6,313 research outputs found
More Reliable Inference for Segregation Indices
The most widely used measure of segregation is the dissimilarity index, D. It is now well understood that this measure also reflects randomness in the allocation of individuals to units; that is, it measures deviations from evenness not deviations from randomness. This leads to potentially large values of the segregation index when unit sizes and/or minority proportions are small, even if there is no underlying systematic segregation. Our response to this is to produce an adjustment to the index, based on an underlying statistical model. We specify the assignment problem in a very general way, with differences in conditional assignment probabilities underlying the resulting segregation. From this we derive a likelihood ratio test for the presence of any systematic segregation and a bootstrap bias adjustment to the dissimilarity index. We further develop the asymptotic distribution theory for testing hypotheses concerning the magnitude of the segregation index and show that use of bootstrap methods can improve the size and power properties of test procedures considerably. We illustrate these methods by comparing dissimilarity indices across school districts in England to measure social segregation.segregation, dissimilarity index, bootstrap methods, hypothesis testing
Uniformly balanced words with linear complexity and prescribed letter frequencies
We consider the following problem. Let us fix a finite alphabet A; for any
given d-uple of letter frequencies, how to construct an infinite word u over
the alphabet A satisfying the following conditions: u has linear complexity
function, u is uniformly balanced, the letter frequencies in u are given by the
given d-uple. This paper investigates a construction method for such words
based on the use of mixed multidimensional continued fraction algorithms.Comment: In Proceedings WORDS 2011, arXiv:1108.341
Percolation on fitness landscapes: effects of correlation, phenotype, and incompatibilities
We study how correlations in the random fitness assignment may affect the
structure of fitness landscapes. We consider three classes of fitness models.
The first is a continuous phenotype space in which individuals are
characterized by a large number of continuously varying traits such as size,
weight, color, or concentrations of gene products which directly affect
fitness. The second is a simple model that explicitly describes
genotype-to-phenotype and phenotype-to-fitness maps allowing for neutrality at
both phenotype and fitness levels and resulting in a fitness landscape with
tunable correlation length. The third is a class of models in which particular
combinations of alleles or values of phenotypic characters are "incompatible"
in the sense that the resulting genotypes or phenotypes have reduced (or zero)
fitness. This class of models can be viewed as a generalization of the
canonical Bateson-Dobzhansky-Muller model of speciation. We also demonstrate
that the discrete NK model shares some signature properties of models with high
correlations. Throughout the paper, our focus is on the percolation threshold,
on the number, size and structure of connected clusters, and on the number of
viable genotypes.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl
Efficient estimators : the use of neural networks to construct pseudo panels
Pseudo panels constituted with repeated cross-sections are good substitutes to true panel data. But individuals grouped in a cohort are not the same for successive periods, and it results in a measurement error and inconsistent estimators. The solution is to constitute cohorts of large numbers of individuals but as homogeneous as possible. This paper explains a new way to do this: by using a self-organizing map, whose properties are well suited to achieve these objectives. It is applied to a set of Canadian surveys, in order to estimate income elasticities for 18 consumption functions..Pseudo panels ; self-organizing maps;
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