Search results for "probability"
showing 10 items of 3417 documents
Conflict in Somalia: impact on child undernutrition
2017
Background: In Somalia, protracted conflict and persistent drought have caused population displacement and livelihood destruction. As a result, there is widespread child malnutrition. We aimed to determine the effects of conflict on wasting and stunting among children aged 6-59 months in Somalia 2007–2010.\ud \ud Methods: Data were from household nutritional surveys from 2007 to 2010, with 1,066 clusters covering 73,778 children, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project and remote sensing. We used Bayesian hierarchical spatial-temporal regression methods to examine the effects of conflict on wasting and stunting. A preliminary model included individual, household and envir…
Unemployment Transitions to Stable and Unstable Jobs Before and During the Crisis
2014
Using administrative records data from Spanish Social Security, we analyse the pattern and the determinants of individual unemployment benefit spell durations. We compare a period of expansion (2005-2007) and the recent recession (2009-2011), allowing us to determine the impact of the current crisis. In line with the duality that characterizes the Spanish labour market, we distinguish between exits to a stable job and exits to an unstable job. We estimate a Multivariate Mixed Proportional Hazard Model for each time period. We find similar effects of the crisis for stable and unstable jobs, which are particularly strong in the first year of the spell. Moreover, slight negative duration depen…
Improving transferability strategies for debris flow susceptibility assessment: Application to the Saponara and Itala catchments (Messina, Italy)
2017
Abstract Debris flows can be described as rapid gravity-induced mass movements controlled by topography that are usually triggered as a consequence of storm rainfalls. One of the problems when dealing with debris flow recognition is that the eroded surface is usually very shallow and it can be masked by vegetation or fast weathering as early as one-two years after a landslide has occurred. For this reason, even areas that are highly susceptible to debris flow might suffer of a lack of reliable landslide inventories. However, these inventories are necessary for susceptibility assessment. Model transferability, which is based on calibrating a susceptibility model in a training area in order t…
Weak convergence to the coalescent in neutral population models
1999
For a large class of neutral population models the asymptotics of the ancestral structure of a sample of n individuals (or genes) is studied, if the total population size becomes large. Under certain conditions and under a well-known time-scaling, which can be expressed in terms of the coalescence probabilities, weak convergence in D E ([0,∞)) to the coalescent holds. Further the convergence behaviour of the jump chain of the ancestral process is studied. The results are used to approximate probabilities which are of certain interest in applications, for example hitting probabilities.
A characterization of the distribution of a weighted sum of gamma variables through multiple hypergeometric functions
2008
Applying the theory on multiple hypergeometric functions, the distribution of a weighted convolution of Gamma variables is characterized through explicit forms for the probability density function, the distribution function and the moments about the origin. The main results unify some previous contributions in the literature on nite convolution of Gamma distributions. We deal with computational aspects that arise from the representations in terms of multiple hypergeometric functions, introducing a new integral representation for the fourth Lauricella function F (n) D and its con uent form (n) 2 , suitable for numerical integration; some graphics of the probability density function and distr…
Generalized Bayesian Pursuit: A Novel Scheme for Multi-Armed Bernoulli Bandit Problems
2011
In the last decades, a myriad of approaches to the multi-armed bandit problem have appeared in several different fields. The current top performing algorithms from the field of Learning Automata reside in the Pursuit family, while UCB-Tuned and the e-greedy class of algorithms can be seen as state-of-the-art regret minimizing algorithms. Recently, however, the Bayesian Learning Automaton (BLA) outperformed all of these, and other schemes, in a wide range of experiments. Although seemingly incompatible, in this paper we integrate the foundational learning principles motivating the design of the BLA, with the principles of the so-called Generalized Pursuit algorithm (GPST), leading to the Gen…
Monte Carlo simulation in phylogenies: an application to test the constancy of evolutionary rates.
1994
Monte Carlo simulation has commonly been used in phylogenetic studies to test different tree-reconstruction methods, and consequently, its application for testing evolutionary models can be considered as a natural extension of this usage. Repetitive simulation of a given evolutionary process, under the restrictions imposed by the model to be tested, along a determinate tree topology allow the estimate of probability distributions for the desired parameters. Next, the phylogenetic tree can be reconstructed again without the constraints of the model, and the parameter of interest, derived from this tree, can be compared to the corresponding probability distribution derived from the restricted…
Mixed Phases, Phase Transitions, Stability of Matter
2016
Phase mixtures and phase transitions are two major themes of thermodynamics. A third one, related to the former, is the stability of macroscopic matter around us. Mixed phases can be analyzed and illustrated in a nice geometric way. Phase transitions are dealt with from the point of view of classical thermodynamics as well as in the framework of models of statistical mechanics.
Spatio-Chromatic Adaptation via Higher-Order Canonical Correlation Analysis of Natural Images
2014
Independent component and canonical correlation analysis are two general-purpose statistical methods with wide applicability. In neuroscience, independent component analysis of chromatic natural images explains the spatio-chromatic structure of primary cortical receptive fields in terms of properties of the visual environment. Canonical correlation analysis explains similarly chromatic adaptation to different illuminations. But, as we show in this paper, neither of the two methods generalizes well to explain both spatio-chromatic processing and adaptation at the same time. We propose a statistical method which combines the desirable properties of independent component and canonical correlat…
Selectivity in Probabilistic Causality: Where Psychology Runs Into Quantum Physics
2011
Given a set of several inputs into a system (e.g., independent variables characterizing stimuli) and a set of several stochastically non-independent outputs (e.g., random variables describing different aspects of responses), how can one determine, for each of the outputs, which of the inputs it is influenced by? The problem has applications ranging from modeling pairwise comparisons to reconstructing mental processing architectures to conjoint testing. A necessary and sufficient condition for a given pattern of selective influences is provided by the Joint Distribution Criterion, according to which the problem of "what influences what" is equivalent to that of the existence of a joint distr…