The Toilet Paper

Weekly summaries of scientific papers without the boring sciencey bits. Ideal for bathroom (and other types of) breaks.

The effect of servant leadership on the effectiveness of Scrum teams

To what extent do Scrum masters make use of servant leadership and how does this affect teams?

A maze where whoever manages to find an exit receives a monetary reward.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy survey respondents

Researchers often use financial incentives to increase response rates for their surveys. How well do these work for online surveys?

A little girl hugs a tree, with a several branches that represent different branches of engineering.

Gender stereotypes are steering girls away from STEM

More female role models may help, but they’re merely a part of the solution.

A heart, sandwiched between two Dutch chocolate letters I and U, forming the phrase “I love u”

Is there a time and place for single-letter variable names?

We are often told that variable names should be meaningful and avoid abbreviations, yet some variables are simply named “k”. What gives?

A scene from the movie Zoolander, where Ben Stiller repeats the line “But why male models?”

A gentle introduction to ensemble learning

What is ensemble learning? Well, it’s kind of machine learning’s version of “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Forrest Gump on a bench, with a box of chocolates

You really shouldn’t spend so much time working

Money might buy you a bit of happiness, but working for larger amounts of money will not necessarily make you happier.

How to use the System Usability Scale (SUS) in 2021

An updated guide on how to measure the usability of a product with the System Usability Scale (SUS).

For decision making, speaking is silver – but so is silence

Some people talk too much in meetings, others too little. Good leaders can foster high-quality conversations by creating safe environments.

Ex-girlfriend website meme from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Ghost writing providers for essays and assignments are cheap and plentiful

Ghost writers aren’t particularly scary, but there are still very good reasons to fear them if you are an educator. Happy Halloween!

How (not) to use the variance inflation factor

The variance inflation factor (VIF) is often used to find and remove multi-collinearity in a regression model. Does that make sense?

A hand with some dice. One die has an “X” on it, which is commonly associated with the “Doubt” action in L.A. Noire

Casting doubt on the ability of tools to measure technical debt

Numbers produced by technical debt tools tell a tale, but it’s largely fictional.

A centurion sets an example by attacking the enemy like a fencer

A good centurion is worth their weight in a model

An agent-based model suggests that centurions in the Roman army had a pretty large impact on the outcome of battles.

A group of people tries to get a cat to attack a fly by using mirrors and other objects to redirect light from a laser pointer.

How many hands make light work in computer science student projects

Group assignments are common in computer science programmes, but it’s not clear how well they work from an educational perspective.

Two border agents examine a little girl’s backpack that has some Arabic text on it.

What do regular expression bugs look like?

This study gives us a better understanding of the practical problems faced by developers when using regular expressions.

Why and how do developers tweet about GitHub projects?

The open source community is very active on Twitter, so what happens on GitHub doesn’t stay on GitHub.

A virtual meeting with Dunder Mifflin employees. One of the employees is wearing their birthday suit.

You should be able to turn off your camera in virtual meetings

Online meetings are more tiring than face-to-face meetings, and it may be because video chats are more cognitively demanding.

Link from the Zelda series points at a pot that he’s about to break.

What happened to the Semantic Web?

2021 is not the year of the Linux desktop, nor is it the year of the Semantic Web. But as a field of research it is still alive and kicking.

Do Java developers write better Python? Studying off-language code quality on GitHub

What happens when you let Java and C++ developers write Python code?

“The March of Progress”, documenting the evolution from “No homo” to “Homo sapiens”

Does code structure affect comprehension? On using and naming intermediate variables

The answer is not “yes” or “no”, but somewhere in between. Who would’ve guessed?

What it would take to use mutation testing in industry – A study at Facebook

Mutation testing is useful, but not many developers use it. What steps can we take to increase adoption?

A weighted companion cube in Windows colours

Towards inclusive software engineering through A/B testing: A case-study at Windows

Data collected from users helps you make better product and design decisions – but only if you gather and interpret it correctly.

An old man tries to read his newspaper, but is struggling because of his poor eyesight.

Towards an improved methodology for automated readability prediction

Some texts are easier to read than others. There are many different formulas that supposedly quantify “readability”, but how useful are they?

A classical building dedicated to the poop emoji

Water, toilets and public health in the Roman era

I’ve been feeling like shit for a while now, so this seems like a good moment to feature an article about literal shit.

Response option configuration of online administered Likert scales

What should your Likert scales look like?