Fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making for grouping of electronic components in process planning

The grouping of objects problem has a wide-range of applications in industry. In electronic assembly planning, grouping components play an important role as they can reduce drastically the number of possible sequences of operations. This paper considers the grouping problem of electronic component families based on their multiple attributes. The difficulty lies with the conflict of criteria when selecting a certain component into a group. In order to overcome this difficulty, the proposed approach introduces the concept of fuzziness, which expresses the degree of concordance on the decision. An example of classification electronic components is presented to illustrate the proposed method.     

A consistency algorithm based on information theory

This paper provides a geometric‐mean solution to the consistency problem of multidimensional demographic projection models, based on the constrained minimization of an entropy function. A comparison with the existing harmonic‐mean solution yields many similarities and almost no differences: both solutions satisfy the properties of availability, monotonicity, homogeneity, competition, and symmetry, and, for both solutions, there is a convenient one‐to‐one relationship between adjustments in aggregate numbers of events, on the one hand, and age‐specific numbers of events, on the other hand. However, one major advantage of the geometric mean is that its corresponding distance function is firmly based on (information) theory.     

A neural' network applied to tlie calculation of lyapunov exponents 1

Chaotic deterministics systems are characterised by the instability of orbits on an attractor. The largest Lyapunov exponent measures on average the exponential growth rate of small deviations along an orbit and gives as such an indication whether or not the dynamic generating process is unstable. The direct method for calculation of the Lyapunov exponent, based on finite differences as formulated by the so-called Wolf-algorithm,fails on medium sized data sets. Alternatively, one can use a neural network with backpropagation to estimate a data generating function. This so-calletl indirect method enables us to recover the theoretical value of the largest Lyapunov exponent in several examples.     

Uniform strong convergence results for the conditional kaplan-meier estimator and its quantiles

We consider a fixed design model in which the responses are possibly right censored. The aim of this paper is to establish some important almost sure convergence properties of the Kaplan-Meier type estimator for the lifetime distribution at a given covariate value. We also consider the corresponding quantile estimator and obtain a modulus of continuity result. Our rates of uniform strong convergence are obtained via exponential probability bounds.     

Ist der F?deralismus in der Statistik noch zeitgem???

Ohne Zusammenfassung Pers?nliche Vorbemerkung: Bei dem folgenden Beitrag handelt es sich um eine gekürzte Fassung eines Vortrags am 10.11.2005 vor dem Statistischen Ausschuss des BDI in Düsseldorf. Ihm liegen neben zahlreichen internen Papieren der amtlichen Statistik viele z.T. sehr lange Gespr?che mit führenden Vertretern der amtlichen Statistik, und zwar sowohl des Statistischen Bundesamtes (StBA) als auch der Landes?mter (StL?) zugrunde. Allen Gespr?chspartnern sei herzlich gedankt. Aus den vielen oft sehr gegens?tzlichen Standpunkten und überlegungen habe ich viel gelernt. Es mag gewagt erscheinen, wenn man sich als Au?enstehender einer so brisanten Thematik widmet. Andererseits hat man in einer solchen Position aber auch mehr Freiheiten als „Betroffene”.     

The Internationalization of Educational and Vocational Guidance

The authors identify and discuss the main themes from the discourse on the internationalization of educational and vocational guidance at the 2004 Symposium on International Perspectives on Career Development, cosponsored by the International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance and the National Career Development Association. Participants from 46 countries discussed international perspectives on and comparative features of educational and vocational guidance. They concentrated on issues of designing and adapting models, methods, and materials for career education and counseling. Three additional themes revolved around the importance of public policy initiatives, training enough practitioners to meet the growing international need for career services, and the promise of information technology for expanding the delivery of educational and vocational guidance and for supporting career counselors.     

Actual and de facto Childlessness in Old Age: Evidence and Implications from East Java,Indonesia

The demographic study of child supply has long concentrated on the implications of reproductive excess, rather than a lack of children. In recent years attention to population aging has begun to redress this emphasis, but even in aging research the comparative study of childlessness has a low profile. Data collected as part of anthropological and demographic research on aging in Indonesia are used to question current assumptions and to introduce issues and concepts that shed new light on current levels and experiences of childlessness. In our East Javanese study community 25 percent of the elderly have no living children, and another 15 percent have one child. Provincial and national data indicate that these findings are part of a wider pattern, corroborated by historical evidence from Indonesia, Europe, and populations elsewhere in the world. Analysis of the East Javanese data shows that childlessness is a composite category. Demographic childlessness occurs where a combination of proximate determinants (nuptiality, mortality, primary and pathological sterility) leads to no childbearing and child survival. De facto childlessness arises where there is a lack of support from any children. Actual childlessness aggregates demographic and de facto childlessness, net of adoption or remarriage where these provide alternative access to children. Analysis also takes into account the practices of patronage, charity, and kin support to assess the implications of childlessness in old age where state support is lacking.     

Socially Structured Games

We generalize the concept of a cooperative non-transferable utility game by introducing a socially structured game. In a socially structured game every coalition of players can organize themselves according to one or more internal organizations to generate payoffs. Each admissible internal organization on a coalition yields a set of payoffs attainable by the members of this coalition. The strengths of the players within an internal organization depend on the structure of the internal organization and are represented by an exogenously given power vector. More powerful players have the power to take away payoffs of the less powerful players as long as those latter players are not able to guarantee their payoffs by forming a different internal organization within some coalition in which they have more power. We introduce the socially stable core as a solution concept that contains those payoffs that are both stable in an economic sense, i.e., belong to the core of the underlying cooperative game, and stable in a social sense, i.e., payoffs are sustained by a collection of internal organizations of coalitions for which power is distributed over all players in a balanced way. The socially stable core is a subset and therefore a refinement of the core. We show by means of examples that in many cases the socially stable core is a very small subset of the core. We will state conditions for which the socially stable core is non-empty. In order to derive this result, we formulate a new intersection theorem that generalizes the KKMS intersection theorem. We also discuss the relationship between social stability and the wellknown concept of balancedness for NTU-games, a sufficient condition for non-emptiness of the core. In particular we give an example of a socially structured game that satisfies social stability and therefore has a non-empty core, but whose induced NTU-game does not satisfy balancedness in the general sense of Billera.      

Searching for critical issues in philanthropy

Who Really Cares: America's Charity Divide—Who Gives, Who Doesn't, and Why It Matters, by Arthur C. Brooks. New York: Basic Books, 2006. 256 pp., $26.00 cloth, $16.95 paper. Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, by Joan Roelofs. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 270 pp., $29.95 paper. The Foundation: A Great American Secret, by Joel Fleishman. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007. 384 pp., $27.95 cloth. The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune, by Conor O'Clery. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007. 352 pp., $26.95 cloth.