Two years' experience with recording equipment

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND TRANSITION 1960–1961. Edited by Paul T. David. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1961; pp. x+353. $3.75.

THE GREAT DEBATES: BACKGROUND, PERSPECTIVE, EFFECTS. Edited by Sidney Kraus. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1962; pp. 439. $7.95.

REPORT OF THE COUNTY CHAIRMAN. By James A. Michener. New York: Random House, 1961; pp. 310. $3.95.

SIX CRISES. By Richard M. Nixon. New York: Doubleday, 1962; pp. xvi+459. $5.95.

THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 1960. By Theodore H. White. New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1961; pp. viii+393. $6.95.     

Governing software: networks,databases and algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education

This article examines the emergence of ‘digital governance’ in public education in England. Drawing on and combining concepts from software studies, policy and political studies, it identifies some specific approaches to digital governance facilitated by network-based communications and database-driven information processing software that are being discursively promoted in education by cross-sectoral intermediary organizations. Such intermediaries, including National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Demos, the Innovation Unit, the Education Foundation and the Nominet Trust, are increasingly seeking to participate in new digitally mediated forms of educational governance. Through their promotion of network-based pedagogies and database-driven analytics software, these organizations are seeking to delegate educational decision-making to socio-algorithmic forms of power that have the capacity to predict, govern and activate learners' capacities and subjectivities.     

Introducing novel approaches for examining the variability of individuals’ physical activity

Tudor-Locke and colleagues previously assessed steps/day for 1 year. The aim of this study was to use this data set to introduce a novel approach for the investigation of whether individual’s physical activity exhibits periodicity fluctuating round a mean and, if so, the degree of fluctuation and whether the mean changes over time. Twenty-three participants wore a pedometer for 365 days, recorded steps/day and whether the day was a workday. Fourier transform of each participant’s daily steps data showed the physical activity had a periodicity of 7 days in half of the participants, matching the periodicity of the workday pattern. Activity level remained stable in half of the participants, decreased in ten participants and increased in two. In conclusion, the 7-day periodicity of activity in half of the participants and correspondence with the workday pattern suggest a social or environmental influence. The novel analytical approach introduced herein allows the determination of the periodicity of activity, the degree of variability in activity that is tolerated during day-to-day life and whether the activity level is stable. Results from the use of these methodologies in larger data sets may enable a more focused approach to the design of interventions that aim to increase activity.