Applied Statistics Commons^™

A Proposed Taxonomy For The Systems Statistical Engineering Body Of Knowledge, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the ASEM-IAC 2012, Cotter (2012) identified the gaps in knowledge that statistical engineering needs to address, explored additional gaps in knowledge not addressed in the prior works, and set forth a working definition of and body of knowledge for statistical engineering. In the ASEM-IAC 2015, Cotter (2015) proposed a systemic causal Bayesian hierarchical model that addressed the knowledge gap needed to integrate deterministic mathematical engineering causal models within a stochastic framework. Missing, however, is the framework for specifying the hierarchical qualitative systems structures necessary and sufficient for specifying systemic causal Bayesian hierarchical models. In the ASEM-IAC 2016, Cotter (2016) …

Automated Tree-Level Forest Quantification Using Airborne Lidar, Hamid Hamraz

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Traditional forest management relies on a small field sample and interpretation of aerial photography that not only are costly to execute but also yield inaccurate estimates of the entire forest in question. Airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) is a remote sensing technology that records point clouds representing the 3D structure of a forest canopy and the terrain underneath. We present a method for segmenting individual trees from the LiDAR point clouds without making prior assumptions about tree crown shapes and sizes. We then present a method that vertically stratifies the point cloud to an overstory and multiple understory tree …

A Model To Predict Concentrations And Uncertainty For Mercury Species In Lakes, Ashley Hendricks

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

To increase understanding of mercury cycling, a seasonal mass balance model was developed to predict mercury concentrations in lakes and fish. Results indicate that seasonality in mercury cycling is significant and is important for a northern latitude lake. Models, when validated, have the potential to be used as an alternative to measurements; models are relatively inexpensive and are not as time intensive. Previously published mercury models have neglected to perform a thorough validation. Model validation allows for regulators to be able to make more informed, confident decisions when using models in water quality management. It is critical to quantify uncertainty; …

Wildfire Emissions In The Context Of Global Change And The Implications For Mercury Pollution, Aditya Kumar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wildfires are episodic disturbances that exert a significant influence on the Earth system. They emit substantial amounts of atmospheric pollutants, which can impact atmospheric chemistry/composition and the Earth’s climate at the global and regional scales. This work presents a collection of studies aimed at better estimating wildfire emissions of atmospheric pollutants, quantifying their impacts on remote ecosystems and determining the implications of 2000s-2050s global environmental change (land use/land cover, climate) for wildfire emissions following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A1B socioeconomic scenario.

A global fire emissions model is developed to compile global wildfire emission inventories for major atmospheric …

An Enhanced Bridge Weigh-In-Motion Methodology And A Bayesian Framework For Predicting Extreme Traffic Load Effects Of Bridges, Yang Yu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In the past few decades, the rapid growth of traffic volume and weight, and the aging of transportation infrastructures have raised serious concerns over transportation safety. Under these circumstances, vehicle overweight enforcement and bridge condition assessment through structural health monitoring (SHM) have become critical to the protection of the safety of the public and transportation infrastructures. The main objectives of this dissertation are to: (1) develop an enhanced bridge weigh-in-motion (BWIM) methodology that can be integrated into the SHM system for overweight enforcement and monitoring traffic loading; (2) present a Bayesian framework to predict the extreme traffic load effects (LEs) …

Gridiron-Gurus Final Report: Fantasy Football Performance Prediction, Kyle Tanemura, Michael Li, Erica Dorn, Ryan Mckinney

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Gridiron Gurus is a desktop application that allows for the creation of custom AI profiles to help advise and compete against in a Fantasy Football setting. Our AI are capable of performing statistical prediction of players on both a season long and week to week basis giving them the ability to both draft and manage a fantasy football team throughout a season.

Studying The Optimal Scheduling For Controlling Prostate Cancer Under Intermittent Androgen Suppression, Sunil K. Dhar, Hans R. Chaudhry, Bruce G. Bukiet, Zhiming Ji, Nan Gao, Thomas W. Findley

Harvard University Biostatistics Working Paper Series

This retrospective study shows that the majority of patients’ correlations between PSA and Testosterone during the on-treatment period is at least 0.90. Model-based duration calculations to control PSA levels during off-treatment are provided. There are two pairs of models. In one pair, the Generalized Linear Model and Mixed Model are both used to analyze the variability of PSA at the individual patient level by using the variable “Patient ID” as a repeated measure. In the second pair, Patient ID is not used as a repeated measure but additional baseline variables are included to analyze the variability of PSA.

