Tools and Methods for the Improvement of Quality

In developing quality-control procedures, a step-loss function has been used implicitly or explicitly to describe consumer perceptions about product quality. A quadratic loss function has been suggested by Taguchi as an alternative to the step-loss function in measuring the loss due to imperfect product quality (cost of acceptance). In this article, Bayesian analyses of the known-standard-deviation acceptance-sampling problem are described for both the step and quadratic loss functions with three cost components—cost of inspection, cost of acceptance, and cost of rejection. A normal prior distribution is used for the lot mean. Efficient procedures for finding minimum expected cost procedures are given. For a particular example, comparisons are made of how optimal sampling plans and costs computed under the two cost structures change as the form of the prior distribution and misspecification of its mean and variance are varied. Sensitivity analyses for both cost functions show that the optimal sampling plan is robust with respect to the form of the prior distribution, as well as to misspecification of its mean and variance, if the tail specification reasonably approximates that of a normal distribution.     

Use of kernel-based Bayesian models to predict late osteolysis after hip replacement

We studied the relationship between osteolysis and polyethylene wear, age at surgery, body mass index and height in 463 subjects (180 osteolysis and 283 controls) after cemented Charnley total hip arthroplasty (THA), in order to develop a kernel-based Bayesian model to quantitate risk of osteolysis. Such tools may be integrated into decision-making algorithms to help personalize clinical decision-making. A predictive model was constructed, and the estimated posterior probability of the implant failure calculated. Annual wear provided the greatest discriminatory information. Age at surgery provided additional predictive information and was added to the model. Body mass index and height did not contain valuable discriminatory information over the range in which observations were densely sampled. The robustness and misclassification rate of the predictive model was evaluated by a five-times cross-validation method. This yielded a 70% correct predictive classification of subjects into osteolysis versus non-osteolysis groups at a mean of 11 years after THA. Finally, the data were divided into male and female subsets to further explore the relationship between wear rate, age at surgery and incidence of osteolysis. The correct classification rate using age and wear rate in the model was approximately 66% for males and 74% for females.     

Multivariate spatial models of excess crash frequency at area level: Case of Costa Rica

Recently, areal models of crash frequency have being used in the analysis of various area-wide factors affecting road crashes. On the other hand, disease mapping methods are commonly used in epidemiology to assess the relative risk of the population at different spatial units. A natural next step is to combine these two approaches to estimate the excess crash frequency at area level as a measure of absolute crash risk. Furthermore, multivariate spatial models of crash severity are explored in order to account for both frequency and severity of crashes and control for the spatial correlation frequently found in crash data.     

Bayes Linear Estimators

A class of linear estimators, called Bayes linear estimators, is developed by finding, among all linear estimators, ones which have least average total mean squared error, averaged over parameter points. Ridge, generalized ridge, restricted least squares, subset least squares, least squares, best, and generalized inverse linear estimators are all either Bayes linear estimators or limits of Bayes linear estimators. Results on Bayes linear estimators are extended to affine estimators. “Bootstrapping” procedures, in which the data are recycled in the guise of prior information, are discussed.     

指数故障/维修背景下串联系统可用度置信限

系统可用性是综合反映系统可靠性及维修性的一种测度,如何利用现场获取的各组成单元的故障数据和维修数据进行系统可用性综合及评定恰是可靠性及维修性工程中的难题。考虑到串联模型具有普遍性以及指数信息更具通用性的工程背景,依据信息等价转换原则,从现场记录中提取、挖掘或折算出以时间和次数为特征的指数故障和指数维修的基本信息,并探讨了指数故障/指数维修的串联可修系统可用度概率估计的数值解析方法。基于极大似然估计深入研究了经典方法的置信区间;基于Bayes定理深入研究了单元和系统可用度一阶矩、二阶矩,又利用不完全Beta函数、β分布与F分布分位数间的关系,最终求解出串联可修系统可用度的经典近似置信限和Bayes近似置信限,研究成果有效地解决了串联可修系统可用性综合及评定的难题。这两种方法可适用于所有串联模式的复杂机电系统,而且伴随系统的运行,各组成单元故障/维修数据信息也在发生变化,据此可以实时地进行可修串联系统可用性综合及评定。以我国某风电厂风力发电机组为工程应用实例,验证了该方法的可行性与适用性。     

Clean energy investment scenarios using the Bayesian network

Clean energy investment decisions are getting more difficult to make due to public reactions. In order to support the policies in the field, analysis of the positive conditions is needed. This research aims to construct the positive scenarios for nuclear energy and renewable energy investments in the state of Oregon, USA. The Bayesian network technique will be used to create the scenarios. Oregon has a wide range of renewable energies; hence, investment is becoming more complex. Criteria affecting the decisions are taken from the literature, but were reviewed with energy authorities in Oregon in order to define the interactions.     

Churn prediction using comprehensible support vector machine: An analytical CRM application

Support vector machine (SVM) is currently state-of-the-art for classification tasks due to its ability to model nonlinearities. However, the main drawback of SVM is that it generates “black box” model, i.e. it does not reveal the knowledge learnt during training in human comprehensible form. The process of converting such opaque models into a transparent model is often regarded as rule extraction. In this paper we proposed a hybrid approach for extracting rules from SVM for customer relationship management (CRM) purposes. The proposed hybrid approach consists of three phases. (i) During first phase; SVM-RFE (SVM-recursive feature elimination) is employed to reduce the feature set. (ii) Dataset with reduced features is then used in the second phase to obtain SVM model and support vectors are extracted. (iii) Rules are then generated using Naive Bayes Tree (NBTree) in the final phase. The dataset analyzed in this research study is about Churn prediction in bank credit card customer (Business Intelligence Cup 2004) and it is highly unbalanced with 93.24% loyal and 6.76% churned customers. Further we employed various standard balancing approaches to balance the data and extracted rules. It is observed from the empirical results that the proposed hybrid outperformed all other techniques tested. As the reduced feature dataset is used, it is also observed that the proposed approach extracts smaller length rules, thereby improving the comprehensibility of the system. The generated rules act as an early warning expert system to the bank management.     

基于人工免疫原理的反垃圾邮件系统AIASS

讨论了基于人工免疫原理的反垃圾邮件系统AIASS的生物免疫基础以及各个关键技术环节,对系统环境进行了定量和定性分析,并采用SpamAssassin垃圾邮件库对系统性能进行测试。实验结果表明引入人工免疫原理后,反垃圾邮件系统具备了优于传统方法的自适应能力和稳定性。     

电子元器件贮存可靠性评估与预测的贝叶斯方法

基于电子元件寿命试验的二项型数据信息,提出了电子元件贮存可靠性评估与预测的贝叶斯方法.利用环境因子将电子元件产品在不同贮存条件下的试验数据进行折合,依据贝叶斯理论对小样本下可能出现的数据"数据倒挂"进行预处理,并评估出其在各已知贮存时间点上的可靠度,再运用配曲线法得到产品的贮存寿命分布,进而对其贮存可靠度进行合理预测.最后,通过一个实例说明了方法的可行性.     

基于高斯混合模型的车辆字符识别算法

在基于统计方法的车牌字符识别算法中,为了更有效地描述车牌字符特征的类条件概率密度,提出了一种基于高斯混合模型(GMM)的识别方法.首先采用Gabor变换来提取车牌字符的特征参数,然后通过GMM来逼近字符特征的类条件概率密度分布,最后根据得到的类条件概率密度分布函数构造贝叶斯分类器.其中,GMM的参数估计采用EM算法.实验表明,这种方法具有良好的字符识别效果、较强的鲁棒性以及较大的应用价值.