Other Statistics and Probability Commons^™

Niche-Based Modeling Of Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium Vimineum) Using Presence-Only Information, Nathan Bush

Masters Theses

The Connecticut River watershed is experiencing a rapid invasion of aggressive non-native plant species, which threaten watershed function and structure. Volunteer-based monitoring programs such as the University of Massachusetts’ OutSmart Invasives Species Project, Early Detection Distribution Mapping System (EDDMapS) and the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (IPANE) have gathered valuable invasive plant data. These programs provide a unique opportunity for researchers to model invasive plant species utilizing citizen-sourced data. This study took advantage of these large data sources to model invasive plant distribution and to determine environmental and biophysical predictors that are most influential in dispersion, and to identify …

A Nonlinear Filter For Markov Chains And Its Effect On Diffusion Maps, Stefan Steinerberger

Yale Day of Data

Diffusion maps are a modern mathematical tool that helps to find structure in large data sets - we present a new filtering technique that is based on the assumption that errors in the data are intrinsically random to isolate and filter errors and thus boost the efficiency of diffusion maps. Applications include data sets from medicine (the Cleveland Heart Disease Data set and the Wisconsin Breast Cancer Data set) and engineering (the Ionosphere data set).

Preparedness Of Hospitals In The Republic Of Ireland For An Influenza Pandemic, An Infection Control Perspective, Mary Reidy, Fiona Ryan, Dervla Hogan, Seán Lacey, Claire Buckley

Department of Mathematics Publications

When an influenza pandemic occurs most of the population is susceptible and attack rates can range as high as 40–50 %. The most important failure in pandemic planning is the lack of standards or guidelines regarding what it means to be ‘prepared’. The aim of this study was to assess the preparedness of acute hospitals in the Republic of Ireland for an influenza pandemic from an infection control perspective.

Completely Monotone And Bernstein Functions With Convexity Properties On Their Measures, Shen Shan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The concepts of completely monotone and Bernstein functions have been introduced near one hundred years ago. They find wide applications in areas ranging from stochastic L\'{e}vy processes and complex analysis to monotone operator theory. They have well-known Bernstein and L\'{e}vy-Khintchine integral representations through which there are one-to-one correspondences between them and Radon measures on $[0,\infty)$ or $(0,\infty)$, respectively. In this thesis, we investigate subclasses of completely monotone and Bernstein functions with various convexity properties on their measures. These subclasses have intriguing applications in probability theories and convex analysis.

The convexity properties we investigate include convexity, harmonic convexity and $\beta$-convexity of …

On The Dual Risk Models, Chen Yang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract This thesis focuses on developing and computing ruin-related quantities that are potentially measurements for the dual risk models which was proposed to describe the annuity-type businesses from the perspective of the collective risk theory in 1950’s. In recent years, the dual risk models are revisited by many researchers to quantify the risk of the similar businesses as the annuity-type businesses. The major extensions included in this thesis consist of two aspects: the first is to search for new ruin-related quantities that are potentially indices of the risk for well-established dual models; the other aspect is to generalize the settings …

A Study Of The Parametric And Nonparametric Linear-Circular Correlation Coefficient, Robin Tu

Statistics

Circular statistics are specialized statistical methods that deal specifically with directional data. Data that is angular require specialized techniques due to the modulo 2π (in radians) or modulo 360^◦ (in degrees) nature of angles.

Correlation, typically in terms of Pearson’s correlation coefficient, is a measure of association between two linear random variables x and y. In this paper, the specific circular technique of the parametric and nonparametric linear-circular correlation coefficient will be explored where correlation is no longer between two linear variables x and y, but between a linear random variable x and circular random variable θ.

A simulation …

#Twittercritic: Sentiment Analysis Of Tweets To Predict Tv Ratings, Isabel Litton

Statistics

Twitter has rapidly become one of the most popular sites of the Internet. It functions not just as a microblogging service, but as a crowdsourcing tool for listening, promotion, insight and much more. From the perspective of TV networks, tweets capture the real time reactions of viewers, making them an ideal indicator of a show’s ratings. This paper predicts Internet Movie Database (IMDB) television ratings by text mining Twitter data.

Tweets for five television shows were downloaded over a period of several months utilizing a SAS macro. Television show data, such as rating, show title, episode title, and more were …

The Relationship Between Self-Determination And Client Outcomes Among The Homeless, Samuel M. Hanna

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper has attempted to determine if there is a significant relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. The study has been based upon the conceptual framework set forth in Self-Determination Theory. The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. Using a data collection instrument, based on empirically validated instrumentation, clients from several homeless service providers in the City of San Bernardino were assessed for the level of self-determination and autonomy support they experience within these agencies. Outcome measures included such things as whether the client was going …

Geographical Analysis Of Hub City Transit, Joshua Adam Watts

Master's Theses

This study assess Hub City Transit, the public bus system of Hattiesburg, MS. Statistical analysis is used to determine how well the transit system serves low income areas of the city. A 0.5 mile buffer was applied to the bus routes to determine the coverage of the transit system. Areas of disorder along the routes were also assessed to analyze the landscape routes pass through. Lastly, an analysis of ridership on each route was performed to determine the most heavily used areas, as well as to assess where riders are going on each route.

