Applied Mathematics Commons^™

Empirical Studies On Interest Rate Derivatives, Xudong Sun

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Interest rate models are the building blocks of financial market and the interest rate derivatives market is the largest derivatives market in the world. In this dissertation, we shall focus on numerical pricing of interest rate derivatives, estimating model parameters by Kalman filter, and studying various models empirically. We shall propose a front-fixing finite element method to price the American put option under the quadratic term structure framework and compare it with a trinomial tree method and common finite element method. Numerical test results show the superiority of our front-fixing finite element method in the aspects of computing the option …

Light Pollution Research Through Citizen Science, John Kanemoto

STAR Program Research Presentations

Light pollution (LP) can disrupt and/or degrade the health of all living things, as well as, their environments. The goal of my research at the NOAO was to check the accuracy of the citizen science LP reporting systems entitled: Globe at Night (GaN), Dark Sky Meter (DSM), and Loss of the Night (LoN). On the GaN webpage, the darkness of the night sky (DotNS) is reported by selecting a magnitude chart. Each magnitude chart has a different density/number of stars around a specific constellation. The greater number of stars implies a darker night sky. Within the DSM iPhone application, a …

Multi-Sensory Emotion Recognition With Speech And Facial Expression, Qingmei Yao

Dissertations

Emotion plays an important role in human beings’ daily lives. Understanding emotions and recognizing how to react to others’ feelings are fundamental to engaging in successful social interactions. Currently, emotion recognition is not only significant in human beings’ daily lives, but also a hot topic in academic research, as new techniques such as emotion recognition from speech context inspires us as to how emotions are related to the content we are uttering.

The demand and importance of emotion recognition have highly increased in many applications in recent years, such as video games, human computer interaction, cognitive computing, and affective computing. …

Numerical Simulations Of Traffic Flow Models, Puneet Lakhanpal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Traffic flow has been considered to be a continuum flow of a compressible liquid having a certain density profile and an associated velocity, depending upon density, position and time. Several one-equation and two-equation macroscopic continuum flow models have been developed which utilize the fluid dynamics continuity equation and help us find analytical solutions with simplified initial and boundary conditions. In this thesis, the one-equation Lighthill Witham and Richards (LWR) model combined with the Greenshield's model, is used for finding analytical and numerical solutions for four problems: Linear Advection, Red Traffic Light turning into Green, Stationary Shock and Shock Moving towards …

Experimental Evidence For Heterogeneous Expectations In A Simple New Keynesian Framework, Atticus David Holm Graven

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This paper is a two-dimensional analysis of agent behavior in a standard New Keynesian (NK) Macroeconomic model. On the dimension of pure mathematics, we analyze the parameters of the NK model and of possible prediction rules. On the other dimension we continue a practice of empirical study of heterogeneous expectations with an experiment. The experiment will ask participants to make predictions of future output and inflation. Their responses will create a data-set upon which analysis will be performed to illuminate and corroborate current theories of economic decision making. The literature has shown that most agents' forecasting rules can be modeled …

Adverse Impacts Of Furlough Programs On Employee Work Rate And Organizational Productivity, Adedeji B. Badiru

Faculty Publications

This article is primarily a research-provoking exposition against the management approach used in the 2013 government furlough program. It is intended to prompt potentially productive research investigations on the impact of personnel furloughs, particularly on defense acquisition programs. Defense acquisition programs are time-sensitive and systems oriented. What appears as a minor delay in one unit of an acquisition life cycle can lead to long-term encumbrances within the entire defense system, resulting in enormous cost escalation. Pertinent analytical techniques/methodologies are provided to illustrate potential pathways for further research studies of furloughs and how they adversely impact organizational productivity. The author’s intent …

Communicative Universal Convertibility Matter-Energy-Information, Florentin Smarandache, Stefan Vladutescu

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The research aims to reveal and prove the thesis of the neutral and convertibility relationship between constituent constructive elements of the universe: matter, energy and information. The approach perspective is a computationally-communicative-neutrosophic one. We configure a coherent and cohesive ideation line. Matter, energy and information are fundamental elements of the world. Among them, there is an inextricable multiple, elastic and evolutionary connection. The elements are defined by the connections between them. Our hypothesis is that the relationship between matter, energy and information is a neutral one. This relationship is not required by the evidence. At this level, it does not …