Case Study For Guided Project In Stochastic Hydrology, Meghna Babbar-Sebens

All ECSTATIC Materials

Attached are two guided project activities for hydrology and climate data of Eagle Creek Watershed, Indiana, USA. The zip files have flow and precipitation datasets at daily, monthly, and annual time scales.

A Study Of Mathematics Achievement, Placement, And Graduation Of Engineering Students, Sara Hahler Blazek

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine how background knowledge impacts freshmen engineering students' success at Louisiana Tech University in terms of grades in two different freshman classes and graduation. To determine what factors impact students, three different studies were implemented. The first study used linear regression to analyze which demographic and academic variables significantly impacted freshman math and engineering courses. Using regression discontinuity, the second study determined if the university's placement requirement for Pre-Calculus was appropriate. The final study analyzed factors that impact graduation for engineering students as well as other disciplines to determine which significant variables were …

Statistical Study For Bridge Deterioration Across Alabama, Cameron Mcwilliams

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

The Value Of A Collegiate Far Part 141 Jeopardy-Crew Resource Management (Crm)-Simulation Event, Samuel M. Vance

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

This article explores the viability of using a FAR Part 141 collegiate crew resource management (CRM) flight simulator scenario event as a jeopardy event (a graded, syllabus item) in an upper-level professional pilot curriculum course. Ultimately, the objective is to suggest this approach as a value-added curriculum consideration for other collegiate professional pilot programs. The selection of four CRM criteria to be examined was made by the course professor. Using the four principles, the students assembled the grading rubric for their event. The simulator scenario placed students in airspace, geography and weather dissimilar to that in which they were training …

Applying Ahp And Clustering Approaches For Public Transportation Decisionmaking: A Case Study Of Isfahan City, Alireza Salavati, Hossein Haghshenas, Bahador Ghadirifaraz, Jamshid Laghaei, Ghodrat Eftekhari

Journal of Public Transportation

The main purpose of this paper is to define appropriate criteria for the systematic approach to evaluate and prioritize multiple candidate corridors for public transport investment simultaneously to serve travel demand, regarding supply of current public transportation system and road network conditions of Isfahan, Iran. To optimize resource allocation, policymakers need to identify proper corridors to implement a public transportation system. In fact, the main question is to adopt the best public transportation system for each main corridor of Isfahan. In this regard, 137 questionnaires were completed by experts, directors, and policymakers of Isfahan to identify goals and objectives in …

A Traders Guide To The Predictive Universe- A Model For Predicting Oil Price Targets And Trading On Them, Jimmie Harold Lenz

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

At heart every trader loves volatility; this is where return on investment comes from, this is what drives the proverbial “positive alpha.” As a trader, understanding the probabilities related to the volatility of prices is key, however if you could also predict future prices with reliability the world would be your oyster. To this end, I have achieved three goals with this dissertation, to develop a model to predict future short term prices (direction and magnitude), to effectively test this by generating consistent profits utilizing a trading model developed for this purpose, and to write a paper that anyone with …

Design Optimization Of A Stochastic Multi-Objective Problem: Gaussian Process Regressions For Objective Surrogates, Juan Sebastian Martinez, Piyush Pandita, Rohit K. Tripathy, Ilias Bilionis

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Multi-objective optimization (MOO) problems arise frequently in science and engineering situations. In an optimization problem, we want to find the set of input parameters that generate the set of optimal outputs, mathematically known as the Pareto frontier (PF). Solving the MOO problem is a challenge since expensive experiments can be performed only a constrained number of times and there is a limited set of data to work with, e.g. a roll-to-roll microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) reactor for manufacturing high quality graphene. State-of-the-art techniques, e.g. evolutionary algorithms; particle swarm optimization, require a large amount of observations and do not …

The Influence Of The Electric Supply Industry On Economic Growth In Less Developed Countries, Edward Richard Bee

Dissertations

This study measures the impact that electrical outages have on manufacturing production in 135 less developed countries using stochastic frontier analysis and data from World Bank’s Investment Climate surveys. Outages of electricity, for firms with and without backup power sources, are the most frequently cited constraint on manufacturing growth in these surveys.

