Other Applied Mathematics Commons^™

Is Technological Progress A Random Walk? Examining Data From Space Travel, Michael Howell, Daniel Berleant, Hyacinthe Aboudja, Richard Segall, Peng-Hung Tsai

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

Improvement in a variety of technologies can often be successful modeled using a general version of Moore’s law (i.e. exponential improvements over time). Another successful approach is Wright’s law, which models increases in technological capability as a function of an effort variable such as production. While these methods are useful, they do not provide prediction distributions, which would enable a better understanding of forecast quality

Farmer and Lafond (2016) developed a forecasting method which produces forecast distributions and is applicable to many kinds of technology. A fundamental assumption of their method is that technological progress can be modeled as a …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Cell Assembly Detection In Low Firing-Rate Spike Train Data, Phan Minh Duc Truong

Mathematics Theses and Dissertations

Cell assemblies, defined as groups of neurons forming temporal spike coordination, are thought to be fundamental units supporting major cognitive functions. However, detecting cell assemblies is challenging since they can occur at a range of time scales and with a range of precisions, from synchronous spikes to co-variations in firing rate. In this dissertation, we use a recently published cell assembly detection (CAD) algorithm that is capable of detecting assemblies at a range of time scales and precisions. We first showed that the CAD method can be applied to sparser spike train data than what have previously been reported. This …

A Novel Correction For The Adjusted Box-Pierce Test — New Risk Factors For Emergency Department Return Visits Within 72 Hours For Children With Respiratory Conditions — General Pediatric Model For Understanding And Predicting Prolonged Length Of Stay, Sidy Danioko

Computational and Data Sciences (PhD) Dissertations

This thesis represents the results of three research projects that underline the breadth and depth of my interests.

Firstly, I devoted some efforts to the well-known Box-Pierce goodness-of-fit tests for time series models which has been an important research topic over the last few decades. All previously proposed tests are focused on changes of the test statistics. Instead, I adopted a different approach that takes the best performing test and modifying the rejection region. Thus, I developed a semiparametric correction of the Adjusted Box-Pierce test that attains the best I error rates for all sample sizes and lags and outperforms …

Quantitatively Motivated Model Development Framework: Downstream Analysis Effects Of Normalization Strategies, Jessica M. Rudd

Doctor of Data Science and Analytics Dissertations

Through a review of epistemological frameworks in social sciences, history of frameworks in statistics, as well as the current state of research, we establish that there appears to be no consistent, quantitatively motivated model development framework in data science, and the downstream analysis effects of various modeling choices are not uniformly documented. Examples are provided which illustrate that analytic choices, even if justifiable and statistically valid, have a downstream analysis effect on model results. This study proposes a unified model development framework that allows researchers to make statistically motivated modeling choices within the development pipeline. Additionally, a simulation study is …

Storage Management Strategy In Mobile Phones For Photo Crowdsensing, En Wang, Zhengdao Qu, Xinyao Liang, Xiangyu Meng, Yongjian Yang, Dawei Li, Weibin Meng

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In mobile crowdsensing, some users jointly finish a sensing task through the sensors equipped in their intelligent terminals. In particular, the photo crowdsensing based on Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) collects pictures for some specific targets or events and uploads them to nearby edge servers, which leads to richer data content and more efficient data storage compared with the common mobile crowdsensing; hence, it has attracted an important amount of attention recently. However, the mobile users prefer uploading the photos through Wifi APs (PoIs) rather than cellular networks. Therefore, photos stored in mobile phones are exchanged among users, in order to …

How Machine Learning And Probability Concepts Can Improve Nba Player Evaluation, Harrison Miller

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper I will be breaking down a scholarly article, written by Sameer K. Deshpande and Shane T. Jensen, that proposed a new method to evaluate NBA players. The NBA is the highest level professional basketball league in America and stands for the National Basketball Association. They proposed to build a model that would result in how NBA players impact their teams chances of winning a game, using machine learning and probability concepts. I preface that by diving into these concepts and their mathematical backgrounds. These concepts include building a linear model using ordinary least squares method, the bias …

A New Model For Predicting Probabilities Of Viable Pregnancy And Multiple Gestations For I̲N̲ V̲I̲T̲R̲O̲ Fertilization, Ray Vernon Haning Jr.

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In vitro fertilization (IVF) can be viewed as high stakes gambling with more than one winning outcome and more than one outcome leading to failure. Knowing the odds of successful outcomes, the odds of outcomes leading to failure, and the various costs is a tremendous asset in any form of gambling. Four important variables have been reported to affect pregnancy rates in IVF programs: age of patient, number of unsuccessful prior attempts, embryo morphology, and number of embryos transferred.

While it is desirable to optimize pregnancy rates, such optimization may often result in a high incidence of multiple gestation. Data …