New Operations Over Interval Valued Intuitionistic Hesitant Fuzzy Set, Florentin Smarandache, Said Broumi

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

Hesitancy is the most common problem in decision making, for which hesitant fuzzy set can be considered as a useful tool allowing several possible degrees of membership of an element to a set. Recently, another suitable means were defined by Zhiming Zhang [1], called interval valued intuitionistic hesitant fuzzy sets, dealing with uncertainty and vagueness, and which is more powerful than the hesitant fuzzy sets. In this paper, four new operations are introduced on interval-valued intuitionistic hesitant fuzzy sets and several important properties are also studied.

Editor's Statement, Abby Stocker, Leah Patton, Brad Cox, Jacob Manning, Roberta Fultz, Jared Hedges, Stacie Lewis

Colloquy Undergraduate Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Four Named To Endowed Professorships, Kim Hill

News and Events (Discontinued Series)

No abstract provided.

Sloane’S Gap: Do Mathematical And Social Factors Explain The Distribution Of Numbers In The Oeis?, Nicolas J.-P. Gauvrit, Jean-Paul Delahaye, Hector Zenil

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) is a catalog of integer sequences. We are particularly interested in the number of occurrences of N(n) of an integer n in the database. This number N(n) marks the importance of n and it varies noticeably from one number to another, and from one number to the next in a series. “Importance” can be mathematically objective (2^10 is an example of an “important” number in this sense) or as the result of a shared mathematical culture (10^9 is more important than 9^10 because we use a decimal notation). The concept of algorithmic complexity …

Fuzzy Analysis Of School Dropouts And Their Life After, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, K. Amal, K. Kandasamy

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this book authors study and analyze the problem of school dropouts and their life after. The problems can by no means be analyzed by collecting the numerical data. For such data can only serve as information beyond that the data can be of no use, for the school dropouts suffer an environment change after becoming a school dropout. Thus the emotions of the school dropout; is technically involved. A school dropout can be a child labourer, a rag picker or a social miscreant or be in police custody or be in a rehabilitation home if he/she is a runaway. …

Functional Data Analysis To Guide A Conditional Likelihood Regression In A Case-Crossover Study Investigating Whether Social Characteristics Modify The Health Effects Of Air Pollution, Juana Maribel Herrera Hernandez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this study we are focused on exploring whether social characteristics modify the relationship between air pollution and hospitalizations due to asthma or chronic pulmonary obstructive disease (COPD) in El Paso, Tx. The case-crossover design with conditional regression analysis was used, here the controls and the case are the same subject at different

times and has the advantage of removing confounding by permanently confounding factors. Social characteristics are included in the models as interactions with the pollutants, variables included are age, sex, ethnicity and insurance status as indicator for the socio-economic status. The pollutant's lags were chosen using the historical …

Dynamic Processes In Network Goods: Modeling, Analysis And Applications, Arnut Paothong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The network externality function plays a very important role in the study of economic network industries. Moreover, the consumer group dynamic interactions coupled with network externality concept is going to play a dominant role in the network goods in the 21st century. The existing literature is stemmed on a choice of externality function with certain quantitative properties. The utility function coupled with the network externality function is used to investigate static properties of rational equilibrium. The aim of this work is to systematically initiate a development of quantitative effects of the concept of network externality and its influence on the …

On Numerical Solution For Optimal Allocation Of Investment Funds In Portfolio Selection Problem, Yahaya Abubakar

CBN Journal of Applied Statistics (JAS)

In this article, we present a procedure for obtaining an optimal solution to the Markowitz’s mean-variance portfolio selection problem based on the analytical solution developed in a previous research that lead to the emergence of an important model known as the Black Model. The procedure is well presented, illustrated and validated by a numerical example from real stocks dataset obtainable from a popular European stock market.

