Search results for "Simplicity"
showing 10 items of 47 documents
Dowsing from the Late Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century: The Practices, Uses and Interpretations of an Element of European Magic
2012
Dowsing was an element of European folk magic. With the help of simple wooden rods persons with special magical abilities were supposed to be able to find hidden objects, from buried treasures to subterranean springs. The rise of dowsing can be traced to its use in the emerging mining centres of Central Europe around 1500. However, dowsers soon claimed nearly universal magical knowledge. Even though dowsing encountered strong scepticism, a number of early modern scholars and scientists tried to explain the alleged efficacy of the rod in a number of different ways, ranging from demonological arguments to the atom theory, and the idea of an all-encompassing world spirit. From the eighteenth …
Statistical methods for determining components non-liniarities, from thermoluminescent devices
2016
Thermoluminescent (TLD) dosimeters enjoy wide usage due to low cost and simplicity of use. They have however large errors at high doses in mixed-radiation fields, where non-linear effects occur. Algorithms based on the Akaike criterion [1] are presented for determining the maximal (physically meaningful) polynomial order with which the non-linearities are modeled. This depends on the number of points existing on a curve and on the points' errors.
Fooled by Data-Mining: The Real-Life Performance of Market Timing with Moving Averages
2013
In this paper, we revisit the myths regarding the superior performance of market timing strategies based on moving average and time-series momentum rules. These active timing strategies are very appealing to investors because of their extraordinary simplicity and because they promise substantial advantages over their passive counterparts (see, for example, the paper by M. Faber (2007) "A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation" published in the Journal of Wealth Management). However, the ``too good to be true" reported performance of these market timing rules raises a legitimate concern as to whether this performance is realistic and whether investors can expect that future perfo…
Statistical analysis when dealing with astigmatism: assessment of different spherocylindrical notations.
2001
Ophthalmic epidemiological studies frequently deal with ocular refractive errors, which are commonly expressed in the form sphere/cylinder x axis. However, this representation has been shown not to be the most suitable one for performing statistical analysis. Although alternative analytical and graphic methods to represent this kind of data have been developed, these formalisms have often gone unnoticed by researchers, despite their usefulness and versatility. Besides, there has been no discussion of how each of them fits in with a particular type of study. In this paper, several mathematical representations of dioptric power are revisited in a comprehensive way. The aim is to encourage res…
On Computability of Decaying and Nondecaying States in Quantum Systems with Cantor Spectra
2003
We study Hamiltonians with singular spectra of Cantor type with a constant ratio of dissection. The decay properties of the states in such systems depend on the nature of the dissection rate that can be characterized in terms of the algebraic number theory. We show that in spite of simplicity of the considered model the computational modeling of nondecaying states is in general impossible.
Neutrino oscillation probabilities through the looking glass
2019
In this paper we review different expansions for neutrino oscillation probabilities in matter in the context of long-baseline neutrino experiments. We examine the accuracy and computational efficiency of different exact and approximate expressions. We find that many of the expressions used in the literature are not precise enough for the next generation of long-baseline experiments, but several of them are while maintaining comparable simplicity. The results of this paper can be used as guidance to both phenomenologists and experimentalists when implementing the various oscillation expressions into their analysis tools.
Recent results from the MAID and Dubna-Mainz-Taipei PWA analysis
2008
The unitary isobar model MAID2007 has been developed to analyze the world data of pion photo- and electroproduction. The model contains both a common background and several resonance terms. The background is unitarized according to the K-matrix prescription, and the 13 four-star resonances with masses below 2 GeV are described by appropriately unitarized Breit-Wigner forms. The data have been analyzed by both single-energy and global fits, and the transverse and longitudinal helicity amplitudes have been extracted for the four-star resonances below 2 GeV. Because of its inherent simplicity, MAID2007 is well adopted for predictions and analysis of the observables in pion photo- and electropr…
A Learning Automata Based Solution to Service Selection in Stochastic Environments
2010
Published version of a paper published in the book: Trends in Applied Intelligent Systems. Also available on SpringerLink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13033-5_22 With the abundance of services available in today’s world, identifying those of high quality is becoming increasingly difficult. Reputation systems can offer generic recommendations by aggregating user provided opinions about service quality, however, are prone to ballot stuffing and badmouthing . In general, unfair ratings may degrade the trustworthiness of reputation systems, and changes in service quality over time render previous ratings unreliable. In this paper, we provide a novel solution to the above problems based …
Plantinga’s Haecceitism and Simple Quantified Modal Logic
2017
In a series of papers Alvin Plantinga argued for a serious actualist modal semantics based on the notions of possible world, understood as maximal possible state of affairs, and of individual essence (haecceity). Plantinga’s actualism is known as haecceitism. In spite of the fact that haecceitism has been thought by Plantinga to require a Kripke-style semantics, the aim of this paper is to show that it is compatible with constant domains semantics and the simplest quantified modal logic. I will argue that not only does this approach have all the advantages of a greater simplicity in combining quantification and modalities, but also it better conforms to the actualist program.
Economic Allocation in Life Cycle Assessment The State of the Art and Discussion of Examples
2012
Summary This article examines methods for analyzing allocation in life cycle assessment (LCA); it focuses on comparisons of economic allocation with other feasible alternatives. The International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) guideline 14044 indicates that economic allocation should only be used as a last resort, when other methods are not suitable. However, the LCA literature reports several examples of the use of economic allocation. This is due partly to its simplicity and partly to its ability to illustrate the properties of complex systems. Sometimes a price summarizes complex attributes of product or service quality that cannot be easily measured by physical criteria. On th…