A model for measuring the need for services in a district

Administrators of social programs are often faced with decisions regarding how to distribute available funds. An important factor in this decision is the geographic location of the population in need of the agency's services. One would assume that those areas of the community where there are more people in need of the agency's support would receive a larger portion of the budget. However, in many cases, dollars are apportioned without adequate knowledge of what parts of the community are in the greatest need of services.This paper presents a method that can be used by most agencies for making a determination of the service need in different parts of the community. The agency used in the model construction is the Office of Community Services (OCS). The mandate of OCS is to implement a comprehensive plan for the delivery of social services in New York City. The “community” (New York City) is divided into forty Human Resource Districts (HRD's). In each of these districts there are outstations that provide a range of social services.In the past, misleading population characteristics of the districts were used to represent the need for OCS services. The characteristics were misleading because they did not represent the number of persons who would be in need of the services. For example, the number of persons receiving public assistance would not adequately represent the number of persons who needed child health services. This is especially true because some persons who are not eligible for public assistance are eligible for child health services.     

计算机专业实验教学模式改革的实践和探索

针对目前计算机专业实验教学存在的问题,在计算机相关专业实验教学中引入新的方法和手段,使计算机相关专业学生实践动手能力、综合分析和解决问题的创新能力得到加强和提高,积极与企业合作,能使学校受益,更能使学生受益。     

CONSTRUCTING AN ENVIRONMENTALLY-EXTENDED MULTI-REGIONAL INPUT–OUTPUT TABLE USING THE GTAP DATABASE

The use of Multi-Regional Input–Output Analysis (MRIOA) for understanding global environmental problems is growing rapidly. Renewed interest in MRIOA has led to several large research projects focused on constructing detailed and accurate MRIOTs. However, very few researchers have made use of the already available and regularly updated database produced by the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). We demonstrate and discuss how the GTAP database can be converted into an MRIOT without the need for additional balancing. An illustrative example uses the GTAP-MRIO to reallocate carbon dioxide emissions from producing to consuming countries. We suggest that an MRIOT that treats international transport exogenously is adequate until more reliable data on international transport margins and emissions are available. To focus resources and refine methods, a concerted research effort is needed to compare the results of the GTAP-MRIO model with the new MRIO datasets under development.     

College students and HR professionals: conflicting views on information available on Facebook

Increasingly employers are using social media as a mechanism to screen potential job candidates. This study examined college students' perceptions of the amount and degree of information available to potential employers who use social media. The study employed a survey of college students to determine how much information they felt someone could learn about them through their Facebook page. Results indicated that participants did not perceive much information about key job categories could be derived from their pages and they planned very few changes even though many believed it highly likely an employer would review their page. A subgroup also had their pages reviewed by HR professionals. A comparison analysis revealed that in several key job‐related areas, such as potential unethical behaviours and communication skills, HR personnel felt that they were able to learn significantly more about the participants than the participants believed themselves.     

Polytomous logistic regression

In this paper a review will be given of some methods available for modelling relationships between categorical response variables and explanatory variables. These methods are all classed under the name polytomous logistic regression (PLR). Models for PLR will be presented and compared; model parameters will be tested and estimated by weighted least squares and by likelihood. Usually, software is needed for computation, and available statistical software is reported.
An industrial problem is solved to some extent as an example to illustrate the use of PLR. The paper is concluded by a discussion on the various PLR-methods and some topics that need a further study are mentioned.     

ABC法在4S汽车备件库存管理中综合应用

随着国内汽车行业的快速发展,4S行业竞争日趋激烈,其利润逐步由销售转向汽车维修服务领域。所以,适当的备件库存对于快速、及时解决汽车故障,往往起到决定性的作用。然而,过剩的备件库存,又将影响流动资金占用。对4S企业来说,备件库存管理的好坏,将成为决定4S企业生存的关键因素。通过对4S行业及服务备件管理基本理论的研究．提出一种综合运用ABC分类管理的方法,结合计算机技术加以实现,为4S企业在激烈的行业竞争中．快速确定企业的库存方案和订货方案提供技术支持：     

A socio-economic activity distribution model for nonincorporated minor civil divisions; The case of Maryland

