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Nonparametric Methods For Data In Infinite Dimensional Space., Anirvan Chakraborty Dr. Dec 2015

Nonparametric Methods For Data In Infinite Dimensional Space., Anirvan Chakraborty Dr.

Doctoral Theses

For univariate as well as finite dimensional multivariate data, there is an extensive literature on nonparametric statistical methods. One of the reasons for the popularity of nonparametric methods is that it is often difficult to justify the assumptions (e.g., Gaussian distribution of the data) made in the models used in parametric methods. Nonparametric procedures use more flexible models, which involve less assumptions. So, they are more robust against possible departures from the model assumptions, and are applicable to a wide variety of data. Nonparametric methods outperform their parametric competitors in many situations, where the assumptions required for the parametric methods …


Rank Based Procedures For Ordered Alternative Models, Yuanyuan Shao Dec 2015

Rank Based Procedures For Ordered Alternative Models, Yuanyuan Shao

Dissertations

The ordered alternatives in a one-way layout with k ordered treatment levels are appropriate for many applications, especially in psychology and medicine. There is extensive literature in this area, and many parametric and nonparametric approaches have been introduced. Abelson-Tukey (AT) test is a frequently used parametric method. Its coefficients provide an ideal way of combining means for the purpose of detecting a monotonic relationship between the independent and dependent variables. The AT method, though, is not robust. Furthermore, our initial empirical studies show that it is not more powerful than the Jonckheere-Terpstra (JT) and the Hettmansperger- Norton (HN) nonparametric tests …


Essays In Political Economy And Voting., Mihir Bhattacharya Dr. Oct 2015

Essays In Political Economy And Voting., Mihir Bhattacharya Dr.

Doctoral Theses

This thesis comprises three chapters on issues in political economy and voting. The first chapter considers a multilevel multidimensional aggregation problem in voting. The second chapter considers a model of party formation where citizens propose links to other candidates. The final chapter considers a model of electoral competition between regional and national parties.We provide a brief description of each chapter below. 1.1 Multilevel Multidimensional Consistent AggregatorsIn this chapter we study gerrymander-proof or consistent aggregation rules in different contexts. There are several papers that have studied the structure of consistent voting rules satisfying various versions of consistency. Virtually all these papers …


On The Analysis Of Some Recursive Equations In Probability., Arunangshu Biswas Dr. Sep 2015

On The Analysis Of Some Recursive Equations In Probability., Arunangshu Biswas Dr.

Doctoral Theses

This thesis deals with recursive systems used in theoretical and applied probability. Recursive systems are stochastic processes {Xn}n≥1 where the Xn depends on the earlier Xn−1 and also on some increment process which is uncorrelated with the process Xn. The simplest example of a recursive system is the Random Walk, whose properties have been extensively studied. Mathematically a recursive system takes the form Xn = f(Xn−1, n), is the increment/ innovation procedure and f(·, ·) is a function on the product space of xn and n. We first consider a recursive system called Self-Normalized sums (SNS) corresponding to a sequence …


Nonparametric Regression In Natural Exponential Families: A Simulation Study, Yijun Chen Aug 2015

Nonparametric Regression In Natural Exponential Families: A Simulation Study, Yijun Chen

All Theses

Nonparametric regression has been particularly well developed. Base on the asymptotic equivalence theory, there are some procedures that can turn more complicated nonparametric estimation problems into a standard nonparametric regression, especially in natural exponential families. This procedure is described in detail with a wavelet thresholding estimator for Gaussian nonparametric regression and simulation study shed light on the behavior of this method under different sample sizes and parameterizations of exponential distribution. The resulting estimators have a high degree of adaptivity in [2].


On Supervised And Unsupervised Methodologies For Mining Of Text Data., Tanmay Basu Dr. Jul 2015

On Supervised And Unsupervised Methodologies For Mining Of Text Data., Tanmay Basu Dr.

Doctoral Theses

The supervised and unsupervised methodologies of text mining using the plain text data of English language have been discussed. Some new supervised and unsupervised methodologies have been developed for effective mining of the text data after successfully overcoming some limitations of the existing techniques.The problems of unsupervised techniques of text mining, i.e., document clustering methods are addressed. A new similarity measure between documents has been designed to improve the accuracy of measuring the content similarity between documents. Further, a hierarchical document clustering technique is designed using this similarity measure. The main significance of the clustering algorithm is that the number …


Complete And Partial Ordering Approaches In The Context Of Poverty Ordering And On The Impacts Of Growth And Inequality On Poverty., Sandip Sarkar Dr. Jul 2015

Complete And Partial Ordering Approaches In The Context Of Poverty Ordering And On The Impacts Of Growth And Inequality On Poverty., Sandip Sarkar Dr.