The findings show that Hub City …

The Expected Total Curvature Of Random Polygons, Jason Cantarella, Alexander Y. Grosberg, Robert Kusner, Clayton Shonkwiler

Robert Kusner

We consider the expected value for the total curvature of a random closed polygon. Numerical experiments have suggested that as the number of edges becomes large, the difference between the expected total curvature of a random closed polygon and a random open polygon with the same number of turning angles approaches a positive constant. We show that this is true for a natural class of probability measures on polygons, and give a formula for the constant in terms of the moments of the edgelength distribution.

We then consider the symmetric measure on closed polygons of fixed total length constructed by …

An Assessment Of The Performances Of Several Univariate Tests Of Normality, James Olusegun Adefisoye

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The importance of checking the normality assumption in most statistical procedures especially parametric tests cannot be over emphasized as the validity of the inferences drawn from such procedures usually depend on the validity of this assumption. Numerous methods have been proposed by different authors over the years, some popular and frequently used, others, not so much. This study addresses the performance of eighteen of the available tests for different sample sizes, significance levels, and for a number of symmetric and asymmetric distributions by conducting a Monte-Carlo simulation. The results showed that considerable power is not achieved for symmetric distributions when …

Firing Rate Dynamics In Recurrent Spiking Neural Networks With Intrinsic And Network Heterogeneity, Cheng Ly

Statistical Sciences and Operations Research Publications

Heterogeneity of neural attributes has recently gained a lot of attention and is increasing recognized as a crucial feature in neural processing. Despite its importance, this physiological feature has traditionally been neglected in theoretical studies of cortical neural networks. Thus, there is still a lot unknown about the consequences of cellular and circuit heterogeneity in spiking neural networks. In particular, combining network or synaptic heterogeneity and intrinsic heterogeneity has yet to be considered systematically despite the fact that both are known to exist and likely have significant roles in neural network dynamics. In a canonical recurrent spiking neural network model, …

The Simulation & Evaluation Of Surge Hazard Using A Response Surface Method In The New York Bight, Michael H. Bredesen

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Atmospheric features, such as tropical cyclones, act as a driving mechanism for many of the major hazards affecting coastal areas around the world. Accurate and efficient quantification of tropical cyclone surge hazard is essential to the development of resilient coastal communities, particularly given continued sea level trend concerns. Recent major tropical cyclones that have impacted the northeastern portion of the United States have resulted in devastating flooding in New York City, the most densely populated city in the US. As a part of national effort to re-evaluate coastal inundation hazards, the Federal Emergency Management Agency used the Joint Probability Method …

Genomic-Enabled Prediction Of Ordinal Data With Bayesian Logistic Ordinal Regression, Osval A. Montesinos-López, Abelardo Montesinos-López, José Crossa, Juan Burgueño, Kent M. Eskridge

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Most genomic-enabled prediction models developed so far assume that the response variable is continuous and normally distributed. The exception is the probit model, developed for ordered categorical phenotypes. In statistical applications, because of the easy implementation of the Bayesian probit ordinal regression (BPOR) model, Bayesian logistic ordinal regression (BLOR) is implemented rarely in the context of genomic-enabled prediction [sample size (n) is much smaller than the number of parameters (p)]. For this reason, in this paper we propose a BLOR model using the Pólya-Gamma data augmentation approach that produces a Gibbs sampler with similar full conditional distributions of the BPORmodel …

Establishment And Persistence Of Yellow-Flowered Alfalfa No-Till Interseeded Into Crested Wheatgrass Stands, Christopher G. Misar, Lan Xu, Roger N. Gates, Arvid Boe, Patricia S. Johnson, Christopher S. Schauer, John R. Rickertsen, Walter Stroup

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Crested wheatgrass [Agropyron cristatum (L.) Gaertn., A. desertorum

(Fisch. ex Link) Schult., and related taxa] often exists

in near monoculture stands in the northern Great Plains.

Introducing locally adapted yellow-flowered alfalfa [Medicago

sativa L. subsp. falcata (L.) Arcang.] would complement crested

wheatgrass. Our objective was to evaluate effects of seeding

date, clethodim {(E) -2-[1-[[(3-chloro-2-propenyl)oxy]imino]

propyl]-5-[2-(ethylthio)propyl]-3-hydroxy-2-cyclohexen-1-one}

sod suppression, and seeding rate on initial establishment and

stand persistence of Falcata, a predominantly yellow-flowered

alfalfa, no-till interseeded into crested wheatgrass. Research was

initiated in August 2008 at Newcastle, WY; Hettinger, ND;

Fruitdale, SD; and Buffalo, SD. Effects of treatment …

Effect Of Dexamethasone Prodrug On Inflamed Temporomandibular Joints In Juvenile Rats, Mitchell Knudsen, Matthew Bury, Callie Holwegner, Adam L. Reinhardt, Fang Yuan, Yijia Zhang, Peter Giannini, D. B. Marx, Dong Wang, Richard A. Reinhardt

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Introduction: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) often causes inflammation of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and has been treated with both systemic and intra-articular steroids, with concerns about effects on growing bones. In this study, we evaluated the impact of a macromolecular prodrug of dexamethasone (P-DEX) with inflammation-targeting potential applied systemically or directly to the TMJ.