Should Voting Be Mandatory? Democratic Decision Making From The Economic Viewpoint, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Boakun Li

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Many decisions are made by voting. At first glance, the more people participate in the voting process, the more democratic -- and hence, better -- the decision. In this spirit, to encourage everyone's participation, several countries make voting mandatory. But does mandatory voting really make decisions better for the society? In this paper, we show that from the viewpoint of decision making theory, it is better to allow undecided voters not to participate in the voting process. We also show that the voting process would be even better -- for the society as a whole -- if we allow partial …

270: How To Win The Presidency With Just 17.56% Of The Popular Vote, Charles D. Wessell

Math Faculty Publications

With the U.S. presidential election fast approaching we will often be reminded that the candidate who receives the most votes is not necessarily elected president. Instead, the winning candidate must receive a majority of the 538 electoral votes awarded by the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Someone with a curious mathematical mind might then wonder: What is the small fraction of the popular vote a candidate can receive and still be elected president? [excerpt]

Quantitative Reasoning And Sustainability, Corrine H. Taylor

Numeracy

Quantitative Reasoning and Sustainability have much in common. Both are complex, nuanced concepts with rather long definitions that have evolved over time. Both subjects are “everybody’s business” on college campuses, and must be approached in courses across the curriculum, not merely in one course on QR or in one course on Sustainability. The growing, wider presence of both QR and Sustainability on college campuses is due to their applicability in individuals’ personal, professional, and public lives. Moreover, QR and Sustainability support and enhance each other in and out of the classroom. Sustainability is an important, authentic, relevant context for lessons …

A Normal Truncated Skewed-Laplace Model In Stochastic Frontier Analysis, Junyi Wang

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Stochastic frontier analysis is an exciting method of economic production modeling that is relevant to hospitals, stock markets, manufacturing factories, and services. In this paper, we create a new model using the normal distribution and truncated skew-Laplace distribution, namely the normal-truncated skew-Laplace model. This is a generalized model of the normal-exponential case. Furthermore, we compute the true technical efficiency and estimated technical efficiency of the normal-truncated skewed-Laplace model. Also, we compare the technical efficiencies of normal-truncated skewed-Laplace model and normal-exponential model.

Valuation Of Financial Derivatives Subject To Liquidity Risk, Yanan Jiang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Valuation of financial derivatives subject to liquidity risk remains an open problem in finance. This dissertation focuses on the valuation of European-style call option under limited market liquidity through the dynamic management of a portfolio of assets. We investigate liquidity from three perspectives: market breadth, depth, and immediacy. We present a general framework of valuation based on the optimal realization of a performance index relative to the set of all feasible portfolio trajectories. Numerical examples are then presented and analyzed that show option price increases as the market transitions from liquid to less liquid state. Furthermore, buying and selling activities, …

Estimation Of Performance Indices For The Planning Of Sustainable Transportation Systems, Pankaj Maheshwari, Alexander Paz, Pushkin Kachroo

Graduate Publications & Presentations

What is sustainable transportation system?

Fulfill the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations

Utilize resources without compromising their health and productivity Leads to development that improves quality of life

Assimilate economic, ecological, social, and bio-physical components of resource ecosystems

Minimize the use of renewable and non-renewable resources, provide affordability and equity between generations

Mathematical Analysis Of The Problems Faced By The People With Disabilities (Pwds), Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, A. Praveen Prakash

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The authors in this book have analyzed the socio-economic and psychological problems faced by People with Disabilities (PWDs) and their families. The study was made by collecting data using both fuzzy linguistic questionnaire / by interviews in case they are not literates from 2,15,811 lakhs people. This data was collected using the five Non Government Organizations (NGOs) from northern Tamil Nadu. Now any reader would be interested to know whether the Tamils (natives of Tamil Nadu) had ever spoken about people with disability. Even before 2000 years tamils had heroic poetry Purananuru (28th poem) about the war fare methods. In …

