FITSL : a language for directed exploration and analysis of sequence data

Abstract

This thesis describes a sequence-data processing toolkit for analysis of Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) log data, that unlike other tools allows directed exploration of sequence patterns. This system provides a powerful yet straightforward abstraction for sequence-data processing, and a set of high-level manipulation primitives which allow arbitrarily complex transformations of such data. Using this language, very sophisticated queries can be performed using only a few lines of code. Furthermore, queries can be constructed interactively, allowing for rapid development, refinement, and comparison of hypotheses. Importantly, this system is not limited to ITS logs, but is equally applicable to the manipulation of any form of (potentially multidimensional) sequence data.