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Network Methods (network + methods)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	50%

Selected Abstracts

Long-term sales forecasting using holt,winters and neural network methods

JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 5 2005
Apostolos Kotsialos
Abstract The problem of medium to long-term sales forecasting raises a number of requirements that must be suitably addressed in the design of the employed forecasting methods. These include long forecasting horizons (up to 52 periods ahead), a high number of quantities to be forecasted, which limits the possibility of human intervention, frequent introduction of new articles (for which no past sales are available for parameter calibration) and withdrawal of running articles. The problem has been tackled by use of a damped-trend Holt,Winters method as well as feedforward multilayer neural networks (FMNNs) applied to sales data from two German companies. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

A Comparison of Neural Network, Statistical Methods, and Variable Choice for Life Insurers' Financial Distress Prediction

JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 3 2006
Patrick L. Brockett
This study examines the effect of the statistical/mathematical model selected and the variable set considered on the ability to identify financially troubled life insurers. Models considered are two artificial neural network methods (back-propagation and learning vector quantization (LVQ)) and two more standard statistical methods (multiple discriminant analysis and logistic regression analysis). The variable sets considered are the insurance regulatory information system (IRIS) variables, the financial analysis solvency tracking (FAST) variables, and Texas early warning information system (EWIS) variables, and a data set consisting of twenty-two variables selected by us in conjunction with the research staff at TDI and a review of the insolvency prediction literature. The results show that the back-propagation (BP) and LVQ outperform the traditional statistical approaches for all four variable sets with a consistent superiority across the two different evaluation criteria (total misclassification cost and resubstitution risk criteria), and that the twenty-two variables and the Texas EWIS variable sets are more efficient than the IRIS and the FAST variable sets for identification of financially troubled life insurers in most comparisons. [source]

Reliable prediction of T-cell epitopes using neural networks with novel sequence representations

PROTEIN SCIENCE, Issue 5 2003
Morten Nielsen
Abstract In this paper we describe an improved neural network method to predict T-cell class I epitopes. A novel input representation has been developed consisting of a combination of sparse encoding, Blosum encoding, and input derived from hidden Markov models. We demonstrate that the combination of several neural networks derived using different sequence-encoding schemes has a performance superior to neural networks derived using a single sequence-encoding scheme. The new method is shown to have a performance that is substantially higher than that of other methods. By use of mutual information calculations we show that peptides that bind to the HLA A*0204 complex display signal of higher order sequence correlations. Neural networks are ideally suited to integrate such higher order correlations when predicting the binding affinity. It is this feature combined with the use of several neural networks derived from different and novel sequence-encoding schemes and the ability of the neural network to be trained on data consisting of continuous binding affinities that gives the new method an improved performance. The difference in predictive performance between the neural network methods and that of the matrix-driven methods is found to be most significant for peptides that bind strongly to the HLA molecule, confirming that the signal of higher order sequence correlation is most strongly present in high-binding peptides. Finally, we use the method to predict T-cell epitopes for the genome of hepatitis C virus and discuss possible applications of the prediction method to guide the process of rational vaccine design. [source]

Social network analysis: A methodological introduction

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Carter T. Butts
Social network analysis is a large and growing body of research on the measurement and analysis of relational structure. Here, we review the fundamental concepts of network analysis, as well as a range of methods currently used in the field. Issues pertaining to data collection, analysis of single networks, network comparison, and analysis of individual-level covariates are discussed, and a number of suggestions are made for avoiding common pitfalls in the application of network methods to substantive questions. [source]