Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Modified Edf Goodness Of Fit Tests For Logistic Distribution Under Srs And Rss, S. A. Al-Subh, M. T. Alodat, Kamaruzaman Ibrahim, Abdul Aziz Jemain

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Modified forms of goodness of fit tests are presented for the logistic distribution using statistics based on the empirical distribution function (EDF). A method to improve the power of the modified EDF goodness of fit tests is introduced based on Ranked Set sampling (RSS). Data are collected via the Ranked Set Sampling (RSS) technique (McIntyre, 1952). Critical values for the logistic distribution with unknown parameters are provided and the powers of the tests are given for a number of alternative distributions. A simulation study is presented to illustrate the power of the new method.

Small-To-Medium Enterprises And Economic Growth: A Comparative Study Of Clustering Techniques, Karim K. Mardaneh

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in regional (non-metropolitan) areas are considered when economic planning may require large data sets and sophisticated clustering techniques. The economic growth of regional areas was investigated using four clustering algorithms. Empirical analysis demonstrated that the modified global k-means algorithm outperformed other algorithms.

Posterior Estimates Of Poisson Distribution Using R Software, Raja Sultan, S.P. Ahmad

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The Bayesian estimation of unknown parameter of the Poisson distribution is examined under different priors. The posterior distributions for the unknown parameter of the Poisson distribution are derived using the following priors: uniform, Jeffrey’s, Gamma distribution, Gamma-Chi-square distribution, Gammaexponential distribution and Chi-square-exponential distribution. Numerical and graphical illustrations of the posterior densities of the parameters of interest were conducted using R Software.

Weighted Cook-Johnson Copula And Their Characterizations: Application To Probably Modeling Of The Hot Spring Eruptions, Hakim Bekrizadeh, Gholam Ali Parham, Mohamd Reza Zadkarmi

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Copulas have emerged as a practical method for multivariate modeling. A limited amount of work has been conducted regarding the application of copula-based modeling in context analysis. This study generalizes the Cook-Johnson copula under the appropriate weighted function and provides examples and the properties of the generalized Cook-Johnson copula. Results show that the generalized Cook-Johnson copula is suitable for probable modeling of hot spring eruption.

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 …

An Efficient Bit Vector Approach To Semantics-Based Machine Perception In Resource-Constrained Devices, Cory Andrew Henson, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The primary challenge of machine perception is to define efficient computational methods to derive high-level knowledge from low-level sensor observation data. Emerging solutions are using ontologies for expressive representation of concepts in the domain of sensing and perception, which enable advanced integration and interpretation of heterogeneous sensor data. The computational complexity of OWL, however, seriously limits its applicability and use within resource-constrained environments, such as mobile devices. To overcome this issue, we employ OWL to formally define the inference tasks needed for machine perception – explanation and discrimination – and then provide efficient algorithms for these tasks, using bit-vector encodings …

Smu Launches Livelabs To Enhance Singapore’S Capability In Consumer & Social Analytics, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

Officiated by Mr Teo Chee Hean, Deputy Prime Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security, Minister for Home Affairs and Chairman of the National Research Foundation (NRF), and witnessed by over 300 guests comprising the academia, industry partners and senior representatives from private and public sector organisations, SMU and StarHub jointly launched two Interactive Digital Media (IDM) initiatives - LiveLabs Urban Lifestyle Innovation Platform (LiveLabs) and SmartHub, on 5 November 2012. Both city-scale test-beds aim to strengthen Singapore’s standing as a preferred location for innovation and research, particularly in the area of consumer and social analytics. LiveLabs is SMU’s newest research …

Climate Change And The Water Crisis In Israel, Lauren Deutsch

Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences

Israel’s water crisis is controlled by the availability and location of water resources that are affected by climate change and geopolitics in southwest Asia. Conflict between Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have put strains on the allocation of water recourses. The goal of this research was to model how much a change in climate will affect the amount of available freshwater in Israel. Intensive research taken from Israel and the occupied territories was carried out to understand how the amount of precipitation, rainfall, and the rate of evaporation is affected by …

