The NISO Institutional Identifiers (I2) Working Group

Recognizing the importance of the institution as a critical entity in any information model, from information creation to information sharing, NISO (National Information Standards Organization) has formed a working group to develop a standard (Z39.94) for identifying institutions. This installment of “Standards Update” will discuss the mission and objectives of that working group and provide some information about its timelines for developing the standard.     

Bayesian break-point forecasting in parallel time series,with application to university admissions

A regular supply of applicants to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario is provided by 65 high schools. Each high school can be characterized by a series of grading standards which change from year to year. To aid admissions decisions, it is desirable to forecast the current year's grading standards for all 65 high schools using grading standards estimated from past year's data. We develop and apply a Bayesian break-point time-series model that generates forecasts which involve smoothing across time for each school and smoothing across schools. “Break point” refers to a point in time which divides the past into the “old past” and the “recent past” where the yearly observations in the recent past are exchangeable with the observations in the year to be forecast. We show that this model works fairly well when applied to 11 years of Queen's University data. The model can be applied to other data sets with the parallel time-series structure and short history, and can be extended in several ways to more complicated structures.     

The NISO Institutional Identifiers (I2) Working Group

Abstract

Recognizing the importance of the institution as a critical entity in any information model, from information creation to information sharing, NISO (National Information Standards Organization) has formed a working group to develop a standard (Z39.94) for identifying institutions. This installment of “Standards Update” will discuss the mission and objectives of that working group and provide some information about its timelines for developing the standard.     

Inference and Decision Making for 21st-Century Drug Development and Approval

ABSTRACT

The cost and time of pharmaceutical drug development continue to grow at rates that many say are unsustainable. These trends have enormous impact on what treatments get to patients, when they get them and how they are used. The statistical framework for supporting decisions in regulated clinical development of new medicines has followed a traditional path of frequentist methodology. Trials using hypothesis tests of “no treatment effect” are done routinely, and the p-value < 0.05 is often the determinant of what constitutes a “successful” trial. Many drugs fail in clinical development, adding to the cost of new medicines, and some evidence points blame at the deficiencies of the frequentist paradigm. An unknown number effective medicines may have been abandoned because trials were declared “unsuccessful” due to a p-value exceeding 0.05. Recently, the Bayesian paradigm has shown utility in the clinical drug development process for its probability-based inference. We argue for a Bayesian approach that employs data from other trials as a “prior” for Phase 3 trials so that synthesized evidence across trials can be utilized to compute probability statements that are valuable for understanding the magnitude of treatment effect. Such a Bayesian paradigm provides a promising framework for improving statistical inference and regulatory decision making.     

Sharp Bounds on a Class of Copulas with known Values at Several Points

We derive best-possible bounds on the class of copulas with known values at several points, under the assumption that the points are either in “increasing order” or in “decreasing order”. These bounds may be used to establish best-possible bounds on Kendall's τ and Spearman's ρ, for such copulas. An important special case is when the values of a copula are known at several diagonal points. We also use our results to establish best-possible bounds on the distribution function of the sum of two random variables with known marginal distributions when the values of the joint distribution function are known at several points.     

企业的“双益”、“三力”及其量化模型

所谓“双益”是指经济效益与所有者权益;所谓“三力”是指营运能力、盈利能力与偿债能力。这些都是企业管理与财务分析中常见的经济概念,这里无需详释。本文的目的是要从企业管理和财务管理的目标出发,从定性和定量两方面来揭示“双益”与“三力“之间的内在联系,并寻求表现这种联系的量化模式,提供一种财务或企业经济活动内在的思路和手段。     

SCOAP3 and Open Access

SCOAP3 is an innovative Open Access initiative for publishing in high-energy physics. The model is viewed by many as a potential solution to multiple issues related to the financial crisis, the peer review system, scholarly communication, and the need to support institutional repositories. This installment of “The Balance Point” presents articles written by three Open Access advocates, outlining the SCOAP3 proposal, benefits of participation, and some of the roles libraries, publishers and scientists can play in making important changes to scholarly communication. Contributors discuss scalability and transferability issues of SCOAP3, as well as other matters of concern.     

Sequential design for response surface model fit in computer experiments using derivative information

This article considers the problem of response surface model fit in computer experiment. We propose a new sequential adaptive design through the “maximum expected improvement” approach. The new method defines the improvement by the first order approximation from the known design points using derivative information and sequentially seeks point in area with large curvature and variance. A version with distance penalty is also considered. We demonstrate their superiority over some existing methods by simulation.     

SCOAP3 and Open Access

Abstract

SCOAP3 is an innovative Open Access initiative for publishing in high-energy physics. The model is viewed by many as a potential solution to multiple issues related to the financial crisis, the peer review system, scholarly communication, and the need to support institutional repositories. This installment of “The Balance Point” presents articles written by three Open Access advocates, outlining the SCOAP3 proposal, benefits of participation, and some of the roles libraries, publishers and scientists can play in making important changes to scholarly communication. Contributors discuss scalability and transferability issues of SCOAP3, as well as other matters of concern.     

