(Dis)locating nations in the World Cup: football fandom and the global geopolitics of affect

The World Cup, as a tournament that pits national teams against one another, initially seems to be a site where support for sports is tied to nations. However, situating this sporting event at the intersection of discourses of globalization, transnational circulation of capital and populations, and theories of fandom, our examination of diasporic populations found that the choice is not a simple one between ‘origin nation’ and ‘residence nation.’ Instead, the decision of which team to support relies much more on an attenuated, complex notion that we call transnational affinity. We examine this concept in relation to the context of transnational flow of players, media, spectators, and capital, contending that locating nations or national preference in the World Cup requires understanding the contemporary de- or trans-nationalization of not only sports but identity itself beyond the binary of national and global.     

Estimation of Deprivation Level Functions using a Numerical Rating Scale

Evaluating and quantifying human suffering in humanitarian operations offers an innovative and potentially powerful way to assess the performance of humanitarian logistics (HL) and help build optimization models. Previous studies have suggested deprivation cost as a metric and have estimated deprivation cost functions for water using willingness‐to‐pay. Our study proposes deprivation levels, defined as the degree of human suffering caused by lack of access to a good or service, and estimates deprivation level functions using a numerical rating scale. Analyzing data collected from respondents with and without disaster experience, we find that individuals in the latter category estimate deprivation differently from the beneficiaries of disaster relief. Our study demonstrates that deprivation levels can be expressed as logistic growth functions with a typical S‐shape, and that these can be integrated into HL optimization models to better account for human suffering.     

The Role of Media Exposure on Coordination in the Humanitarian Setting

Despite high demand and resource limitations, humanitarian organizations (HOs) typically do not share resources and/or coordinate in the field. While coordination enhances operational performance and saves costs, the general perception is that it dilutes the media attention that individual organizations might receive, and negatively influences their future donation income. In this study, we empirically unveil the impact of media exposure and operational performance on the donations obtained by HOs. Then, based on the empirical results, we develop a stylized model to characterize the structure of preferred coordination policies with respect to an organization's funding source and main mandate. Our findings shed light on the incentives and dynamics that drive behaviors in humanitarian operations and provide insights for policy makers on designing and implementing mechanisms that encourage humanitarian coordination.     

Varying kernel marginal density estimator for a positive time series

This paper analyses the large sample behaviour of a varying kernel density estimator of the marginal density of a non-negative stationary and ergodic time series that is also strongly mixing. In particular we obtain an approximation for bias, mean square error and establish asymptotic normality of this density estimator. We also derive an almost sure uniform consistency rate over bounded intervals of this estimator. A finite sample simulation shows some superiority of the proposed density estimator over the one based on a symmetric kernel.     

Improving the detection of unusual observations in high‐dimensional settings

Multivariate control charts are used to monitor stochastic processes for changes and unusual observations. Hotelling's T² statistic is calculated for each new observation and an out‐of‐control signal is issued if it goes beyond the control limits. However, this classical approach becomes unreliable as the number of variables p approaches the number of observations n, and impossible when p exceeds n. In this paper, we devise an improvement to the monitoring procedure in high‐dimensional settings. We regularise the covariance matrix to estimate the baseline parameter and incorporate a leave‐one‐out re‐sampling approach to estimate the empirical distribution of future observations. An extensive simulation study demonstrates that the new method outperforms the classical Hotelling T² approach in power, and maintains appropriate false positive rates. We demonstrate the utility of the method using a set of quality control samples collected to monitor a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry apparatus over a period of 67 days.     

Analysis of robust design experiments with time-dependent ordinal response characteristics: a quality improvement study from the horticulture industry

An approach to the analysis of time-dependent ordinal quality score data from robust design experiments is developed and applied to an experiment from commercial horticultural research, using concepts of product robustness and longevity that are familiar to analysts in engineering research. A two-stage analysis is used to develop models describing the effects of a number of experimental treatments on the rate of post-sales product quality decline. The first stage uses a polynomial function on a transformed scale to approximate the quality decline for an individual experimental unit using derived coefficients and the second stage uses a joint mean and dispersion model to investigate the effects of the experimental treatments on these derived coefficients. The approach, developed specifically for an application in horticulture, is exemplified with data from a trial testing ornamental plants that are subjected to a range of treatments during production and home-life. The results of the analysis show how a number of control and noise factors affect the rate of post-production quality decline. Although the model is used to analyse quality data from a trial on ornamental plants, the approach developed is expected to be more generally applicable to a wide range of other complex production systems.     

Order statistics from trivariate normal and -distributions in terms of generalized skew-normal and skew- distributions

We consider here a generalization of the skew-normal distribution, GSN(λ₁,λ₂,ρ), defined through a standard bivariate normal distribution with correlation ρ, which is a special case of the unified multivariate skew-normal distribution studied recently by Arellano-Valle and Azzalini [2006. On the unification of families of skew-normal distributions. Scand. J. Statist. 33, 561–574]. We then present some simple and useful properties of this distribution and also derive its moment generating function in an explicit form. Next, we show that distributions of order statistics from the trivariate normal distribution are mixtures of these generalized skew-normal distributions; thence, using the established properties of the generalized skew-normal distribution, we derive the moment generating functions of order statistics, and also present expressions for means and variances of these order statistics.Next, we introduce a generalized skew-t_ν distribution, which is a special case of the unified multivariate skew-elliptical distribution presented by Arellano-Valle and Azzalini [2006. On the unification of families of skew-normal distributions. Scand. J. Statist. 33, 561–574] and is in fact a three-parameter generalization of Azzalini and Capitanio's [2003. Distributions generated by perturbation of symmetry with emphasis on a multivariate skew t distribution. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. Ser. B 65, 367–389] univariate skew-t_ν form. We then use the relationship between the generalized skew-normal and skew-t_ν distributions to discuss some properties of generalized skew-t_ν as well as distributions of order statistics from bivariate and trivariate t_ν distributions. We show that these distributions of order statistics are indeed mixtures of generalized skew-t_ν distributions, and then use this property to derive explicit expressions for means and variances of these order statistics.     

Semiparametric estimation for count data through weighted distributions

This paper is concerned with semiparametric discrete kernel estimators when the unknown count distribution can be considered to have a general weighted Poisson form. The estimator is constructed by multiplying the Poisson estimate with a nonparametric discrete kernel-type estimate of the Poisson weight function. Comparisons are then carried out with the ordinary discrete kernel probability mass function estimators. The Poisson weight function is thus a local multiplicative correction factor, and is considered as the uniform measure to detect departures from the equidispersed Poisson distribution. In this way, the effects of dispersion and zero-proportion with respect to the standard Poisson distribution are also minimized. This method of estimation is also applied to the weighted binomial form for the count distribution having a finite support. The proposed estimators, in addition to being simple, easy-to-implement and effective, also outperform the competing nonparametric and parametric estimators in finite-sample situations. Two examples illustrate this new semiparametric estimation.     

Nonparametric control charts based on runs and Wilcoxon-type rank-sum statistics

In this article, we introduce three new distribution-free Shewhart-type control charts that exploit run and Wilcoxon-type rank-sum statistics to detect possible shifts of a monitored process. Exact formulae for the alarm rate, the run length distribution, and the average run length (ARL) are all derived. A key advantage of these charts is that, due to their nonparametric nature, the false alarm rate (FAR) and in-control run length distribution is the same for all continuous process distributions. Tables are provided for the implementation of the charts for some typical FAR values. Furthermore, a numerical study carried out reveals that the new charts are quite flexible and efficient in detecting shifts to Lehmann-type out-of-control situations.