Episodic Recruitment And Climate Analysis Of Ponderosa Pine On The Palmer Divide, Eastern Colorado, William Henry Brenton Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous recruitment studies on populations of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa P. & C. Lawson) in Colorado have been limited to the western mountains and the Front Range. In this research I used tree-ring data to reconstruct recruitment for ponderosa pine near the eastern limits of its distribution at two sites on the Palmer Divide, Eastern Colorado, to determine the relative climate sensitivity of the two sites, and the extent to which climate or other factors may have influenced recruitment at the sites. The results of the tree-ring analysis suggest that ponderosa pines in more the easterly site lower elevation …

Iexplore: Interactive Browsing And Exploring Biomedical Knowledge, Vinh Nguyen, Olivier Bodenreider, Jagannathan Srinivasan, Todd Minning, Thomas Rindflesch, Bastien Rance, Ramakanth Kavuluru, Himi Yalamanchili, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Satya S. Sahoo, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present iExplore, a Semantic Web based application that helps biomedical researchers study and explore biomedical knowledge interactively. iExplore uses the Biomedical Knowledge Repository (BKR), which integrates knowledge from various sources ranging from information extracted from biomedical literature (from PubMed) to many structured vocabularies in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The current version of BKR provides a unified provenance representation for 12 million semantic predications (triples with a predicate connecting a subject and an object) derived from 87 vocabulary families in the UMLS and 14 million predications extracted from 21 million PubMed abstracts. To engage the domain experts in …

Event-Driven Environmental News In The U.S. And Canada, Stuart Soroka, Stephen J. Farnsworth, Lori Young, Andrea Lawlor

Political Science & International Affairs Articles

This paper presents results from a content analytic study of U.S. and Canadian evening news programs on energy and environmental topics from 1999 to 2009. The analysis reveals the importance of coverage of weather and natural disasters in both countries — importance not just in terms of the volume of coverage, but in the role that coverage plays in driving discussion of broader, more thematic coverage of pollution and climate change. Indeed, causality tests reveal that coverage of climate change, pollution and related issues are strongly affected by — or, rather, dependent on — coverage of disasters and other weather …

Comparing Two Independent Groups Via A Quantile Generalization Of The Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Test, Rand R. Wilcox

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test, as well as modern improvements, are based in part on an estimate of p = P(D < 0), where D = X−Y and X and Y are independent random variables; a common goal is to test H₀: p = 0.5. This corresponds to testing H₀: ξ_0.5, where ξ_0.5 is the 0.5 quantile of the distribution of D. If the distributions associated with X and Y do not differ, then D has a symmetric distribution about zero. In particular, ξ_q + ξ_1-q = 0 for any q ≤ 0.5, where ξ_q is the q^th quantile. Methods aimed at testing H₀: p = 0.5 are generalized by …

Single Sampling Plans For Variables Indexed By Aql And Aoql With Measurement Error, R. Sankle, J.R. Singh

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Single sampling plans are investigated for variables indexed by acceptable quality level (AQL) and average outgoing quality limit (AOQL) under measurement error. Procedures and tables are provided for selection of single sampling plans for variables for given AQL and AOQL when rejected lots are 100% inspected for replacement of a nonconforming unit. For a particular sampling plan in operation for an observed measurement, a method for determining true operating characteristic (OC) functions and average outgoing quality (AOQ) is described for various error sizes.

An Extension Of Cochran-Orcutt Procedure For Generalized Linear Regression Models With Periodically Correlated Errors, Abdullah A. Smadi, Nour H. Abu-Afouna

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

An important assumption of ordinary regression models is independence among errors. This research considers the case of periodically correlated errors following the periodic AR model of order 1 (PAR(1)). The remedial measure for correlated errors in regression known as the Cochran-Orcutt procedure is generalized to the case of periodically correlated errors. The motivation for making such generalizations is that the response data may inhibit some seasonality, which may not be captured by the traditional AR(1) autoregressive model. The proposed procedure is described and the bias and MSE of the resulting intercept and slope parameter estimates of the simple LR model …

A Proposed Ridge Parameter To Improve The Least Square Estimator, Ghadban Khalaf

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Ridge regression, a form of biased linear estimation, is a more appropriate technique than ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation in the case of highly intercorrelated explanatory variables in the linear regression model Y = β + u. Two proposed ridge regression parameters from the mean square error (MSE) perspective are evaluated. A simulation study was conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed estimators compared to the OLS, HK and HKB estimators. Results show that the suggested estimators outperform the OLS and the other estimators regarding the ridge parameters in all situations examined.

