Abstract
In public transport, smart card-based ticketing system allows to redesign the UPT network, by providing customized transport services, or incentivize travelers to change specific patterns. However, in open systems, to develop personalized connections the journey destination must be known before the end of the travel. Thus, to obtain that knowledge, in this study three models (Top-K, NB, and J48) were applied using different groups of travelers of an urban public transport network located in a medium-sized European metropolitan area (Porto, Portugal). Typical travelers were selected from the segmentation of transportation card signatures, and groups were defined based on the traveler age or economic conditions. The results show that is possible to predict the journey’s destination based on the past with an accuracy rate that varies, on average, from 20% in the worst scenarios to 65% in the best. © 2019, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

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The present study puts forward a regression analytic model based on the random forest algorithm, developed to predict, at an early stage, the global academic performance of the undergraduates of a polytechnic higher education institution. The study targets the universe of an institution composed of 5 schools rather than following the usual procedure of delimiting the prediction to one single specific degree course. Hence, we intend to provide the institution with one single tool capable of including the heterogeneity of the universe of students as well as educational dynamics. A different approach to feature selection is proposed, which enables to completely exclude categories of predictive variables, making the model useful for scenarios in which not all categories of data considered are collected. The introduced model can be used at a central level by the decision-makers who are entitled to design actions to mitigate academic failure. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
Promotional tools such as cross-market discounts have been increasingly used as a means to increase customer satisfaction and sales. This paper aims to assess whether the implementation of a cross-market discount campaign by a retailing company encouraged customers to increase their purchases level. It contributes to the literature by using neural networks to detect novelties in a real context involving cross-market discounts. Besides the computation of point predictions, the methodology proposed involves the estimation of neural networks prediction intervals. Sales predictions are compared with the observed values in order to detect significant changes in customers' spending. The use of neural networks is validated through the comparison with the forecasting estimates of support vector regression, regression trees, and linear regression. The results reveal that the promotional campaign under analysis did not significantly impact the sales of the rewarded customers.