Methods: Joint inflammation was initiated by injecting two doses of complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA) at 1-month intervals into the right TMJs of 24 growing Sprague–Dawley male rats (controls on left side). Four additional rats were not manipulated. With the second CFA injection, animals received (1) 5 …

Threshold Models For Genome-Enabled Prediction Of Ordinal Categorical Traits In Plant Breeding, Osval A. Montesinos-López, Abelardo Montesinos-López, Paulino Pérez-Rodríguez, Gustavo De Los Campos, Kent M. Eskridge, José Crossa

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Categorical scores for disease susceptibility or resistance often are recorded in plant breeding. The aim of this study was to introduce genomic models for analyzing ordinal characters and to assess the predictive ability of genomic predictions for ordered categorical phenotypes using a threshold model counterpart of the Genomic Best Linear Unbiased Predictor (i.e., TGBLUP). The threshold model was used to relate a hypothetical underlying scale to the outward categorical response. We present an empirical application where a total of nine models, five without interaction and four with genomic x environment interaction (G·E) and genomic additive x additive x environment interaction …

Measuring Peer Socialization For Adolescent Substance Use:A Comparison Of Perceived And Actual Friends’ Substance Use Effects, Arielle R. Deutsch, Pavel Chernyavskiy, Douglas Steinley, Wendy S. Slutske

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Objective: There has been an increase in the use of social network analysis in studies of peer socialization effects on adolescent substance use. Some researchers argue that social network analyses provide more accurate measures of peer substance use, that the alternate strategy of assessing perceptions of friends’ drug use is biased, and that perceptions of peer use and actual peer use represent different constructs. However, there has been little research directly comparing the two effects, and little is known about the extent to which the measures differ in the magnitude of their influence on adolescent substance use, as well as …

A Copula Based Approach For Design Of Multivariate Random Forests For Drug Sensitivity Prediction, Saad Haider, Raziur Rahman, Souparno Ghosh, Ranadip Pal

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Modeling sensitivity to drugs based on genetic characterizations is a significant challenge in the area of systems medicine. Ensemble based approaches such as Random Forests have been shown to perform well in both individual sensitivity prediction studies and team science based prediction challenges. However, Random Forests generate a deterministic predictive model for each drug based on the genetic characterization of the cell lines and ignores the relationship between different drug sensitivities during model generation. This application motivates the need for generation of multivariate ensemble learning techniques that can increase prediction accuracy and improve variable importance ranking by incorporating the relationships …

Design Of Probabilistic Random Forests With Applications To Anticancer Drug Sensitivity Prediction, Raziur Rahman, Saad Haider, Souparno Gosh, Ranadip Pal

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Random forests consisting of an ensemble of regression trees with equal weights are frequently used for design of predictive models. In this article, we consider an extension of the methodology by representing the regression trees in the form of probabilistic trees and analyzing the nature of heteroscedasticity. The probabilistic tree representation allows for analytical computation of confidence intervals (CIs), and the tree weight optimization is expected to provide stricter CIs with comparable performance in mean error. We approached the ensemble of probabilistic trees’ prediction from the perspectives of a mixture distribution and as a weighted sum of correlated random variables. …

S1: Supplementary Information For Article: A Copula Based Approach For Design Of Multivariate Random Forests For Drug Sensitivity Prediction, Saad Haider, Raziur Rahman, Souparno Ghosh, Ranadip Pal

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

Changes in performance with prior feature selection

Random forest (RF) is designed to create uncorrelated trees using random subsets of features in each node of each tree. RF by itself is a great tool for feature selection from a high dimensional set of features. But we observed that the prediction accuracy is improved when a prior feature selection (RELIEFF) [1] approach is implemented. Table A shows the performance of RF, VMRF and CMRF with and without RELIEFF feature selection in 2 drug sets of GDSC.

Performance Analysis for drugsets consisting of more 8 than two drugs

We have generated empirical …

Voc Emissions From Beef Feedlot Pen Surfaces As Affected By Within-Pen Location, Moisture And Temperature, Bryan L. Woodbury, John E. Gilley, David B. Parker, David B. Marx, Roger A. Eigenberg

Department of Statistics: Faculty Publications

A laboratory study was conducted to evaluate the effects of pen location, moisture, and temperature on emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from surface materials obtained from feedlot pens where beef cattle were fed a diet containing 30% wet distillers grain plus solubles. Surface materials were collected from the feed trough (bunk), drainage, and raised areas (mounds) within three feedlot pens. The surface materials were mixed with water to represent dry, wet, or saturated conditions and then incubated at temperatures of 5, 15, 25 and 35 C. A wind tunnel and gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer were used to collect and quantify …