Planners and administrators alike increasingly recognize the need for a quantitative tool that could be used to evaluate the effects of policies and other socio-economic attributes on the level of activities in non-incorporated subcounty areas of the State. In this paper, a quantitative model that could be used for such a purpose in presented.To overcome the problem of insufficiency of census data, temporal administrative data were collected for 224 Minor Civil Divisions or Election Districts (MCD's or ED's) of 20 counties of the State of Maryland from eclectric sources and then processed through utilization of University of Maryland multi-variate computer programs. Regressional equations were then constructed for a host of socio-economic activities (e.g. population, employment, etc.). The outcome of this endeavor supports a proposition advocated by the author in an earlier working paper (June 1979) namely that variables denoting such activities and their respective attributes could be obtained by processing administrative data which is tabulated periodically by county, State and public utility organizations.Although only the general model is presented hereafter, the results obtained in this research endeavor reinforce the idea that a family of models rather than a single general model should be constructed for various types of MCD's of the State (e.g. rural and urban). Moreover, the results seem to support ideas advocated by the author [13] and Hill [11] in their respective studies that the equations of the model could be improved even further by transforming them into a “Semiendogenous” form.The model in its present form could be used as a tool for carrying out an impact analysis study. For instance, the impact of sewer and water facilities as well as land use policies on building permits could be examined through the utilization of this model. Another example of its applicability is the examination of employment opportunity impact on population or the average price of dwelling units. Although all needed data were assembled, to use the model as a forecasting tool requires consultation with county planning officials concerning future policies (e.g. land use, sewer/water) and some improvement of the mode(s).     

Evaluation of scheduling techniques for solving flowshop problems with no intermediate storage

The flowshop scheduling problem with no intermediate storage (NIS problem) was studied in this research. This problem, a modification of the classical flowshop scheduling problem, arises when a set of jobs, once started, must be processed with no wait between consecutive machines. By eliminating the need for intermediate storage, reduction of capital investment in work-in-process inventory can be achieved. This approach can be practically applied to a steel mill, in which the metal should be continuously processed in order to maintain high temperature, as well as many other similar processes.To provide insight into selecting an appropriate scheduling technique for solving the NIS problem, six methods were compared in terms of the quality and efficiency of the scheduling solutions they produced. The quality of solution was measured by makespan and the efficiency of solution was measured by the computational time requirements. The six methods examined in this study included: the Gupta algorithm, the Szwarc algorithm, an integer linear programming method, the Campbell et al. algorithm, the Dannenbring rapid access with extensive search algorithm, and a mixed integer linear programming procedure.The problem factors considered in this study were number of jobs, number of machines, and range of processing times. Relatively small-sized problems were tested with up to ten jobs, five machines, and 1–100 processing time units. Six solution techniques were selected and compared, with respect to makespan and computational time requirements, for multiple combinations of the three problem variables.The resulting test data were investigated using graphical procedures and formal statistical analyses. Initially, plots of mean values were used to graphically compare the six solution methods for the two performance criteria. Next, a multivariate analysis of variance study was conducted to investigate the quality and efficiency of the algorithms with respect to the problem factors. Then, a multiple comparison procedure was employed to analyze treatment mean differences among the six solution techniques. Results from the statistical analyses are summarized in this article.It was concluded that the two mathematical programming methods, the integer linear programming procedure and the mixed integer linear programming methods, produced the best performance in terms of makespan. These two methods, however, used a far greater amount of computational time than the other four solution techniques. Producing moderately good results as far as quality of performance, the Gupta and the Szwarc algorithms were comparable with the Campbell et al. and the Dannenbring algorithms in terms of computational efficiency. By comparison, the Campbell et al. and the Dannenbring algorithms produced the poorest performance with respect to the quality of solutions.Certain limitations were imposed for this study. The problem size considered was relatively small and the sample size was also limited to ten problems per cell. In addition, a uniform distribution function was used for generating processing times within certain ranges. These limitations were necessary in order to allow the various scheduling problems to be solved within a reasonable amount of computer time.Finally, some suggestions were provided for future research in the NIS problem area. The integer linear programming method was recommended as a standard of evaluation, owing to its best overall performance. A possible area for future research would involve the improvement of the Gupta and the Szwarc algorithms through the use of backtracking procedures within the branch-and-bound technique, so that they might be competitive with the mathematical programming methods with respect to quality of performance. Other distribution functions could be investigated in terms of the influence of the distribution of processing times on the performance measures.     