Monitoring cyclical processes. A non-parametric approach

Forecasting the turning points in business cycles is important to economic and political decisions. Time series of business indicators often exhibit cycles that cannot easily be modelled with a parametric function. This article presents a method for monitoring time-series with cycles in order to detect the turning points. A non-parametric estimation procedure that uses only monotonicity restrictions is used. The methodology of statistical surveillance is used for developing a system for early warnings of cycle turning points in monthly data. In monitoring, the inference situation is one of repeated decisions. Measurements of the performance of a method of surveillance are, for example, average run length and expected delay to a correct alarm. The properties of the proposed monitoring system are evaluated by means of a simulation study. The false alarms are controlled by a fixed median run length to the first false alarm. Results are given on the median delay time to a correct alarm for two situations: a peak after two and three years respectively .     

区域增加值贸易带动的综合就业效应测算

文章从增加值贸易视角出发,通过构建2012年和2015年中国区域-世界投入产出嵌套表,结合增加值贸易的就业投入系数,测算并比较分析了区域增加值贸易带动的就业创造、就业溢出和就业反馈效应。结果显示:考察期内中国区域增加值带动的就业效应主要源于国内贸易,且从发展趋势来看,对国内贸易带动就业的依赖程度在进一步上升;中国区域增加值贸易带动的就业效应多表现为就业创造>就业溢出>就业反馈,其中直接带动的就业创造效应开始减弱,间接带动的溢出及反馈效应成为区域就业增长的主要来源。因此,我国应进一步整合优化以内需为基础的国内价值链作为就业"稳定器",稳步推进国内价值链与全球价值链的对接作为全球化条件下实现产业升级和促就业的"助力器"。     

How fair can employers be?

In this article we examine three concepts of fairness in employment decisions. Two of these concepts are widely known in the literature as “Fairness 1”and “Fairness 2”. The third concept, which we refer to as “Fairness 0”, is defined and introduced here. Fairness 0 applies to the hiring stage, whereas Fairness 1 and Fairness 2 apply to the placement or promotion stages of employment. Our results have important policy implications. We show that the three concepts of fairness can only rarely be achieved simultaneously.     

Electronic Resources Workflow: Design,Analysis and Technologies for an Overdue Solution

During the summer of 2013, a joint team involving Duke University Libraries and IBM spent three months configuring IBM Business Process Manager to improve electronic resources workflows in the Libraries’ Technical Services department. The resulting workflow showcases the application's ability to transform the management of online databases. This article will provide an overview of the “before” and “after” database workflow, with a demo of the new system and its integration points with other tools.     

Some Uses for Distribution-Fitting Software in Teaching Statistics

Statistics courses now make extensive use of menu-driven, interactive computer software. This article presents some insight as to how a new class of PC-based statistical software, called “distribution-fitting” software, can be used in teaching various courses in statistics.     

Open Access,Equity, and Strong Economy in Developing and Transition Countries: Policy Perspective

Since January 2007, Ukraine has a law mandating open access to publicly funded research. Most of the Parliament members supported it. The law is already the second parliamentary inquiry mandating the Cabinet of Ministers to take actions on creating favorable conditions for developing open access repositories in archives, libraries, museums, and scientific and research institutions with open access conditions to publicly funded research. Nevertheless, the “bottom-up” approaches of Ukrainian universities and research centers as well as political support from the principle legislative body in the country, have still not resulted in a network of well-functioning institutional repositories. The article highlights recent open access developments and presents the lists of open access benefits for the developing and transition countries and regions.     

Parameter estimation in dynamic models

In this paper we study the parameter estimation of a first-order dynamic model for intervention and transfer function analysis, A new parameterization is proposed to avoid the “overshoot” problem in nonlinear estimation in a frequently used parameterization (Box and Tiao, 1975).     

Inference Problems Involving Moment Determinacy of Distributions

We describe diverse stochastic inference problems whose solution essentially depends on the moment determinacy of some distributions involved. For a variety of stochastic models we ask questions such as “how to identify a distribution if knowing its moments?” “how asymmetric can be a distribution with zero odd order moments?” “is any mixture model identifiable?” For specific models we provide answers, motivating arguments, and illustrations. Some challenging open questions are outlined.     

Challenges in Teaching Short Courses by an Academic Department: The University of Florida Experience

“A Week of Short Courses” is the title given by the Department of Statistics at the University of Florida to its offerings each spring. The offerings are short courses, each lasting 2 1/2 days. The program began in the spring of 1991 with four courses, and has grown to six courses in 1994. During this four-year period the Department of Statistics has faced many challenges that are addressed in this paper.     

A network epidemic model for online community commissioning data

A statistical model assuming a preferential attachment network, which is generated by adding nodes sequentially according to a few simple rules, usually describes real-life networks better than a model assuming, for example, a Bernoulli random graph, in which any two nodes have the same probability of being connected, does. Therefore, to study the propagation of “infection” across a social network, we propose a network epidemic model by combining a stochastic epidemic model and a preferential attachment model. A simulation study based on the subsequent Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm reveals an identifiability issue with the model parameters. Finally, the network epidemic model is applied to a set of online commissioning data.     

Exact estimability of the transfer functions of linear systems

In this paper we show the exact estimability of the transfer functions of linear stochastic systems under two sets of conditions.The main point is to demonstrate the measurability of the “identifying” function.The estimability od the transfer functions is not only of interest for its own but also for the estimability of the system parameters.