Graphical Modeling For High Dimensional Data, Munni Begum, Jay Bagga, C. Ann Blakey

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

With advances in science and information technologies, many scientific fields are able to meet the challenges of managing and analyzing high-dimensional data. A so-called large p small n problem arises when the number of experimental units, n, is equal to or smaller than the number of features, p. A methodology based on probability and graph theory, termed graphical models, is applied to study the structure and inference of such high-dimensional data.

Obtaining Consumer Perceptions Of External Costs Of “Cheap” Food Products And Analyzing Quality Food Markets That Minimize External Costs In Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, Jennifer Long '13

Outstanding Senior Seminar Papers

Today, the United States’ food system is primarily a large industrial operation with smaller-scale community-based food systems. Although the industrial food system has benefitted society by increasing the amount of food available for every person, some of these products are “cheap” food products that generate external costs, such as poor health, potential wealth loss to farmers and environmental degradation. With over 1 billion individuals on earth undernourished and 15.8% of all U.S. households as of 2010 food insecure [Patel, 2012], this system has not completely solved food issues. Community-based food systems, on the other hand, minimize external costs …

Examining Ways To Promote Water Conservation At Golf Courses In Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, Rose Kelly '13

Outstanding Senior Seminar Papers

The purpose of this study was to examine ways for golf courses in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, to promote water conservation. As the demand for freshwater exponentially increases around the United States, it becomes necessary to examine current freshwater uses, especially those for recreational purposes. Golf courses are one of the largest freshwater users, with a typical course consuming hundreds of thousands of gallons every day for grass maintenance. With water shortages and insecure future water supplies, golf courses around the United States are urgently looking for ways to promote water conservation. This includes golf courses in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois. The severe drought …

A Graphical Examination Of Variable Deletion Within The Mewma Statistic, Jay R. Schaffer, Shawn Vandenhul

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A general procedure for identifying the variable(s) that contribute(s) to the signal of the multivariate extension of the exponentially weighted moving average (MEWMA) chart is presented. The procedure systematically removes one or two variables from the MEWMA statistic calculations. Percentages are calculated for correctly identifying various shifts.

Testing The Population Coefficient Of Variation, Shipra Banik, B. M. Golam Kibria, Dinesh Sharma

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

The coefficient of variation (CV), which is used in many scientific areas, measures the variability of a population relative to its mean and standard deviation. Several methods exist for testing the population CV. This article compares a proposed bootstrap method to existing methods. A simulation study was conducted under both symmetric and skewed distributions to compare the performance of test statistics with respect to empirical size and power. Results indicate that some of the proposed methods are useful and can be recommended to practitioners.

Bayesian Estimation Of Erlang Distribution Under Different Generalized Truncated Distributions As Priors, Adil H. Khan, T.R. Jan

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Various generalized truncated distributions are considered as independent informative priors for estimating shape and scale parameters of the Erlang distribution. In addition, various special cases are also discussed.

Multivariate Generalized Poisson Distribution For Interference On Selected Non-Communicable Diseases In Lagos State, Nigeria, Adewara Johnson Ademola, Mbata Ugochuckwu Ahamefula

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

Multivariate Generalized Poisson Distribution (MGPD) models are applied to make inferences regarding non-communicable diseases, diabetes, hypertension, stroke and ulcer in Lagos State, Nigeria. The generalized Poisson distribution is employed due to its usefulness in modeling count data in the presence of either over- or under- dispersion. Results show that the correlation between ulcer and stroke is not significant. Other pairwise comparisons of diseases are significant, thus implying that a patient who suffers from diabetes or stroke has a high propensity to also be hypertensive.

