A study in using linear programming to design non-urban attendance areas

A great deal of recent work has been directed toward using mathematical programming to achieve racial balance in urban schools. However, with the ever increasing cost of fuel for buses, there also appears to be a need to apply these techniques in non-urban school districts to reduce the use of fuel. This paper describes the development of a linear programming model to assign students to schools in such a way, as to minimize student-miles. Using data gathered in a non-urban school district, this model was tested on a large scale linear programming package with encouraging results. The resulting computational results are presented and discussed along with comments on the additional work necessary to implement this model.     

应用于山区电气化铁路的新型列车尾部安全防护装置

文章阐述了我国列尾装置的发展历程、技术现状,介绍了适应于山区电气化铁路区段的特殊使用要求的新型列尾装置。     

数学学习方式的解析

中学生在常规学习中做数学课堂笔记存在很多问题,但要学好数学,必须养成良好的学习习惯,特别要注意认真记好、用好课堂笔记。文章就如何做好数学课堂笔记提出了一些思路和具体的操作策略。     

The effect of a large expansion of pre-primary school facilities on preschool attendance and maternal employment

We provide evidence on the impact of a large-scale construction of pre-primary school facilities in Argentina. We estimate the causal impact of the program on pre-primary school attendance and maternal labor supply. Identification relies on a differences-in-differences strategy where we combine differences across regions in the number of facilities built with differences in exposure across cohorts induced by the timing of the program. We find a sizeable impact of the program on pre-primary school participation among children aged between 3 and 5. In fact, we cannot reject the null hypothesis of a full take-up of newly constructed places. In addition, we find that the implicit childcare subsidy induced by the program appears to increases maternal employment.     

Mathematical analysis of emergency ambulance location

Proper ambulance location is crucial in saving lives and reducing injury. To determine efficient and effective locations, it is necessary to evaluate both the spatial and temporal distributions of demand. Because of the complex nature of the ambulance response and transport activities, the problem is subdivided into a facility location problem and a vehicle allocation problem. A set covering model is modified to solve the location problem while a simulation is used to solve the allocation problem. Combining these two models provides a powerful methodology for systematically finding a satisfactory solution to the ambulance location problem.     

农村公共产品供给层次性分析

统筹城乡经济发展和建设社会主义新农村首要面临的问题是为农村、农民提供基本而有保障的公共物品。农村公共物品不仅存在供给总量的短缺问题,而且存在需求层次与供给结构之间的脱节。因此,解决现阶段农村公共物品供给矛盾的有效途径是抓住"工业反哺农业"这一契机,优化农村公共物品的供给结构,不断提高公共财政资金的利用效率。     

Cost benefit analysis of open school boundaries

This paper describes and analyzes the results of a survey of parent attitudes toward an “open boundary” system, whereby parents could request permission to send their children to a non-neighborhood school. An attempt was made to measure the resulting effect on public welfare as suggested by the “compensation principle,” by having gainers and losers use a monetary value to express the intensity of their preferences. While only a small percentage of parents indicated the desire to cross boundaries, a substantial majority favored the proposed system, and the sample group revealed net community benefits.     

A flexible framework for intervention analysis applied to credit-card usage during the coronavirus pandemic

We develop a variant of intervention analysis designed to measure a change in the law of motion for the distribution of individuals in a cross-section, rather than modeling the moments of the distribution. To calculate a counterfactual forecast, we discretize the distribution and employ a Markov model in which the transition probabilities are modeled as a multinomial logit distribution. Our approach is scalable and is designed to be applied to micro-level data. A wide panel often carries with it several imperfections that complicate the analysis when using traditional time-series methods; our framework accommodates these imperfections. The result is a framework rich enough to detect intervention effects that not only shift the mean, but also those that shift higher moments, while leaving lower moments unchanged. We apply this framework to document the changes in credit usage of consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider multinomial logit models of the dependence of credit-card balances, with categorical variables representing monthly seasonality, homeownership status, and credit scores. We find that, relative to our forecasts, consumers have greatly reduced their use of credit. This result holds for homeowners and renters as well as consumers with both high and low credit scores.     

