巴基斯坦视角下的中印关系

中印两国对外政策的变化导致两国超越了敌对关系而进入到经济合作关系,但还是不能超越合作伙伴关系而成为友好邻邦,中印友好关系受到一系列因素的限制。中巴友好得到四个支柱的支撑,但中国开始用全球利益的视角看待巴基斯坦。巴基斯坦和中国需要发展其他具有建设性的和具体的合作领域。     

Procedural priming effects on spontaneous inference formation

Procedural priming refers to how the frequent or recent use of certain cognitive procedures on one task can lead to a greater propensity to use the same procedures on a subsequent task. In this paper, we demonstrate how procedural priming may be used to assess spontaneous inference formation in situations where the inference involves a relationship or rule. We do so in the context of the advertising cost–product quality rule, i.e., that “higher advertising expense implies higher product quality.” Prior research suggests that underlying the advertising cost–quality rule is a basic human attribution (the effort investment rule) that says, if someone invests a lot of effort in a cause, it implies a true belief in that cause. We prime the effort investment rule in an interpersonal context and show that this affects spontaneous generation of the advertising cost–quality rule in an advertising context.     

Estimation in a competing risks proportional hazards model under length-biased sampling with censoring

What population does the sample represent? The answer to this question is of crucial importance when estimating a survivor function in duration studies. As is well-known, in a stationary population, survival data obtained from a cross-sectional sample taken from the population at time $t_0$ represents not the target density $f(t)$ but its length-biased version proportional to $tf(t)$ , for $t>0$ . The problem of estimating survivor function from such length-biased samples becomes more complex, and interesting, in presence of competing risks and censoring. This paper lays out a sampling scheme related to a mixed Poisson process and develops nonparametric estimators of the survivor function of the target population assuming that the two independent competing risks have proportional hazards. Two cases are considered: with and without independent censoring before length biased sampling. In each case, the weak convergence of the process generated by the proposed estimator is proved. A well-known study of the duration in power for political leaders is used to illustrate our results. Finally, a simulation study is carried out in order to assess the finite sample behaviour of our estimators.     

The role of weighted distributions in stochastic modeling

C. R. Rao pointed out that “The role of statistical methodology is to extract the relevant information from a given sample to answer specific questions about the parent population” and raised the question “What population does a sample represent”? Wrong specification can lead to invalid inference giving rise to a third kind of error. Rao introduced the concept of weighted distributions as a method of adjustment applicable to many situations.

In this paper, we study the relationship between the weighted distributions and the parent distributions in the context of reliability and life testing. These relationships depend on the nature of the weight function and give rise to interesting connections between the different ageing criteria of the two distributions. As special cases, the length biased distribution, the equilibrium distribution of the backward and forward recurrence times and the residual life distribution, which frequently arise in practice, are studied and their relationships with the original distribution are examined. Their survival functions, failure rates and mean residual life functions are compared and some characterization results are established.     

Characterization of the geometric distribution by the form of a predictor

The problem of prodicting max (X₁X₂) given min(X₁X₂) is considered when Y₁and Y₂ are i.i.d random variables making positive integral values. It is provea tnat tne oest predictor is a linear Function or min(X₁,X₂); with unit slope Iff X₁, and X₂ have geometric distributions. As an extension of this result, the geometric distribution is characterized by the constancy of regression of min(X₁?X₂|, c) on inin(X₁,X₂) where c is any positive integer.     

A Note on the Moment Generating Function

A simple proof is given to show that there always exists a neighborhood of zero in which a moment generating function has a power series expansion. Thus, the relation between moments and derivatives of the moment generating function at zero can be obtained without resorting to postcalculus theorems.     

Characterization based on convex conditional mean function

This paper addresses the problem of characterizing a distribution by means of a convex conditional mean function. The characterization is proved, under mild conditions, by means of showing the uniqueness of the solution of a certain non-linear differential equation.