Dynamic Decision Making And Race Games, Shipra De

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Frequent criticism in dynamic decision making research pertains to the overly complex nature of the decision tasks used in experimentation. To address such concerns we study dynamic decision making with respect to the simple race game Hog, which has a computable optimal decision strategy. In the two-player game of Hog, individuals compete to be the first to reach a designated threshold of points. Players alternate rolling a desired quantity of dice. If the number one appears on any of the dice, the player receives no points for his turn; otherwise, the sum of the numbers appearing on the dice is …

A Nonnegative Analysis Of Politics, Tim Chartier, Charles D. Wessell

Math Faculty Publications

The article investigates how linear algebra can recover mathematical information from the electronic messages using the Enron Email Sets in Pennsylvania. It states that a term-by-email matrix has been created to cluster algorithm, which allows one to mine through data and discover meaning. Moreover, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) enables one to interpret the resulting factorization in terms of the original problem.

Currency Trading Using The Fractal Market Hypothesis, Jonathan Blackledge, Kieran Murphy

Articles

We report on a research and development programme in financial modelling and economic security undertaken in the Information and Communications Security Research Group (ICSRG, 2011) which has led to the launch of a new company - Currency Traders Ireland Limited - funded by Enterprise Ireland. Currency Traders Ireland Limited (CTI, 2011) has a fifty year exclusive license to develop a new set of indicators for analysing currency exchange rates (Forex trading). We consider the background to the approach taken and present examples of the results obtained to date.

Variables Affecting Crime Rate, Jaime Zeigler

Honors Program Theses

The Federal Bureau of Investigation releases data about crime statistics. They publish the raw data and provide factors that influence the crime rate. They provide the general public with a few variables that they deemed most influential, but do not provide the statistical analysis to support. After performing a statistical analysis, I support or disprove their claims. Another way to question the validity of regression is comparing the current regression to a previous regression performed two years ago by myself with the same variables from the same source. An additional aspect that this paper explores the history of factors affecting …

The Postsecret Phenomenon: A Contemporary Application Of Existential Psychotherapy, Dan Martin

Senior Honors Projects

In November 2004, as a whimsical break from his monotonous job, Frank Warren decided he would start a small art project in his community. This idea, which he entitled “PostSecret,” involved leaving blank post cards in various public locations that simply asked to “Share a Secret” and listed a few guidelines. Frank’s goal was to “create this non-judgmental, safe place where people could feel comfortable sharing parts of their lives that they've never told a soul.” What he expected to be a small result became a weekly blog, five published books, a traveling art gallery, and a lecture series given …

Software Internationalization: A Framework Validated Against Industry Requirements For Computer Science And Software Engineering Programs, John Huân Vũ

Master's Theses

View John Huân Vũ's thesis presentation at http://youtu.be/y3bzNmkTr-c.

In 2001, the ACM and IEEE Computing Curriculum stated that it was necessary to address "the need to develop implementation models that are international in scope and could be practiced in universities around the world." With increasing connectivity through the internet, the move towards a global economy and growing use of technology places software internationalization as a more important concern for developers. However, there has been a "clear shortage in terms of numbers of trained persons applying for entry-level positions" in this area. Eric Brechner, Director of Microsoft Development Training, suggested …

Communication Across Random Landings, Kerron Joseph, Jay Walbran

Undergraduate Research Conference

The idea to do this project began with a simple question: Suppose that people carrying communication radios parachute out of a plane, if each device has a certain range, what is the probability that once everyone lands they will be able to communicate. To study this problem I assumed that the spot where each individual lands is normally distributed.

We discuss the different ways the communication radios can work. In particular we examine the situation where all the radios have to be within a certain radius r to operate correctly and the situation where the radios work on a relay …

Characterizing And Detecting Unrevealed Elements Of Network Systems, James A. Leinart

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the problem of discovering and characterizing unknown elements in network systems. Klir (1985) provides a general definition of a system as “... a set of some things and a relation among the things" (p. 4). A system, where the `things', i.e. nodes, are related through links is a network system (Klir, 1985). The nodes can represent a range of entities such as machines or people (Pearl, 2001; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Likewise, links can represent abstract relationships such as causal influence or more visible ties such as roads (Pearl, 1988, pp. 50-51; Wasserman & Faust, 1994; Winston, …