learning environment
is becoming increasingly common, and for children learning
to read, there’s a whole wealth of material online that goes
beyond the traditional Janet and John readers.
But what works best for these learners in an on-screen
environment? Computer graphic design experts at the University
of Waikato are involved in a research project to find out more
about the factors that help or hinder on-screen reading.
Nicholas Vanderschantz and Claire Timpany are collaborating
with Dr David Whitehead and Wendy Carss from the
Faculty of Education to look at how text and background
colour can influence errors and self-corrections in children’s
on-screen reading.
“Initial experiments we’ve done with young readers shows that
colour combinations in children’s on-screen reading material
can affect their ability to read text,” says Mr Vanderschantz.
“We’re now collecting more data, with a specific focus on
context – we want to find out what differences readers
encounter in processing and comprehending a list of words as
compared to text in sentences and paragraphs.”
Ultimately the researchers hope to come up with guidelines for
designers and educators to create appropriate online material
for learner readers.
Does colour influence digital readability?
21Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study
Understanding the causes of solar flares would not only give us
greater warning of their occurrence, but could also provide the
key to one of science’s holy grails – fusion energy.
On March 13, 1989 the entire Canadian province of Quebec
– home to six million people – suffered a power black-out for
eight hours in sub-zero temperatures after a solar flare caused
a vital capacitor on the power grid to fail. The outage sparked a
disastrous sequence of events costing tens of millions of dollars.
Solar flares are the biggest explosions in the solar system,
unleashing the equivalent of a billion megatons of TNT in
seconds and showering the earth with x-rays and gamma rays
that disrupt satellite-based telecommunication systems and
cause power surges in the world’s electrical grids.
Understanding the causes of solar flares would not only give us
greater warning of their occurrence, but could also provide the
key to one of science’s holy grails – fusion energy.
Mathematicians like Waikato’s Professor Ian Craig, Associate
Professor Sean Oughton and Dr Yuri Litvinenko are working
at the cutting edge of astrophysics. They’re developing
mathematical models to explain the dynamic nature of the
magnetic fields that rise to the surface of the sun, causing
sunspots that store and release energy – sometimes quietly,
and sometimes explosively in a solar flare.
Supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund and the
Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Unlocking the secrets of the sun’s energy
22 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
Research Case Study
A craze for sudoku has swept the
world in recent years, but the
number puzzle has a long history.
A craze for sudoku has swept the world in recent years, but
the number puzzle has a long history. It’s a form of Latin
Square, the name given to combinatorial designs used by
mathematicians as a principal tool in the design of efficient
statistical experiments.
Dr Nick Cavenagh is a world expert in the field of
combinatorics, and has a specialist interest in Latin Squares.
“They are used all the time by statisticians to minimise
experimental error, particularly when many different factors are
influencing the data,” he says.
“For example, it can be very expensive to conduct experiments
to see how a range of chemicals interact with each other, but
using combinatorial designs you can test lots of interactions at
once in the most efficient way.”
Dr Cavenagh is currently working on ways to compare the
security and storability of combinatorial designs of different
types, by analysing their defining sets – the set of numbers which
uniquely determine a specific design.
“Latin Squares are used in some cryptographic systems and
for data storage, so we are developing a new measure of what
I’ve called surety to indicate how secure a system is and how
efficiently it can be stored.”
It’s conjectured that Latin Squares have surety equal to one-
quarter -- that is, the design can be uniquely determined if you
know at least one-quarter of all the cells – but as yet no formal
proof is available.
“We expect to discover new relationships between designs
with the same surety, and explore the effects on surety of
small changes to different types of combinatorial designs,”
says Dr Cavenagh. “This is fundamental research, which will
help applied researchers to make more informed decisions.”
Key to puzzle poses mathematical conundrum
23Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
Research Case Study
Clever use of statistics is helping to keep
a small island off New Zealand’s
southernmost tip rat-free.
Clever use of statistics is helping to keep a small island off
New Zealand’s southernmost tip rat-free.
Pearl Island is the first island in the world where simultaneous
eradication of all three invasive rat species has been attempted,
but subsequent monitoring detected the presence of rats nine
months after the initial eradication.
The question for the ecologists was: were these rats survivors
from the original rat population or had they reinvaded from
nearby Stewart Island?
By analysing genetic material from captured rats, a team of
statisticians including Dr Steven Miller from the University of
Waikato found they were likely to be reinvaders, which suggested
that while the initial eradication had been successful, rats were
swimming to Pearl Island at a much greater rate than anticipated.
“Using DNA profiling is much easier than relying on physical
tagging to identify rats,” says Dr Miller. “But there’s lots of
uncertainty when you’re matching genetics of different
populations, and this is where statistics comes in handy.
“You’re weighing up probabilities to determine the best
management strategy. One of the most successful rat
eradication programmes has been in the Bay of Islands where
genetic analysis contributed to the decision to tackle rats
on all the islands at the same time.”
Statistics proves secret weapon in fight against invasive species
Research Case Study Research Case Study
24 University of Waikato | research capabil ities
The Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences works with
a broad range of industry, business and government organisations,
and we are always keen to establish new partnerships.
Want To Know More?
We are happy to come to you and talk in more detail about
your needs and opportunities, and how our work could
contribute. If you are interested in meeting please contact:
Shane Stuart
Research Developer
Email: [email protected]
Ph: +64 (0) 21 766 823
Graduate and postgraduate research enquiries should be directed to:
CoMputer sCIenCe & CoMputer GraphIC DesIGn
Professor Ian Witten
Associate Professor Eibe Frank
Email: [email protected]
Ph: +64 7 838 4021
MatheMatICs
Professor Ian Craig
Dr Tim Stokes
Email: [email protected]
Ph: +64 7 838 4713
statIstICs
Dr Lyn Hunt
Email: [email protected]
Ph: +64 7 838 4038
Or to find out more about any of our work check
out our website: www.scms.waikato.ac.nz
Research Case Study Research Case Study
I n s p I r a t I o n . E x p l o r a t I o n . I n n o va t I o n .
©the university of Waikato, august 2011.
The University of Waikato Private Bag 3105 hamilton 3240, new Zealand toll Free: 0800 WaIKato
email: [email protected] Website: www.waikato.ac.nz
Faculty of Computing & Mathematical Sciences Phone: +64 7 838 4322 Fax: +64 7 838 4155 toll Free: 0800 924 528
email: [email protected] Website: www.scms.waikato.ac.nz