Ferrieri's Index Of Openness Applied To Remittances To Developing Countries, Gaetano Ferrieri

Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods

A new methodology to measure international openness and globalization is described. This allows capacity to be effectively combined with size in a number of socio-economic areas, such as trade, migration and foreign investment. The method is applied to remittances to developing countries.

Changing The Status Quo Of Waste Management: Case Study Of A Rural Costa Rican Town, Anna Katherine Rodenborg Baker

Capstone Collection

Costa Rica is a country famous for its efforts in environmental protection. Despite its numerous innovative steps toward the protection of its natural biodiversity and resources, the country has still not yet provided basic environmental services, such as local trash collection, to its entire population. This paper examines the processes of organizing the campaign to petition the Municipality to organize trash collection in Costa Rica. It provides a case study of policy advocacy in sustainable rural development. It is informed by my experience as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Rural Community Development program, during which time the Municipality was …

Applying Lean Six Sigma At Nordson Efd, Kristen Harvey

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) gives a company a competitive advantage over its competitors. On average, LSS cuts down on unwanted waste and cost by 25% ("What Is Lean Six Sigma?"). Additionally, LSS allows businesses to move beyond fixing defects or perfecting their processes to focus on the quality of their products. It also fosters a continuous improvement culture within companies’ operations and administrative offices. LSS is a proven methodology used to reduce all types of waste in businesses. Although lean six sigma started in the manufacturing industry, it has been adapted for use across all industries, public and private ("Six …

Exploring Strategies For Converting Illinois Wesleyan University From Dual-Stream To Single-Stream Recycling, Megan George '13

Outstanding Senior Seminar Papers

The purpose of this study was to answer the question: how can a transition from dual-stream to single-stream recycling be implemented effectively as a way of increasing the rate of recycling on the Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU) campus? The problem of waste in the United States is of increasing concern for many reasons. For the Bloomington-Normal, Illinois community-- where IWU is located-- the imminent filling of the local landfill site inspired a community-wide push towards improving waste diversion strategies, and in this case: recycling programs. This research focused on both analyzing the current recycling program at IWU and examining other …

Beyond Adaptive Capacity Checklists: Examining The Construction Of Capacity In Mexico City And Santiago, Patricia Romero-Lankao, Sara Hughes, Angélica Rosas-Huerta, Roxana Borquéz, Melissa Haeffner

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cities are vulnerable to a range of environmental hazards that are likely to be exacerbated by climate change: floods, droughts, poor air quality, and heat islands are a few examples. Assessments of this vulnerability often include an evaluation of a city’s adaptive capacity, or its potential to respond to changes in the frequency or severity of environmental hazards as well as its ability to take advantage of or mitigate these changes. For example, at the city (e.g., institutional) level, a common metric of adaptive capacity is the availability and effective use of information. In many cases, a city would receive …

Quest For Continuous Improvement: Gathering Feedback And Data Through Multiple Methods To Evaluate And Improve A Library’S Discovery Tool, Jeanne M. Brown

Library Faculty Presentations

Summon at UNLV

• Implemented fall 2011: a web-scale discovery tool
• Expectations for Summon
• Continuous Summon Improvement (CSI)Group

The environment

• User changes
• Library changes
• Vendor changes
• Product changes
• Complex information environment
• Change + complexity = need to assess using multiple streams of feedback

Apps And Apple Devices: Productive Icloud Uses, Cyrus Ford Zarganj

Library Faculty Presentations

This program introduces useful apps for librarians who have two or more Apple devices such as an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook. You can learn how to use the iCloud, sync devices together, and about other useful apps for librarians to work on their projects from different places with different Apple devices without carrying files.

Clean Energy: The Economics Of Why And How, Adele C. Morris

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

One rationale for large public investments in clean energy technology points to concerns that have not been addressed by other policies, most notably greenhouse gas emissions and energy security. Another inspiration for clean energy policy suggests that strategic government investments would increase domestic firms' market share of a growing industry and thus help domestic firms and workers. This lecture examines the economic case for clean energy policy in the United States and addresses the issues state and local governments confront in building a clean energy industry.