A literature review on business process modelling: new frontiers of reusability

Business process modelling (BPM) has become fundamental for modern enterprises due to the increasing rate of organisational change. As a consequence, business processes need to be continuously (re-)designed as well as subsequently aligned with the corresponding enterprise information systems. One major problem associated with the design of business processes is reusability. Reuse of business process models has the potential of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of BPM. This article critically surveys the existing literature on the problem of BPM reusability and more specifically on that State-of-the-Art research that can provide or suggest the ‘elements’ required for the development of a methodology aimed at discovering reusable conceptual artefacts in the form of patterns. The article initially clarifies the definitions of business process and business process model; then, it sets out to explore the previous research conducted in areas that have an impact on reusability in BPM. The article concludes by distilling directions for future research towards the development of apatterns-based approach to BPM; an approach that brings together the contributions made by the research community in the areas of process mining and discovery, declarative approaches and ontologies.     

Sparse Partial Least Squares in Time Series for Macroeconomic Forecasting

Factor models have been applied extensively for forecasting when high‐dimensional datasets are available. In this case, the number of variables can be very large. For instance, usual dynamic factor models in central banks handle over 100 variables. However, there is a growing body of literature indicating that more variables do not necessarily lead to estimated factors with lower uncertainty or better forecasting results. This paper investigates the usefulness of partial least squares techniques that take into account the variable to be forecast when reducing the dimension of the problem from a large number of variables to a smaller number of factors. We propose different approaches of dynamic sparse partial least squares as a means of improving forecast efficiency by simultaneously taking into account the variable forecast while forming an informative subset of predictors, instead of using all the available ones to extract the factors. We use the well‐known Stock and Watson database to check the forecasting performance of our approach. The proposed dynamic sparse models show good performance in improving efficiency compared to widely used factor methods in macroeconomic forecasting. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The earnings of state government employees in the United States

This paper has presented a theoretical and empirical analysis of wage determination in the state government sector. The theoretical model is based on the assumption that the state government's objective is to maximize its political support. This objective function leads to predictable behavior regarding how state government employment policies react to changes in the state's wealth, income inequality, composition of constituency groups, and voting behavior.The empirical analysis, conducted on the 1970 U.S. Census Public Use Sample, showed that the wage of state government workers shifts as a result of changes in these political factors. In fact, the results indicated that over three-fourths of the interstate variation in the state government wage rate could be explained by the relatively small vector of political variables introduced in this paper.It should be clear, however, that the analysis conducted in this paper is but a first step in the systematic study of state government behavior. There are several areas where further research may lead to useful results. For example, an important determinant of state government behavior is the composition and power of the various constituency groups. In this paper, the empirical analysis concentrated on three obvious constituencies and ignored the power coalitions in the rest of the population. A more complete accounting of all constituencies may uncover additional results regarding the nature of the income redistribution policies conducted by state governments. Such an accounting could, of course, use the large volumes of available data which divide the state budgets into particular functions. Thus a more general framework could match the data available on the composition of the various constituencies with the data available on expenditures in specific functions. It is not unreasonable to expect that such generalizations of the analysis conducted in this paper will lead to important insights into the labor economics of political markets.     

Project appraisal for developing countries: a systematic approach

A cost/benefit model has been developed for financial and economic appraisal of projects in developing countries. The approach proposed is a technique for analysis that forces the analyst to consider all the relevant factors systematically, thus enhancing the identification of problem areas and supporting rational disciplined decision-making processes. The model includes all the assumptions relevant to the project analysis, detailed financing, financial analysis, the impact of the project on public finance, the impact on foreign exchange, and the economic appraisal from the nation's point of view.

The model is developed at a sufficiently detailed level and proves to be very useful for short-term/long-term planning and evaluation of the project. Consistency of making assumptions is ensured by having all the assumptions clearly defined and shown in the model. Moreover, the structure of the model is flexible and can easily be upgraded over time to meet the requirements and refinements with availability of more information and changing conditions. It is felt that with the existence of an easy to use computer model reluctance or indifference to test alternatives and carry out sensitivity analysis, which continues to the detriment of the nation's interest, will be eliminated.     

De Computer: Werkwijze en toepassingsmogelijkheden van elektronische rekenmachines

Since world-war II, there has been an enormous development in the field of the electronic data processing equipment.
This rapid development was on one side due to the boom which followed the war, on the other hand the armaments-race contributed considerably to a further increase of the research in this sector.
In the years 1948–50 it became clear that this equipment could also be of great advantage in other areas than scientific, such as business administration, automatic translation, information retrieval and production control. These applications, however, made other demands on the computer. A greater and faster memory and more speed in input and output of data were necessary. The research in the last few years is therefore mainly concentrated on these problems.
The computers, as they are now available, consist of 5 units: input device, calculating-unit, storage, control unit and output device. The processing is controlled by means of a program, which consists of a number of instructions, prescribing in detail the operations to be performed by the machine.
It will be clear that the use of this equipment requires a careful study beforehand, whilst also the implications on staff and organisation must be considered.     