Doctoral Theses

No abstract provided.


Essays On Incentive Compatibility On Restricted Domains., Anup Pramanik Dr. Jun 2015

Essays On Incentive Compatibility On Restricted Domains., Anup Pramanik Dr.

Doctoral Theses

This thesis comprises three chapters that investigate the structure of dominant strategy incentive compatible (strategy-proof) social choice functions on restricted domains. The first chapter deals with standard mechanism design problem in quasi-linear environments with multidimensional non-convex type spaces. It identifies a class of type spaces called ordinal type spaces and shows that the simple and familiar 2-cycle monotonicity condition is necessary and sufficient for implementation. This result covers the single-peaked domain. The second chapter deals with the standard social choice problem (no monetary transfers) but one where agents have indifference in their preference orderings generated via an exogenous partition of …


Statistical Consulting - Senior Project, Cary Hernandez Jun 2015

Statistical Consulting - Senior Project, Cary Hernandez

Statistics

No abstract provided.


Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Attitudes And Beliefs Toward Statistics: Developing An Initial Profile, Christina M. Zumbrun Jun 2015

Secondary Mathematics Teachers’ Attitudes And Beliefs Toward Statistics: Developing An Initial Profile, Christina M. Zumbrun

Dissertations

Over the last several decades, mathematics education researchers have given increased attention to students’ and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs toward mathematics and statistics, but no work has been done that examines practicing secondary mathematics teachers’ (SMTs’) attitudes and beliefs towards statistics in light of the GAISE framework and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM). This study begins to address this gap in the research by creating the Teacher Attitude and Beliefs toward Statistics Survey (TABSS), a synthesis of items taken from the Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics (Schau, 2003), the Statistics Course Attitude Scale and newly developed items …


Some Studies On Selected Stream Ciphers Analysis Fault Attack & Related Results., Subhadeep Banik Dr. May 2015

Some Studies On Selected Stream Ciphers Analysis Fault Attack & Related Results., Subhadeep Banik Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Stream Ciphers are important Symmetric Cryptological primitives, built for the purpose of providing secure message encryption. As no formal security proofs exist, our confidence in these algorithms is largely based on the fact that intense cryptanalysis has been carried out over several years without revealing any weakness. This thesis makes some independent contributions to the cryptanalysis of a selection of stream ciphers.In this thesis, we take a closer look at two stream ciphers viz. RC4+ designed by Maitra et al. at Indocrypt 2008 and GGHN designed by Gong et al. at CISC 2005. Both these ciphers were designed as viable …


Application Of Machine Learning To Mapping And Simulating Gene Regulatory Networks, Hien-Haw Liow May 2015

Application Of Machine Learning To Mapping And Simulating Gene Regulatory Networks, Hien-Haw Liow

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores, proposes, and examines methods of applying modernmachine learning and Bayesian statistics in the quantitative and qualitative modeling of gene regulatory networks using high-throughput gene expression data. A semi-parametric Bayesian model based on random forest is developed to infer quantitative aspects of gene regulation relations; a parametric model is developed to predict geneexpression levels solely from genotype information. Simulation of network behavior is shown to complement regression analysis greatly in capturing the dynamics of gene regulatory networks. Finally, as an application and extension of novel approaches in gene expression analysis, new methods of discovering topological structure of gene …


Roulette: More Than Just A Chance, David Abuhanna May 2015

Roulette: More Than Just A Chance, David Abuhanna

Honors College Theses

Data were generated using a physical roulette wheel to test whether an association exists between initial conditions (the pocket from which the ball is released) and output (the pocket where the ball lands). I have generated data to determine whether there exists statistical significance in distributions of adjoined pockets. Using the statistical software Excel for data tabulation and mapping and using R for statistical computations, I determined a possible method for cheating. I also established an association does in fact exist between initial conditions and output. The existence of this association diminishes roulette as a game of "pure" chance. The …


