In recent time, agile methods have been devoted much attention, and the concept is widely used in the IT industry in particular. An increasing number of companies are interested in this way of working. The following report is the result of a study on the ability to create value for customers in business development through the use of agile methods. We ask what the advantages and limitations of agile methods are in the creation of customer value. Grounded Theory and an initial literature review was used to answer this question.

The aim of the study was to look at a particular work group of housing supporters, whomhave implemented two special working methods in their work. The methods have been implemented by two of the housing supporters that also have special education in the methodsSOC (Sense of Coherence) and solution focused brief therapy. The study is based on anethnographic observation and analysis of documents that are used in the implementation. To analyse the information that was given at the observation and in the document I´ve used a theory which illustrates the significance of developing professions so their knowledge become legitimate. I´ve also used a theory that illustrates the importance of implementation and how it´s done at its best.

This thesis takes on a broader perspective of the modern age phenomenon we call spam. One of the aims of this thesis is to present and to compare the variety of methods used in the day-to-day fight against spam, as far they have evolved today, but also to present and discuss some alternative methods for suggested future use. The properties of a common e-mail spam are analyzed to show how the components that make up the structure in an e-mail can be used to classify spam. Furthermore I explain the naïve Bayesian classification methods, the signature-based method, the commonly used rule-based method and the challenge and response method and discuss these. The widespread use of blacklists is also explained and a close new variant to blacklisting, Turntide is presented and discussed.

This study presents a survey of the capital budgeting methods used in investment decisions by selected Swedish firms. The study has a qualitative approach where the main goal is to increase the understanding of why firms use ?incorrect? capital budgeting methods like the payback method despite the well known fact that it is one of the most faulty methods, according to literature in business finance (Brealey. Myers). The study has specially researched the impact of company?s size, investments size, ownership structure, branch traditions and political risks influence on firms capital budgeting..

The purpose of this study is to investigate the reading methods that pedagogues, active in classes 1-3, use in the first stage of learning to read and how they consider their own choices of methods. In the theoretical background I sort out the basic differences between synthetic and analytic methods of acquiring the skills of reading. The analytic reading method means that the skills of reading starts with the complete text in order to later analyze the parts of the text. The synthetic method approach is based on a reading method where the parts are linked as a whole. The two methods are considered antipodes but can also be looked upon as complements in the current governing documents.

This essay talks about how teachers in schools are working with a particular focus on students with autistic syndrome. The aim is to investigate the methods used for these students, who develop their learning and achieve the goals of the school. The methods that were used in this study were two interviews in two different schools in central Sweden where teachers and professionals were interviewed. One part of the study was to compare both schools to see which methods they used and when they used them. My interest for autistic students started during my practice in a school.

The Squares Family is a game developed as a learning aid in mathematics. With its graphical representation of the decimal system, the four basic arithmetic operations and positive and negative numbers together with a learning agent as pedagogical approach, the game?s primary purpose is to motivate students in their learning of mathematics. Although the game is strictly based on mathematical rules it attempts to encourage students to play and work with math without experiencing it as mathematics as this is initially not obvious. The game being internationally tested on normal performing students, this project introduced the game to six Swedish students who experience low motivation for and/or difficulties in mathematics.

This major project in Building Engineering has its focus on inquiring into what methods has been used in the planning process of the residential buildingLjusbojen 1. This project has been conducted in cooperation with Kadesjös Ingenjörsbyrå AB, an engineering contractor firm which also acts as the property developer. Initially several different general methods for planning residential buildings have been presented. After the methods from the process of building Ljusbojen 1 has been analyzed compared to the general methods presented in part 1. This shows what the determining factors are during the planning process; factors such as cost, quality, time management, know-how and environmental issues.

Efficient numerical methods for option pricing is an active field of research. This project has the goal to examine possible ways to improve an established method of numerical pricing. The method is based on an adaptive finite difference method in price and uses the backwards differentiation formula of order 2, BDF2, in time. The project will focus on improvements to the time integration through implementation of discontinuous Galerkin methods, dG. Empirical convergence and accuracy results are obtained for equidistant dG-methods up to order 3 and performance is compared to BDF2.

Reading difficulties is the most common learning difficulty in the western world and it is common that people with reading disabilities also exhibit arithmetic difficulties. Different theories about the cause of the relationship exists, one theory describes the importance of good phonological ability in reading as well as in arithmetic, while another theory describes the importance of a reliable number system and that only a subgroup of students with reading disabilities also have difficulties with arithmetic. The purpose of this study is to investigate how students with reading difficulties (RD), without any known mathematical difficulties, perform on mathematical tasks relative to a control group. The study was theoretically grounded on the Triple code model (Dehaene, 1992), which is a model for numerical information processing that describes how various numerical and arithmetic tasks are processed through three distinct representation systems in the brain, a verbal and a visual representation system and a quantity system. Reading skills, phonological skills, arithmetic skills and number processing skills were examined in 61 students through a variety of tests.

This thesis compares four relevance feedback methods. The Rocchio and Ide dec-hi algorithms for the vector space model and the binary independence model and Okapi BM25 within the probabilistic framework. This is done in a custom-made Information Retrieval system utilizing a collection containing 131 896 LA-Times articles which is part of the TREC ad-hoc collection. The methods are compared on two grounds, using only the relevance information from the 20 highest ranked documents from an initial search and also by using all available relevance information. Although a significant effect of choice of method could be found on the first ground, post-hoc analysis could not determine any statistically significant differences between the methods where Rocchio, Ide dec-hi and Okapi BM25 performed equivalent.

This master's thesis aims to explore the field of evaluative bibliometrics. In short, this field of research uses bibliometrics - i.e. the application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other media of communication - as a research assessment tool. In recent years, evaluative bibliometrics has been an increasingly used method in research evaluation and is today used and implemented in many countries worldwide. Today, in Sweden, we can also see that evaluative bibliometrics is highly recognised and, in some cases, used in practice.

Shear Strength and Deformation Characteristics of Uppsala Clay with CRS and Standard OedometerTyra Morell Bonin & Magdalena MählerTo see how much a clay compact under different pressure one can use several different methods and in this project, two methods were used, the Standard Oedometer and a CRS apparatus. A Standard Oedometer is a full-time manual device and the CRS apparatus is a modern electric and automatic device. The aim of the project was to see similarities and differences between the two methods and examine which method that were most reliable. This has been done with repeated laboratory tests and afterward evaluations. With this information one can get a picture of how the clay will behave and how it will deform in nature.

Stage-discharge equations for lakes without disharge measurementsSimon AnderssonIn 2015 all lakes, rivers, coastal water and groundwater should be of good ecological statusaccording to the water framework directive from the European Union. In the process ofimproving the quality of Swedish water bodies, knowledge of where problems occur isneeded in order to utilize the resources optimally. The ability of lakes to store water is animportant factor since it controls the flow of water through the country. A stage-dischargeequation is a mathematical relation between discharge from a lake and its water level. Bybetter understanding of stage-discharge equations for lakes, their storage capacity can bedescribed better in hydrological models.This master thesis aims to evaluate methods for determining stage-discharge equations forlakes where a variable amount of field measurements is available.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers approach communication in their mathematics instruction. The communication involves concepts such as teachers' mathematical language, incorrect answers, and various interaction patterns. In line with this, the study also examines how these types of communication may affect students in the classroom. Furthermore, observations and interviews were conducted with five different teachers in Sweden using an observation scheme and an interview guide. The results reveal that four out of the five teachers use both child-directed and adult-directed language when addressing students at different levels of mathematical understanding.