Some contributions to model selection and statistical inference in Markovian models

The general theme of this thesis is providing and studying a new understanding of some statistical models and computational methods based on a Markov process/chain. Section 1-4 are devoted to reviewing the literature for the sake of completeness and the better understanding of Section 5-7 that are our original studies. Section 1 is devoted to understanding a Markov process since continuous and discrete types of a Markov process are hinges of the thesis. In particular, we will study some basics/advanced results of Markov chains and Ito diffusions. Ergodic properties of these processes are also documented. In Section 2 we first study the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm since this is basic of other MCMC methods. We then study more advanced methods such as Reversible Jump MCMC, Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm, pseudo marginal MCMC and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. These MCMC methods will appear in Section 3, 4 and 7. In Section 3 we consider another type of Monte Carlo method called sequential Monte Carlo (SMC). Unlike MCMC methods, SMC methods often give us on-line ways to approximate intractable objects. Therefore, these methods are particularly useful when one needs to play around with models with scalable computational costs. Some mathematical analysis of SMC also can be found. These SMC methods will appear in Section 4, 5, 6 and 7. In Section 4 we first discuss hidden Markov models (HMMs) since all statistical models that we consider in the thesis can be treated as HMMs or their generalisation. Since, in general, HMMs involve intractable objects, we then study approximation ways for them based on SMC methods. Statistical inference for HMMs is also considered. These topics will appear in Section 5, 6 and 7. Section 5 is largely based on a submitted paper titled Asymptotic Analysis of Model Selection Criteria for General Hidden Markov Models with Alexandros Beskos and Sumeetpal Sidhu Singh, https: //arxiv.org/abs/1811.11834v3. In this section, we study the asymptotic behaviour of some information criteria in the context of hidden Markov models, or state space models. In particular, we prove the strong consistency of BIC and evidence for general HMMs. Section 6 is largely based on a submitted paper titled Online Smoothing for Diffusion Processes Observed with Noise with Alexandros Beskos, https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.12247. In this section, we develop sequential Monte Carlo methods to estimate parameters of (jump) diffusion models. Section 7 is largely based on an ongoing paper titled Adaptive Bayesian Model Selection for Diffusion Models with Alexandros Beskos. In this section, we develop adaptive computational ways, based on sequential Monte Carlo samplers and Hamiltonian Monte Carlo on a functional space, for Bayesian model selection

Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook

The purpose of the Sourcebook is to act as a guide for practitioners and technical staff in addressing gender issues and integrating gender-responsive actions in the design and implementation of agricultural projects and programs. It speaks not with gender specialists on how to improve their skills but rather reaches out to technical experts to guide them in thinking through how to integrate gender dimensions into their operations. The Sourcebook aims to deliver practical advice, guidelines, principles, and descriptions and illustrations of approaches that have worked so far to achieve the goal of effective gender mainstreaming in the agricultural operations of development agencies. It captures and expands the main messages of the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development and is considered an important tool to facilitate the operationalization and implementation of the report's key principles on gender equality and women's empowerment

Deep Learning for Automatic Assessment and Feedback of Spoken English

Growing global demand for learning a second language (L2), particularly English, has led to considerable interest in automatic spoken language assessment, whether for use in computerassisted language learning (CALL) tools or for grading candidates for formal qualifications. This thesis presents research conducted into the automatic assessment of spontaneous nonnative English speech, with a view to be able to provide meaningful feedback to learners. One of the challenges in automatic spoken language assessment is giving candidates feedback on particular aspects, or views, of their spoken language proficiency, in addition to the overall holistic score normally provided. Another is detecting pronunciation and other types of errors at the word or utterance level and feeding them back to the learner in a useful way. It is usually difficult to obtain accurate training data with separate scores for different views and, as examiners are often trained to give holistic grades, single-view scores can suffer issues of consistency. Conversely, holistic scores are available for various standard assessment tasks such as Linguaskill. An investigation is thus conducted into whether assessment scores linked to particular views of the speaker’s ability can be obtained from systems trained using only holistic scores. End-to-end neural systems are designed with structures and forms of input tuned to single views, specifically each of pronunciation, rhythm, intonation and text. By training each system on large quantities of candidate data, individual-view information should be possible to extract. The relationships between the predictions of each system are evaluated to examine whether they are, in fact, extracting different information about the speaker. Three methods of combining the systems to predict holistic score are investigated, namely averaging their predictions and concatenating and attending over their intermediate representations. The combined graders are compared to each other and to baseline approaches. The tasks of error detection and error tendency diagnosis become particularly challenging when the speech in question is spontaneous and particularly given the challenges posed by the inconsistency of human annotation of pronunciation errors. An approach to these tasks is presented by distinguishing between lexical errors, wherein the speaker does not know how a particular word is pronounced, and accent errors, wherein the candidate’s speech exhibits consistent patterns of phone substitution, deletion and insertion. Three annotated corpora x of non-native English speech by speakers of multiple L1s are analysed, the consistency of human annotation investigated and a method presented for detecting individual accent and lexical errors and diagnosing accent error tendencies at the speaker level

Beyond doss and fréchet expectation sets

International Conference on Soft Methods in Probability and Statistics, SMPS 2018 held in conjunction with the 5th International Conference on Belief Functions, BELIEF 2018 (9th.2018.Compiegne