29,761 research outputs found
Renormalization of Drift and Diffusivity in Random Gradient Flows
We investigate the relationship between the effective diffusivity and
effective drift of a particle moving in a random medium. The velocity of the
particle combines a white noise diffusion process with a local drift term that
depends linearly on the gradient of a gaussian random field with homogeneous
statistics. The theoretical analysis is confirmed by numerical simulation. For
the purely isotropic case the simulation, which measures the effective drift
directly in a constant gradient background field, confirms the result
previously obtained theoretically, that the effective diffusivity and effective
drift are renormalized by the same factor from their local values. For this
isotropic case we provide an intuitive explanation, based on a {\it spatial}
average of local drift, for the renormalization of the effective drift
parameter relative to its local value. We also investigate situations in which
the isotropy is broken by the tensorial relationship of the local drift to the
gradient of the random field. We find that the numerical simulation confirms a
relatively simple renormalization group calculation for the effective
diffusivity and drift tensors.Comment: Latex 16 pages, 5 figures ep
Gamow-Teller GT+ distributions in nuclei with mass A=90-97
We investigate the Gamow-Teller strength distributions in the
electron-capture direction in nuclei having mass A=90-97, assuming a 88Sr core
and using a realistic interaction that reasonably reproduces nuclear
spectroscopy for a wide range of nuclei in the region as well as experimental
data on Gamow-Teller strength distributions. We discuss the systematics of the
distributions and their centroids. We also predict the strength distributions
for several nuclei involving stable isotopes that should be experimentally
accessible for one-particle exchange reactions in the near future.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures (from 17 eps files), to be submitted to
Phys.Rev.C; corrected typos, minor language change
Poissonian bursts in e-mail correspondence
Recent work has shown that the distribution of inter-event times for e-mail
communication exhibits a heavy tail which is statistically consistent with a
cascading Poisson process. In this work we extend the analysis to higher-order
statistics, using the Fano and Allan factors to quantify the extent to which
the empirical data depart from the known correlations of Poissonian statistics.
The analysis shows that the higher-order statistics from the empirical data is
indistinguishable from that of randomly reordered time series, thus
demonstrating that e-mail correspondence is no more bursty or correlated than a
Poisson process. Furthermore synthetic data sets generated by a cascading
Poisson process replicate the burstiness and correlations observed in the
empirical data. Finally, a simple rescaling analysis using the best-estimate
rate of activity, confirms that the empirically observed correlations arise
from a non-homogeneus Poisson process
Boundary Effects in the One Dimensional Coulomb Gas
We use the functional integral technique of Edwards and Lenard to solve the
statistical mechanics of a one dimensional Coulomb gas with boundary
interactions leading to surface charging. The theory examined is a one
dimensional model for a soap film. Finite size effects and the phenomenon of
charge regulation are studied. We also discuss the pressure of disjunction for
such a film. Even in the absence of boundary potentials we find that the
presence of a surface affects the physics in finite systems. In general we find
that in the presence of a boundary potential the long distance disjoining
pressure is positive but may become negative at closer interplane separations.
This is in accordance with the attractive forces seen at close separations in
colloidal and soap film experiments and with three dimensional calculations
beyond mean field. Finally our exact results are compared with the predictions
of the corresponding Poisson-Boltzmann theory which is often used in the
context of colloidal and thin liquid film systems.Comment: 28 pages, LATEX2e, 11 figures, uses styles[12pt] resubmission because
of minor corrections to tex
Skill set profile clustering: the empty K-means algorithm with automatic specification of starting cluster centers
While studentsā skill set profiles can be estimated with formal cognitive diagnosis models [8], their computational complexity makes simpler proxy skill estimates attractive [1, 4, 6]. These estimates can be clustered to generate groups of similar students. Often hierarchical agglomerative clustering or k-means clustering is utilized, requiring, for K skills, the specification of 2^K clusters. The number of skill set profiles/clusters can quickly become computationally intractable. Moreover, not all profiles may be present in the population. We present a flexible version of k-means that allows for empty clusters. We also specify a method to determine efficient starting centers based on the Q-matrix. Combining the two substantially improves the clustering results and allows for analysis of data sets previously thought impossible
Skill set profile clustering based on student capability vectors computed from online tutoring data
In educational research, a fundamental goal is identifying which skills students have mastered, which skills they have not, and which skills they are in the process of mastering. As the number of examinees, items, and skills increases, the estimation of even simple cognitive diagnosis models becomes difficult. To address this, we introduce a capability matrix showing for each skill the proportion correct on all items tried by each student involving that skill. We apply variations of common clustering methods to this matrix and discuss conditioning on sparse subspaces. We demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of our method on several simulated datasets and illustrate the difficulties inherent in real data using a subset of online mathematics tutor data. We also comment on the interpretability and application of the results for teachers
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