Outages are shown to reduce output below the production frontier by almost five percent in Africa and by a lower percentage in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. Production response to outages is quadratic in form. Outages also increase labor cost, reduce exports …

Well I'Ll Be Damned - Insights Into Predictive Value Of Pedigree Information In Horse Racing, Timothy Baker Mr, Ming-Chien Sung, Johnnie Johnson Professor, Tiejun Ma

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Fundamental form characteristics like how fast a horse ran at its last start, are widely used to help predict the outcome of horse racing events. The exception being in races where horses haven’t previously competed, such as Maiden races, where there is little or no publicly available past performance information. In these types of events bettors need only consider a simplified suite of factors however this is offset by a higher level of uncertainty. This paper examines the inherent information content embedded within a horse’s ancestry and the extent to which this information is discounted in the United Kingdom bookmaker …

Metals Additive Manufacturing Powder Aging Characterization, Thomas Russell Lovejoy, Nicholas Karl Muetterties, David Takeo Otsu

Mechanical Engineering

The metallic additive manufacturing process known as selective laser melting requires highly spherical, normally distributed powder with diameters in the range of 10 to 50 microns. Previous observations have shown a degradation in powder quality over time, resulting in unwanted characteristics in the final printed parts. 21-6-9 stainless steel powder was used to fabricate test parts, with leftover powder recycled back into the machine. Powder samples and test specimens were characterized to observe changes across build cycles. Few changes were observed in the physical and mechanical properties of the specimens, however, there were indications of chemical changes across cycles. Potential …

Risk Estimation Toward A Natural History Model For Low Grade Glioma Patients, Anh Thi Hoang Pham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Glioma is a common type of primary brain tumor that represents 28% of all brain tumors and 80% of malignant tumors. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gliomas account for 53%, 35% and 29% of all brain tumors (68%, 74% and 81% of malignant brain tumors) among children (aged 0-14), teenagers (aged 15-19) and young adults, respectively. Gliomas are often diagnosed through radiological imaging and histopathology. There are two main groups of gliomas following World Health Organization’s classification: Low grade gliomas (LGG), or grade I and II gliomas; and high grade gliomas …

A Recommendation System For Meta-Modeling: A Meta-Learning Based Approach, Can Cui, Mengqi Hu, Jeffery D. Weir, Teresa Wu

Faculty Publications

Various meta-modeling techniques have been developed to replace computationally expensive simulation models. The performance of these meta-modeling techniques on different models is varied which makes existing model selection/recommendation approaches (e.g., trial-and-error, ensemble) problematic. To address these research gaps, we propose a general meta-modeling recommendation system using meta-learning which can automate the meta-modeling recommendation process by intelligently adapting the learning bias to problem characterizations. The proposed intelligent recommendation system includes four modules: (1) problem module, (2) meta-feature module which includes a comprehensive set of meta-features to characterize the geometrical properties of problems, (3) meta-learner module which compares the performance of instance-based …

Design & Analysis Of A Computer Experiment For An Aerospace Conformance Simulation Study, Ryan W. Gryder

Theses and Dissertations

Within NASA's Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration # 1 (ATD-1), Interval Management (IM) is a flight deck tool that enables pilots to achieve or maintain a precise in-trail spacing behind a target aircraft. Previous research has shown that violations of aircraft spacing requirements can occur between an IM aircraft and its surrounding non-IM aircraft when it is following a target on a separate route. This research focused on the experimental design and analysis of a deterministic computer simulation which models our airspace configuration of interest. Using an original space-filling design and Gaussian process modeling, we found that aircraft delay assignments …

Applying Bayesian Machine Learning Methods To Theoretical Surface Science, Shane Carr

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Machine learning is a rapidly evolving field in computer science with increasingly many applications to other domains. In this thesis, I present a Bayesian machine learning approach to solving a problem in theoretical surface science: calculating the preferred active site on a catalyst surface for a given adsorbate molecule. I formulate the problem as a low-dimensional objective function. I show how the objective function can be approximated into a certain confidence interval using just one iteration of the self-consistent field (SCF) loop in density functional theory (DFT). I then use Bayesian optimization to perform a global search for the solution. …

Security Analysis On Network Systems Based On Some Stochastic Models, Xiaohu Li

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Due to great effort from mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists, network science has attained rapid development during the past decades. However, because of the complexity, most researches in this area are conducted only based upon experiments and simulations, it is critical to do research based on theoretical results so as to gain more insight on how the structure of a network affects the security. This dissertation introduces some stochastic and statistical models on certain networks and uses a k-out-of-n tolerant structure to characterize both logically and physically the behavior of nodes. Based upon these models, we draw several illuminating results …

Comparison Of Individual And Moving Range Chart Combinations To Individual Charts In Terms Of Arl After Designing For A Common “All Ok” Arl, Dewi Rahardja

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

In some process monitoring situations, consecutive measurements are spaced widely apart in time, making monitoring process aim and spread difficult. This study uses three cases to compare the effectiveness of two such monitoring schemes, i.e., the X chart alone (X-only chart) and the Individuals and Moving Range Chart Combination (X/MR chars), in terms of Average Run Length (ARL) after designing for a common “all OK” (in-control) ARL. The study finds that X chart alone is sufficient (and hence, recommended) in detecting changes in all the 3 cases: changes in the process mean, changes in the process standard deviation, and changes …

