Estimating household structure in ancient China by using historical data: a latent class analysis of partially missing patterns

Summary.  Social data often contain missing information. The problem is inevitably severe when analysing historical data. Conventionally, researchers analyse complete records only. Listwise deletion not only reduces the effective sample size but also may result in biased estimation, depending on the missingness mechanism. We analyse household types by using population registers from ancient China (618–907 AD) by comparing a simple classification, a latent class model of the complete data and a latent class model of the complete and partially missing data assuming four types of ignorable and non-ignorable missingness mechanisms. The findings show that either a frequency classification or a latent class analysis using the complete records only yielded biased estimates and incorrect conclusions in the presence of partially missing data of a non-ignorable mechanism. Although simply assuming ignorable or non-ignorable missing data produced consistently similarly higher estimates of the proportion of complex households, a specification of the relationship between the latent variable and the degree of missingness by a row effect uniform association model helped to capture the missingness mechanism better and improved the model fit.     

Bayesian networks for imputation

Summary.  Bayesian networks are particularly useful for dealing with high dimensional statistical problems. They allow a reduction in the complexity of the phenomenon under study by representing joint relationships between a set of variables through conditional relationships between subsets of these variables. Following Thibaudeau and Winkler we use Bayesian networks for imputing missing values. This method is introduced to deal with the problem of the consistency of imputed values: preservation of statistical relationships between variables ( statistical consistency ) and preservation of logical constraints in data ( logical consistency ). We perform some experiments on a subset of anonymous individual records from the 1991 UK population census.     

Fast retraction of evidence in a probabilistic expert system

We present and justify a propagation algorithm to facilitate the simultaneous calculation, for every node in a probabilistic exper system of the distribution of the associated random quantity, conditional on all the evidence obtained about the remaining nodes.     

斜腿刚构桥几何布局的优化设计

采用数学规划的方法从静力和动力两方面对斜腿刚构桥的几何布局进行优化设计。静力优化设计的优化目标是截面截面应力平方均值最小，动力优化设计的优化目标是结构自振周期平方和最小。采用了直接搜索法寻优。通过算例可知，这两种优化设计方法均可行，且均为刚性设计。     

Factor analysis for ranked data with application to a job selection attitude survey

Summary.  Factor analysis is a powerful tool to identify the common characteristics among a set of variables that are measured on a continuous scale. In the context of factor analysis for non-continuous-type data, most applications are restricted to item response data only. We extend the factor model to accommodate ranked data. The Monte Carlo expectation–maximization algorithm is used for parameter estimation at which the E-step is implemented via the Gibbs sampler. An analysis based on both complete and incomplete ranked data (e.g. rank the top q out of k items) is considered. Estimation of the factor scores is also discussed. The method proposed is applied to analyse a set of incomplete ranked data that were obtained from a survey that was carried out in GuangZhou, a major city in mainland China, to investigate the factors affecting people's attitude towards choosing jobs.     

冗余度机器人的运动规划碰撞算法

在考虑了操作机的关节极限、自碰撞和静态障碍物的情况下,从给定的初始位形出发,发现一条到末端效应器目标位置和姿态的相连可到达路径。方法给出了机器人操作机点到点逆运动学问题求解算法,利用碰撞算法实现了冗余度机器人运动规划,仿真验证了该方法的有效性,并表明了该方法具有较大的实用价值。     

基于价格的消费者信息搜寻过程研究

消费者在购买商品之前,信息搜集是一个必不可少的阶段。消费者的信息搜集过程是比较复杂的。文章通过构建信息搜寻模型,并对影响信息搜集的因素进行分析,认为产品的价格是影响信息搜集量及其持续时间的主要因素,即消费者在购买高价商品时花费的时间远远大于购买低价商品所花费的时间,并用实例进行验证。     

动静态属性数据相结合的客户分类方法研究

研究了一种客户动态、静态属性数据相结合的客户分类方法。提出了客户时间序列的加权处理方法,并应用客户时间序列的统计特征作为聚类特征向量,采用混合式遗传算法对客户聚类,使每一类客户具有相似的时序特征。在此基础上将聚类结果与客户的静态属性数据相结合,对客户进一步分类。实验结果表明,与传统的基于静态属性数据的客户分类方法相比,本文的方法提高了客户分类的准确性。     

Bayesian analysis of a marked point process: Application in seismic hazard assessment

Point processes are the stochastic models most suitable for describing physical phenomena that appear at irregularly spaced times, such as the earthquakes. These processes are uniquely characterized by their conditional intensity, that is, by the probability that an event will occur in the infinitesimal interval (t, t+Δt), given the history of the process up tot. The seismic phenomenon displays different behaviours on different time and size scales; in particular, the occurrence of destructive shocks over some centuries in a seismogenic region may be explained by the elastic rebound theory. This theory has inspired the so-called stress release models: their conditional intensity translates the idea that an earthquake produces a sudden decrease in the amount of strain accumulated gradually over time along a fault, and the subsequent event occurs when the stress exceeds the strength of the medium. This study has a double objective: the formulation of these models in the Bayesian framework, and the assignment to each event of a mark, that is its magnitude, modelled through a distribution that depends at timet on the stress level accumulated up to that instant. The resulting parameter space is constrained and dependent on the data, complicating Bayesian computation and analysis. We have resorted to Monte Carlo methods to solve these problems.     

非负权最短路问题的一种简便算法

提出了非负权最短路问题的一种新算法。与有名的Ｄｉｊｋｓｔｒａ算法相比，这种算法计算简便、容易理解、易于编程。