A conceptual framework for the location of public facilities in the urban areas of developing countries: the Nigerian case

The provision of adequate public services to their urban populations within the constraints of financial resources is a major problem of most developing countries. The fact that the few available facilities are unevenly distributed in the urban areas suggests a need for efficient physical planning of public services. This paper suggests a conceptual framework for the provision of public services in Nigerian urban areas. The paper identifies the supply and demand factors which should govern the distribution of public services in the urban areas of the country.     

Methods for Default and Robust Bayesian Model Comparison: the Fractional Bayes Factor Approach

In the Bayesian approach to model selection and hypothesis testing, the Bayes factor plays a central role. However, the Bayes factor is very sensitive to prior distributions of parameters. This is a problem especially in the presence of weak prior information on the parameters of the models. The most radical consequence of this fact is that the Bayes factor is undetermined when improper priors are used. Nonetheless, extending the non-informative approach of Bayesian analysis to model selection/testing procedures is important both from a theoretical and an applied viewpoint. The need to develop automatic and robust methods for model comparison has led to the introduction of several alternative Bayes factors. In this paper we review one of these methods: the fractional Bayes factor (O'Hagan, 1995). We discuss general properties of the method, such as consistency and coherence. Furthermore, in addition to the original, essentially asymptotic justifications of the fractional Bayes factor, we provide further finite-sample motivations for its use. Connections and comparisons to other automatic methods are discussed and several issues of robustness with respect to priors and data are considered. Finally, we focus on some open problems in the fractional Bayes factor approach, and outline some possible answers and directions for future research.     

R软件及其在标准化中的应用

标准化工作中经常需要运用统计方法进行数据收集和分析，但由于统计方法应用的复杂性和专业性，使得方法应用受到了限制。随着统计软件和计算机技术的发展，统计方法应用得到了简单化。文章介绍了一种近年来普及速度非常快的免费应用统计软件——R软件的简单应用，并给出了几个应用实例，便于实际应用者理解和学习。     

Combining grey relation analysis and entropy model for evaluating the operational performance: an empirical study

Decision-making on operational performance evaluation is a complex multi-objective problem. Through the combination of grey relation analysis and information entropy, the evaluation results are more objective and reasonable. This paper would introduce entropy into the weighting calculation of the grey relational analysis method for improving the precision. The improved decision model was applied in four notebook computer original design manufacturer companies. The result presented the proposed method is practical and useful. Significantly, the proposed method provides more flexible and objective information in determine the weights vector of the criteria. Also the study result represented that the combined method had certain scientific and rationality. The evaluation model indicates that this method be more reasonable and easier to grasp than other methods. As a result, it is easier to popularize this evaluation method in enterprises.     

Numerical Maximisation of Likelihood: A Neglected Alternative to EM?

There is by now a long tradition of using the EM algorithm to find maximum‐likelihood estimates (MLEs) when the data are incomplete in any of a wide range of ways, even when the observed‐data likelihood can easily be evaluated and numerical maximisation of that likelihood is available as a conceptually simple route to the MLEs. It is rare in the literature to see numerical maximisation employed if EM is possible. But with excellent general‐purpose numerical optimisers now available free, there is no longer any reason, as a matter of course, to avoid direct numerical maximisation of likelihood. In this tutorial, I present seven examples of models in which numerical maximisation of likelihood appears to have some advantages over the use of EM as a route to MLEs. The mathematical and coding effort is minimal, as there is no need to derive and code the E and M steps, only a likelihood evaluator. In all the examples, the unconstrained optimiser nlm available in R is used, and transformations are used to impose constraints on parameters. I suggest therefore that the following question be asked of proposed new applications of EM: Can the MLEs be found more simply and directly by using a general‐purpose numerical optimiser?     

居住小区环境景观规划浅析

居住小区的绿化受到越来越多的关注,但是目前许多居住小区的绿化存在一些误区和问题,有许多并没有引起足够的重视。通过对现下居住小区绿化中存在问题的剖析,探讨了景观设计绿化种植等居住区景观设计的要点,从而希望居住小区的环境景观设计能遵循绿化规划原则,美化环境的同时满足功能需求。