Poisson Distributed Individuals Control Charts With Optimal Limits, Negin Enayaty Ahangar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The conventional method used in attribute control charts is the Shewhart three sigma limits. The implicit assumption of the Normal distribution in this approach is not appropriate for skewed distributions such as Poisson, Geometric and Negative Binomial. Normal approximations perform poorly in the tail area of the these distributions. In this research, a type of attribute control chart is introduced to monitor the processes that provide count data. The economic objective of this chart is to minimize the cost of its errors which is determined by the designer. This objective is a linear function of type I and II errors. …

Tools And Methods To Optimize The Analysis Of Telescopic Performance Metrics On Sofia, Steven R. Wilson, Holger Jakob, Stefan Teufel, Zaheer Ali, Jeffrey Van Cleve, Brian Eney, Greg Perryman

STAR Program Research Presentations

SOFIA is an infrared observatory mounted on a modified 747 engineered to do infrared astronomy at 45000 feet. The telescope equipment contains a number of sensors and stabilizers that allow the telescope to capture images while mounted in a moving plane. We have developed methods to analyze the performance of the telescope assembly that will help improve the stabilization and image capturing performance of the observatory. Here we present reusable methods to analyze telescope performance data that will enable improvements in the quality of the scientific data that is produced by the SOFIA. This poster focuses on the multi-flight performance …

Environmentally Friendly Sizing Agent From Corn Distillers Dried Grains, Yue Zhang

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Distillers dried grains (DDGS), the coproducts of corn ethanol production, were used as a textile sizing agent on cotton, polyester and polyester/cotton blends in an effort to find inexpensive and biodegradable alternatives to sizing agents such as poly(vinyl alcohol) that are currently used. Although DDGS is an inexpensive, biodegradable and abundant co-product, it has limited industrial applications. DDGS is a mixture of carbohydrates, proteins and oil which are used as sizing agents or as size additives. The effects of DDGS extraction conditions on sizing evaluation parameters such as fiber adhesion, film properties, viscosity and fabric abrasion were studied in comparison …

New Microarray Image Segmentation Using Segmentation Based Contours Method, Yuan Cheng

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of the research developed in this dissertation is to develop a more accurate segmentation method for Affymetrix microarray images. The Affymetrix microarray biotechnologies have become increasingly important in the biomedical research field. Affymetrix microarray images are widely used in disease diagnostics and disease control. They are capable of monitoring the expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously. Hence, scientists can get a deep understanding on genomic regulation, interaction and expression by using such tools.

We also introduce a novel Affymetrix microarray image simulation model and how the Affymetrix microarray image is simulated by using this model. This simulation …

Modeling Martian Planetary Entry Descent And Landing Using Monte Carlo Driven Response Surface Methodology, Narcrisha S. Norman

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Response surface methodology (RSM) is a statistical method that explores the relationships between several descriptive variables and one or more response variables. For over sixty years, among other areas, it has been utilized in quality engineering, process engineering, aircraft engineering, economics, chemical engineering, automotive engineering and design/technique optimization. In this dissertation, RSM is utilized to produce regression models that represent the planetary entry, descent and landing (EDL) process. A complete understanding of EDL process is an essential component of any planetary exploration. Research in this area is ongoing and confidence in the ability to explore known celestial bodies is growing. …

Reliability Models For Hpc Applications And A Cloud Economic Model, Thanadech Thanakornworakij

Doctoral Dissertations

With the enormous number of computing resources in HPC and Cloud systems, failures become a major concern. Therefore, failure behaviors such as reliability, failure rate, and mean time to failure need to be understood to manage such a large system efficiently.

This dissertation makes three major contributions in HPC and Cloud studies. First, a reliability model with correlated failures in a k-node system for HPC applications is studied. This model is extended to improve accuracy by accounting for failure correlation. Marshall-Olkin Multivariate Weibull distribution is improved by excess life, conditional Weibull, to better estimate system reliability. Also, the univariate …

Meta-Heuristics Analysis For Technologically Complex Programs: Understanding The Impact Of Total Constraints For Schedule, Quality And Cost, Henry Darrel Webb

EMSE Doctoral Projects

Program management data associated with a technically complex radio frequency electronics base communication system has been collected and analyzed to identify heuristics which may be utilized in addition to existing processes and procedures to provide indicators that a program is trending to failure. Analysis of the collected data includes detailed schedule analysis, detailed earned value management analysis and defect analysis within the framework of a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) incentive fee contract.

This project develops heuristics and provides recommendations for analysis of complex project management efforts such as those discussed herein. The analysis of the effects of the constraints on …