Efficiency analysis of emergency departments in metropolitan areas

The demand in the healthcare industry is increasing exponentially due to aging population of the world and this is leading to a rapid increase in the cost of healthcare. The emergency departments of the hospitals are the frontline of health care systems and play an additional critical role in providing an efficient and high-quality response for patients. The overcrowding at the emergency departments due to growing demand results in a situation where the demand for ED services exceeds the ability to provide care in a reasonable amount of time. This has led countries to reconsider their health policies in a way to increase their efficiency in their healthcare systems in general and in emergency departments, in particular. As in many countries, there has been a steady and significant increase in the number of patients that seek health services at the emergency departments of state hospitals of Turkey, due to the significant structural reforms in health services since 2003. While meeting this increasing demand, it is ever more important to provide these critical health services efficiently. Therefore, the efficiency of the emergency departments of seven general hospitals run by Istanbul's Beyoglu State Hospitals Association have been analyzed using categorical Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models. The analysis of DEA results is supported by a set of statistical methods to make it easier for the hospital administrators to interpret the analysis and draw conclusions. The analysis shows that less-equipped EDs are supported by better equipped, larger EDs, resulting in a hub-and-spoke type of structure among the EDs where “satellite” EDs serve an important referral function and thus evaluating their efficiency without taking the interoperability among these units into account would not be an accurate assessment of their performance.     

巧用数学故事培养学生创新能力

培养学生创新能力的问题一直都是教育界关注的热点,是教育改革和发展所追求的目标,本文简单分析了数学创新能力培养的途径。     

A bounds analysis of school completion rates in Australia

Official estimates of school completion rates in Australia increased in the 1980s, peaked in 1992, and fell immediately thereafter before stabilizing. The official estimates were a specific focus of Australian education policy. The decline caused concern at the time. We use data from the Australian Youth Survey (AYS) to gain insight into the behavior of the official estimates. The AYS suffers from nonrepresentativeness, attrition and nonresponse, which means that parameters of interest are not identified. Our bounds analysis is suggestive that school completion was overstated in the official estimates at their peak. Our analysis points to repetition as a key factor in inflating the official estimates. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SLP法在某轮胎制造厂中的应用分析

文中首先简要介绍了设施布置的基本理论,通过对某轮胎制造厂总平面布置进行分析,找出存在的问题,然后利用SLP法对该厂进行分析与重新布置,最后得到一个更为有效与合理的设施布置方案。     

Goal programming applied to police patrol allocation

This paper describes the development of a decision-making methodology to aid the police patrol planner in resolving the patrol allocation problem. The methodology developed provides information to assist in two major decision areas: staff sizing and vehicle requirement schedules. This research uses a queuing based simulation model to derive expected service levels for a number of different performance measures. Given these results, tradeoff curves are mapped between specified performance measures and utilization rates of patrol vehicles. With this information the patrol planner specifies limiting levels for both performance measures and other managerial constraints which, in turn, are inputted into a goal programming algorithm to determine appropriate staff sizes and vehicle requirements. The primary output provided the patrol planner is the required amount of patrol vehicle hours to allocate to each watch per day per precinct in order to satisfy a designated set of performance measure levels and managerial constraints. The methodology presented in this research was developed in conjunction with the Columbus, Ohio, Police Department with data being provided by the Research and Planning Division.     

Confirmatory factor analysis applied to Matthews adjective checklist of self-reported activation: effect of time of day

Of the instruments devised for measuring self-reported activation, those that consider arousal dimensions (energy and tension) and a third dimension (hedonic tone, or pleasure/displeasure) allow a complete evaluation of the subjective mood. The inventory prepared by Matthews (1987a), which also incorporates a composite general arousal scale made up of items from the principal arousal scales, is one of the most frequently used. The present study assesses the consistency of the four scales of the inventory by means of a confirmatory factor analysis model and version VIII of the Lisrel computer package, and also its stability at different times of day (09:00, 13:00, 17:00 and 21:00). The study sample was made up of 671 healthy university students (236 men/435 women) aged between 17 and 38. Our results confirm the accuracity of fit/goodness of fit of the inventory's three principal factors. However, in our view, the secondary arousal factor should be defined or omitted, since its configura tion was poor at all times of day that the inventory was tested.