Scientific Awareness At Ursinus College, Frank G. Devone Apr 2015

Scientific Awareness At Ursinus College, Frank G. Devone

Mathematics Honors Papers

Ursinus College prides itself on creating well-rounded students, and recent initiatives, such as the Fellowships in the Ursinus Transition to the Undergraduate Research Experience Program and the Center for Science and the Common Good suggest that science is a vital part of the Ursinus liberal arts mission. A scientific awareness pilot survey was administered to a sample of Ursinus students drawn from the Class of 2014 and students residing at Ursinus during summer 2014. Experience and data collected from this pilot were used to create a final survey which was made available to all students at Ursinus College. The survey …


Mahalanobis Kernel-Based Support Vector Data Description For Detection Of Large Shifts In Mean Vector, Vu Nguyen Jan 2015

Mahalanobis Kernel-Based Support Vector Data Description For Detection Of Large Shifts In Mean Vector, Vu Nguyen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Statistical process control (SPC) applies the science of statistics to various process control in order to provide higher-quality products and better services. The K chart is one among the many important tools that SPC offers. Creation of the K chart is based on Support Vector Data Description (SVDD), a popular data classifier method inspired by Support Vector Machine (SVM). As any methods associated with SVM, SVDD benefits from a wide variety of choices of kernel, which determines the effectiveness of the whole model. Among the most popular choices is the Euclidean distance-based Gaussian kernel, which enables SVDD to obtain a …


Modeling User Transportation Patterns Using Mobile Devices, Erfan Davami Jan 2015

Modeling User Transportation Patterns Using Mobile Devices, Erfan Davami

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Participatory sensing frameworks use humans and their computing devices as a large mobile sensing network. Dramatic accessibility and affordability have turned mobile devices (smartphone and tablet computers) into the most popular computational machines in the world, exceeding laptops. By the end of 2013, more than 1.5 billion people on earth will have a smartphone. Increased coverage and higher speeds of cellular networks have given these devices the power to constantly stream large amounts of data. Most mobile devices are equipped with advanced sensors such as GPS, cameras, and microphones. This expansion of smartphone numbers and power has created a sensing …


Bayesian Semi- And Non-Parametric Analysis For Spatially Correlated Survival Data, Haiming Zhou Jan 2015

Bayesian Semi- And Non-Parametric Analysis For Spatially Correlated Survival Data, Haiming Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

Flexible incorporation of both geographical patterning and risk effects in cancer survival models is becoming increasingly important, due in part to the recent availability of large cancer registries. The analysis of spatial survival data is challenged by the presence of spatial dependence and censoring for survival times. Accurately modeling the risk factors and geographical pattern that explain the differences in survival is particularly of interest. Within this dissertation, the first chapter reviews commonlyused baseline priors, semiparametric and nonparametric Bayesian survival models and recent approaches for accommodating spatial dependence, both conditional and marginal. The last three chapters contribute three flexible survival …


The Champlain Sea/Lake Champlain Transition Recorded In The Northeast Arm Of Lake Champlain, Usa-Canada, Ashliegh Theresa Belrose Jan 2015

The Champlain Sea/Lake Champlain Transition Recorded In The Northeast Arm Of Lake Champlain, Usa-Canada, Ashliegh Theresa Belrose

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Sediment accumulated on a lakebed archives information about past climate and changes in the regional environment. Previous studies (Burgess, 2007; Koff, 2011; Palmer, 2012) in the Northeast Arm of Lake Champlain, specifically Missisquoi Bay and Saint Albans Bay, showed a period (~9,400 - 8,600 yBP) of elevated organic matter deposition in both bays, indicating a productive event that pre-dated any possible anthropogenic influence. However, the record was abruptly cut off and any documentation representing the span of time leading up to this event was not found. The elevated organic matter levels were explained as being the result of a warm, …


A Qualitative Assessment: Adult Perceptions Of Collaboration As Mitigation For Statistics Anxiety, Karl James Kinkead Jan 2015

A Qualitative Assessment: Adult Perceptions Of Collaboration As Mitigation For Statistics Anxiety, Karl James Kinkead

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Math anxiety, defined as feelings of apprehension and fear of courses involving mathematics, often interferes with student learning in a variety of college-level courses. A related phenomenon, statistics anxiety, affects the performance of many students in statistics courses. Researchers have found evidence that including collaborative problem solving as an instructional methodology is effective at reducing the negative effects of statistics anxiety. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore adult perceptions of collaborative problem solving as an instructional methodology focused on improving the learning environment in a business statistics course. Behaviorist, constructivist, and adult learning theories provided the …