Reduced-rank regression: A useful determinant identity

We formulate an identity for the determinant of a product involving rectangular matrices. The identity can be used to derive the maximum likelihood estimator in reduced-rank regressions with Gaussian innovations. Furthermore, the identity sheds light on the structure of the estimation problem that arises when the reduced-rank parameters are subject to additional constraints.     

Bayesian inversion of geoelectrical resistivity data

Summary. Enormous quantities of geoelectrical data are produced daily and often used for large scale reservoir modelling. To interpret these data requires reliable and efficient inversion methods which adequately incorporate prior information and use realistically complex modelling structures. We use models based on random coloured polygonal graphs as a powerful and flexible modelling framework for the layered composition of the Earth and we contrast our approach with earlier methods based on smooth Gaussian fields. We demonstrate how the reconstruction algorithm may be efficiently implemented through the use of multigrid Metropolis–coupled Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and illustrate the method on a set of field data.     

The Flip Side of Holland Type Congruence: Incongruence and Job Satisfaction

This study examined the relationship between Holland type (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional; Holland, 1959, 1997) congruence and incongruence (i.e., lack of fit between an occupation's 3‐letter Holland code and a person's lowest 3 Holland interest types) and tested whether incongruence predicts unique variance in satisfaction beyond congruence. Results from an employee sample suggest that incongruence and congruence are distinct constructs (in that they correlated r = ‐.32) and that beyond congruence, incongruence did not predict variance in overall or intrinsic job satisfaction. Counselors are urged to assess both congruence and incongruence, but to focus on helping clients to identify best‐fitting occupations when possible, rather than to merely avoid incongruent occupations.     

理解性阅读--中国哲学的解释方法

莫卡德的“反方法论的”方法诉诸“人格”。他对不进行解释的阅读方法的强调加强了汉学天生具有的错误倾向。对他来讲,解释的方法并不是用以证明什么是正确的,而是让人向一种典范性的人格转变,这种人格有一种特别的权威,可以宣布什么是正确的。而正确的解释来自不同文化的文本的方法,应该是探寻其特定语境中的语言使用的规范,由于这些规范我们才能在解释中尽量少犯错误。     

Complement to a comparative analysis of heuristics for the <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-median problem

A recent comparison of evolutionary, neural network, and scatter search heuristics for solving the p-median problem is completed by (i) gathering or obtaining exact optimal values in order to evaluate errors precisely, and (ii) including results obtained with several variants of a variable neighborhood search (VNS) heuristic. For a first, well-known, series of instances, the average errors of the evolutionary and neural network heuristics are over 10% and more than 1000 times larger than that of VNS. For a second series, this error is about 3% while the errors of the parallel VNS and of a hybrid heuristic are about 0.01% and that of parallel scatter search even smaller.     

The distribution of a federal entitlement: The case of adoption assistance

Adoption assistance entitlements support children whose birth parents cannot care for them. The entitlements are meant to offset the extra cost to adoptive families of raising children whose early adverse experiences leave them with special needs. Unlike other Social Security Act programs, adoption assistance is not federally administered but is administered by states or localities. State-to-state variation in administration of this federal entitlement leads to unequal treatment of similar children. Moreover, although adoption assistance is an entitlement for children, payments made by many states are systematically correlated with the characteristics of adoptive families.