14,216 research outputs found
Approximating multivariate distributions with vines
In a series of papers, Bedford and Cooke used vine (or pair-copulae) as a graphical tool for representing complex high dimensional distributions in terms of bivariate and conditional bivariate distributions or copulae. In this paper, we show that how vines can be used to approximate any given multivariate distribution to any required degree of approximation. This paper is more about the approximation rather than optimal estimation methods. To maintain uniform approximation in the class of copulae used to build the corresponding vine we use minimum information approaches. We generalised the results found by Bedford and Cooke that if a minimal information copula satis¯es each of the (local) constraints (on moments, rank correlation, etc.), then the resulting joint distribution will be also minimally informative given those constraints, to all regular vines. We then apply our results to modelling a dataset of Norwegian financial data that was previously analysed in Aas et al. (2009)
Efficient Rank Reduction of Correlation Matrices
Geometric optimisation algorithms are developed that efficiently find the
nearest low-rank correlation matrix. We show, in numerical tests, that our
methods compare favourably to the existing methods in the literature. The
connection with the Lagrange multiplier method is established, along with an
identification of whether a local minimum is a global minimum. An additional
benefit of the geometric approach is that any weighted norm can be applied. The
problem of finding the nearest low-rank correlation matrix occurs as part of
the calibration of multi-factor interest rate market models to correlation.Comment: First version: 20 pages, 4 figures Second version [changed content]:
21 pages, 6 figure
Online self-repair of FIR filters
Chip-level failure detection has been a target of research for some time, but today's very deep-submicron technology is forcing such research to move beyond detection. Repair, especially self-repair, has become very important for containing the susceptibility of today's chips. This article introduces a self-repair-solution for the digital FIR filter, one of the key blocks used in DSPs
Treatment of input uncertainty in hydrologic modeling: Doing hydrology backward with Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation
There is increasing consensus in the hydrologic literature that an appropriate framework for streamflow forecasting and simulation should include explicit recognition of forcing and parameter and model structural error. This paper presents a novel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampler, entitled differential evolution adaptive Metropolis (DREAM), that is especially designed to efficiently estimate the posterior probability density function of hydrologic model parameters in complex, high-dimensional sampling problems. This MCMC scheme adaptively updates the scale and orientation of the proposal distribution during sampling and maintains detailed balance and ergodicity. It is then demonstrated how DREAM can be used to analyze forcing data error during watershed model calibration using a five-parameter rainfall-runoff model with streamflow data from two different catchments. Explicit treatment of precipitation error during hydrologic model calibration not only results in prediction uncertainty bounds that are more appropriate but also significantly alters the posterior distribution of the watershed model parameters. This has significant implications for regionalization studies. The approach also provides important new ways to estimate areal average watershed precipitation, information that is of utmost importance for testing hydrologic theory, diagnosing structural errors in models, and appropriately benchmarking rainfall measurement devices
Maximally symmetric stabilizer MUBs in even prime-power dimensions
One way to construct a maximal set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) in a
prime-power dimensional Hilbert space is by means of finite phase-space
methods. MUBs obtained in this way are covariant with respect to some subgroup
of the group of all affine symplectic phase-space transformations. However,
this construction is not canonical: as a consequence, many different choices of
covariance sugroups are possible. In particular, when the Hilbert space is
dimensional, it is known that covariance with respect to the full group
of affine symplectic phase-space transformations can never be achieved. Here we
show that in this case there exist two essentially different choices of maximal
subgroups admitting covariant MUBs. For both of them, we explicitly construct a
family of covariant MUBs. We thus prove that, contrary to the odd
dimensional case, maximally covariant MUBs are very far from being unique.Comment: 22 page
Semidefinite Relaxations for Stochastic Optimal Control Policies
Recent results in the study of the Hamilton Jacobi Bellman (HJB) equation
have led to the discovery of a formulation of the value function as a linear
Partial Differential Equation (PDE) for stochastic nonlinear systems with a
mild constraint on their disturbances. This has yielded promising directions
for research in the planning and control of nonlinear systems. This work
proposes a new method obtaining approximate solutions to these linear
stochastic optimal control (SOC) problems. A candidate polynomial with variable
coefficients is proposed as the solution to the SOC problem. A Sum of Squares
(SOS) relaxation is then taken to the partial differential constraints, leading
to a hierarchy of semidefinite relaxations with improving sub-optimality gap.
The resulting approximate solutions are shown to be guaranteed over- and
under-approximations for the optimal value function.Comment: Preprint. Accepted to American Controls Conference (ACC) 2014 in
Portland, Oregon. 7 pages, colo
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