A new nonparametric bivariate test for two sample location problem

A strictly nonparametric bivariate test for two sample location problem is proposed. The proposed test is easy to apply and does not require the stringent condition of affine-symmetry or elliptical symmetry which is required by some of the major tests available for the same problem. The power function of the proposed test is calculated. The asymptotic distribution of the proposed test statistic is found to be normal. The power of proposed test is compared with some of the well-known tests under various distributions using Monte Carlo simulation technique. The power study shows that the proposed test statistic performs better than most of the test statistics for almost all the distributions considered here. As soon as the underlying population structure deviates from normality, the ability of the proposed test statistic to detect the smallest shift in location increases as compared to its competitors. The application of the test is shown by using a data set.     

Education and Employment among Muslims in Indian Jammu and Kashmir

Muslims constitute about 14% population of India and are the largest religious minority community spread over the length and breadth of the country. The minority community in question has been relegated to the lowest socio-economic stratum in Indian society especially after the partition and independence of the country. However, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims are in majority constituting about 67% population of the state. In the current study, the Concentration Index of Muslim population, variation in literacy rate and work participation, occupational structure across region and religion, as well as the interrelationship between concentration of Muslim population, literacy rate and work participation in Jammu and Kashmir has been explored and explained. The present study is based upon secondary information obtained from Census 2001 and is also supplemented with government reports, published work wherever necessary. As far as share of Muslims in the sphere of education and employment in the state of Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, they have reported lower share among the population of literates, category of other workers and higher share in the occupational category of cultivators, agricultural labourers, household industry workers and non-workers in comparison to all religious groups. This means that despite being in majority, their situation is similar to their co-religionists at the all India level.     

Action Learning in the Indian Village as an Alternative to the Traditional Field Practicum in the Foundation Year of the MSW

This paper captures the experiences of the faculty members of a relatively new graduate social work program situated in the largely rural state of Haryana India in reframing the foundation year practicum through community-based and engaged action learning in small villages. Located within Bhagat Phool Singh Vishwavidyalaya (BPSMV), north India's first all women public university, the mission of which is to enhance women's engagement in the greater society through post-secondary, professional and character education, the department is educating social workers for community engagement in social development and in the development of women as an empowered group in society, particularly at the village level. Over a three-year period, the faculty has successfully launched and sustained action learning as an alternative to the traditional practicum in social work education, enhanced civic engagement among students and faculty in three rural villages, and further developed community social work as a principal focus of social work education in India. The paper offers a rationale for action learning in the graduate social work curriculum, describes and documents the department's strategy of action learning, and lays out lessons learned from action learning as a central focus of pedagogy, research, and service within BPSMV Department of Social Work and the rural villages it serves.     

Competitive industrial marketing strategies

This paper argues that for firms marketing industrial goods, the terms—system, product, service and commodity—are better employed to characterize the way the firm competes rather than any intrinsic attributes of what it markets. It is shown that the same hardware can be transacted as a system, service, product of commodity, and the nature of the most popular transaction changes over time. The nature of these shifts and how the firm needs to match its strategy to reflect them are discussed, and the special case of diversified firms in industries subject to rapid transaction shifts is taken up. It is suggested that for such firms a divisional structure based on the type of transaction—‘transaction divisions’—rather than the conventional Product Type divisions may make the firm better able not only to match its strategy to such shifts but also better able to anticipate them.     

Detecting interaction links in a collaborating group using manually annotated data

Identification of network linkages through direct observation of human interaction has long been a staple of network analysis. It is, however, time consuming and labor intensive when undertaken by human observers. This paper describes the development and validation of a two-stage methodology for automating the identification of network links from direct observation of groups in which members are free to move around a space. The initial manual annotation stage utilizes a web-based interface to support manual coding of physical location, posture, and gaze direction of group members from snapshots taken from video recordings of groups. The second stage uses the manually annotated data as input for machine learning to automate the inference of links among group members. The manual codings were treated as observed variables and the theory of turn taking in conversation was used to model temporal dependencies among interaction links, forming a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN). The DBN was modeled using the Bayes Net Toolkit and parameters were learned using Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. The Viterbi algorithm was adapted to perform the inference in DBN. The result is a time series of linkages for arbitrarily long segments that utilizes statistical distributions to estimate linkages. The validity of the method was assessed through comparing the accuracy of automatically detected links to manually identified links. Results show adequate validity and suggest routes for improvement of the method.     

