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Minimal Assumptions (minimal + assumption)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Mathematics and Statistics	50%

Selected Abstracts

How to Analyze Political Attention with Minimal Assumptions and Costs

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2010
Kevin M. Quinn
Previous methods of analyzing the substance of political attention have had to make several restrictive assumptions or been prohibitively costly when applied to large-scale political texts. Here, we describe a topic model for legislative speech, a statistical learning model that uses word choices to infer topical categories covered in a set of speeches and to identify the topic of specific speeches. Our method estimates, rather than assumes, the substance of topics, the keywords that identify topics, and the hierarchical nesting of topics. We use the topic model to examine the agenda in the U.S. Senate from 1997 to 2004. Using a new database of over 118,000 speeches (70,000,000 words) from the Congressional Record, our model reveals speech topic categories that are both distinctive and meaningfully interrelated and a richer view of democratic agenda dynamics than had previously been possible. [source]

The scattering theory of C. Wilcox in elasticity

MATHEMATICAL METHODS IN THE APPLIED SCIENCES, Issue 12 2002
Mongi Mabrouk
Abstract We extend the abstract time-dependent scattering theory of C.H. Wilcox to the case of elastic waves. Most of the results are proved with the minimal assumption that the obstacle satisfies the energy local compactness condition (ELC). This holds especially for the existence and unitarity of the wave operators. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Are stock assessment methods too complicated?

FISH AND FISHERIES, Issue 3 2004
A J R Cotter
Abstract This critical review argues that several methods for the estimation and prediction of numbers-at-age, fishing mortality coefficients F, and recruitment for a stock of fish are too hard to explain to customers (the fishing industry, managers, etc.) and do not pay enough attention to weaknesses in the supporting data, assumptions and theory. The review is linked to North Sea demersal stocks. First, weaknesses in the various types of data used in North Sea assessments are summarized, i.e. total landings, discards, commercial and research vessel abundance indices, age-length keys and natural mortality (M). A list of features that an ideal assessment should have is put forward as a basis for comparing different methods. The importance of independence and weighting when combining different types of data in an assessment is stressed. Assessment methods considered are Virtual Population Analysis, ad hoc tuning, extended survivors analysis (XSA), year-class curves, catch-at-age modelling, and state-space models fitted by Kalman filter or Bayesian methods. Year-class curves (not to be confused with ,catch-curves') are the favoured method because of their applicability to data sets separately, their visual appeal, simple statistical basis, minimal assumptions, the availability of confidence limits, and the ease with which estimates can be combined from different data sets after separate analyses. They do not estimate absolute stock numbers or F but neither do other methods unless M is accurately known, as is seldom true. [source]

Calculating power for the comparison of dependent , -coefficients

JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY: SERIES C (APPLIED STATISTICS), Issue 4 2003
Hung-Mo Lin
Summary. In the psychosocial and medical sciences, some studies are designed to assess the agreement between different raters and/or different instruments. Often the same sample will be used to compare the agreement between two or more assessment methods for simplicity and to take advantage of the positive correlation of the ratings. Although sample size calculations have become an important element in the design of research projects, such methods for agreement studies are scarce. We adapt the generalized estimating equations approach for modelling dependent , -statistics to estimate the sample size that is required for dependent agreement studies. We calculate the power based on a Wald test for the equality of two dependent , -statistics. The Wald test statistic has a non-central ,2 -distribution with non-centrality parameter that can be estimated with minimal assumptions. The method proposed is useful for agreement studies with two raters and two instruments, and is easily extendable to multiple raters and multiple instruments. Furthermore, the method proposed allows for rater bias. Power calculations for binary ratings under various scenarios are presented. Analyses of two biomedical studies are used for illustration. [source]