An efficient nonparametric test for bivariate two-sample location problem

We propose a new test for the two-sample bivariate location problem. The proposed test statistic has a U-statistic representation with a degenerate kernel. The limiting distribution is found for the proposed test statistic. The power of the test is compared using Monte Carlo simulation to the tests of Blumen [I. Blumen, A new bivariate sign-test for location, Journal of the American Statistical Association 53 (1958) 448–456], Mardia [K.V. Mardia, A non-parametric test for the bivariate two-sample location problem, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 29 (1967) 320–342], Peters and Randles [D. Peters, R.H. Randles, A bivariate signed-rank test for the two-sample location problem, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 53 (1991) 493–504], LaRocque, Tardif and van Eeden [D. LaRocque, S. Tardif, C. van Eeden, An affine-invariant generalization of the Wilcoxon signed-rank test for the bivariate location problem, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics 45 (2003) 153–165], and Baringhaus and Franz [L. Baringhaus, C. Franz, On a new multivariate two-sample test, Journal of Multivariate Analysis 88 (2004) 190–206]. Under the bivariate normal and bivariate t distributions the proposed test was more powerful than the competitors for almost every change in location. Under the other distributions the proposed test reached the desired power of one at a faster rate than the other tests in the simulation study. Application of the test is presented using bivariate data from a synthetic and a real-life data set.     

An efficient generalized network-simplex-based algorithm for manufacturing network flows

Fang and Qi (Optim. Methods Softw. 18:143–165, 2003) introduced a new generalized network flow model called manufacturing network flow model for manufacturing process modeling. A key distinguishing feature of such models is the assembling of component raw-materials, in a given proportion, into an end-product. This assembling operation cannot be modeled using usual generalized networks (which allow gains and losses in flows), or using multi-commodity networks (which allow flows of multiple commodity types on a single arc). The authors developed a network-simplex-based algorithm to solve a minimum cost flow problem formulated on such a generalized network and indicated systems of linear equations that need to be solved during the course of the network-simplex-based solution procedure. In this paper, it is first shown how various steps of the network-simplex-based solution procedure can be performed efficiently using appropriate data structures. Further, it is also shown how the resulting system of linear equations can be solved directly on the generalized network.     

A new test for two-sample location problem based on empirical distribution function

We propose a new test for testing the equality of location parameter of two populations based on empirical distribution function (ECDF). The test statistics is obtained as a power divergence between two ECDFs. The test is shown to be distribution free, and its null distribution is obtained. We conducted empirical power comparison of the proposed test with several other available tests in the literature. We found that the proposed test performs better than its competitors considered here under several population structures. We also used two real datasets to illustrate the procedure.     

Assessment of hospital services and patient reactions

This paper deals with the study of assessment of hospital services and patient reactions carried out amongst 473 respondents, both in-door (3 wards) and out-door patients in M.L.B. Medical College Hospital, Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh). The patients were from three wards medical, surgical and gynaecological wards and consisted of 373 discharged and 100 out-door patients.     

RELATIONSHIP TRANSITIONS AMONG YOUTH IN URBAN KENYA

The process of courtship and marriage in sub-Saharan Africa has changed remarkably. These changes, however, have received scant attention, as recent research has focused on adolescent relationships' links to HIV/AIDS rather than to marriage. Drawing on detailed reports of 1,365 romantic and sexual partnerships from youths in Kisumu, Kenya, we find that marital aspirations, school enrollment, emotional attraction, pregnancy, and independence from kin are all predictors of getting engaged or married. Furthermore, though men and women are much more likely to marry partners they believe are sexually exclusive, men who have multiple partners are actually more likely to get married. By focusing on the contemporary process of marriage, this paper offers an alternative portrayal of premarital relationships in sub-Saharan Africa.