88 research outputs found
Complete solution of a constrained tropical optimization problem with application to location analysis
We present a multidimensional optimization problem that is formulated and
solved in the tropical mathematics setting. The problem consists of minimizing
a nonlinear objective function defined on vectors over an idempotent semifield
by means of a conjugate transposition operator, subject to constraints in the
form of linear vector inequalities. A complete direct solution to the problem
under fairly general assumptions is given in a compact vector form suitable for
both further analysis and practical implementation. We apply the result to
solve a multidimensional minimax single facility location problem with
Chebyshev distance and with inequality constraints imposed on the feasible
location area.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure
Cyclic projectors and separation theorems in idempotent convex geometry
Semimodules over idempotent semirings like the max-plus or tropical semiring
have much in common with convex cones. This analogy is particularly apparent in
the case of subsemimodules of the n-fold cartesian product of the max-plus
semiring it is known that one can separate a vector from a closed subsemimodule
that does not contain it. We establish here a more general separation theorem,
which applies to any finite collection of closed semimodules with a trivial
intersection. In order to prove this theorem, we investigate the spectral
properties of certain nonlinear operators called here idempotent cyclic
projectors. These are idempotent analogues of the cyclic nearest-point
projections known in convex analysis. The spectrum of idempotent cyclic
projectors is characterized in terms of a suitable extension of Hilbert's
projective metric. We deduce as a corollary of our main results the idempotent
analogue of Helly's theorem.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figur
Perceptions of childhood immunization in a minority community: Qualitative study
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Published article copyright @ The Royal Society of Medicine.Objective - To assess reasons for low uptake of immunization amongst orthodox Jewish families.
Design - Qualitative interviews with 25 orthodox Jewish mothers and 10 local health care workers.
Setting - The orthodox Jewish community in North East London.
Main outcome measures - Identification of views on immunization in the orthodox Jewish community.
Results - In a community assumed to be relatively insulated from direct media influence, word of mouth is nevertheless a potent source of rumours about vaccination dangers. The origins of these may lie in media scares that contribute to anxieties about MMR. At the same time, close community cohesion leads to a sense of relative safety in relation to tuberculosis, with consequent low rates of BCG uptake. Thus low uptake of different immunizations arises from enhanced feelings of both safety and danger. Low uptake was not found to be due to the practical difficulties associated with large families, or to perceived insensitive cultural practices of health care providers.
Conclusions - The views and practices of members of this community are not homogeneous and may change over time. It is important that assumptions concerning the role of religious beliefs do not act as an obstacle for providing clear messages concerning immunization, and community norms may be challenged by explicitly using its social networks to communicate more positive messages about immunization. The study provides a useful example of how social networks may reinforce or challenge misinformation about health and risk and the complex nature of decision making about children's health.City and
Hackney Teaching
Primary Care Trus
Matrices commuting with a given normal tropical matrix
Consider the space of square normal matrices over
, i.e., and .
Endow with the tropical sum and multiplication .
Fix a real matrix and consider the set of matrices
in which commute with . We prove that is a finite
union of alcoved polytopes; in particular, is a finite union of
convex sets. The set of such that is
also a finite union of alcoved polytopes. The same is true for the set
of such that .
A topology is given to . Then, the set is a
neighborhood of the identity matrix . If is strictly normal, then
is a neighborhood of the zero matrix. In one case, is
a neighborhood of . We give an upper bound for the dimension of
. We explore the relationship between the polyhedral complexes
, and , when and commute. Two matrices,
denoted and , arise from , in connection with
. The geometric meaning of them is given in detail, for one example.
We produce examples of matrices which commute, in any dimension.Comment: Journal versio
The level set method for the two-sided eigenproblem
We consider the max-plus analogue of the eigenproblem for matrix pencils
Ax=lambda Bx. We show that the spectrum of (A,B) (i.e., the set of possible
values of lambda), which is a finite union of intervals, can be computed in
pseudo-polynomial number of operations, by a (pseudo-polynomial) number of
calls to an oracle that computes the value of a mean payoff game. The proof
relies on the introduction of a spectral function, which we interpret in terms
of the least Chebyshev distance between Ax and lambda Bx. The spectrum is
obtained as the zero level set of this function.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures. Changes with respect to the previous version: we
explain relation to mean-payoff games and discrete event systems, and show
that the reconstruction of spectrum is pseudopolynomia
Activating Generalized Fuzzy Implications from Galois Connections
This paper deals with the relation between fuzzy implications and Galois connections, trying to raise the awareness that the fuzzy implications are indispensable to generalise Formal Concept Analysis. The concrete goal of the paper is to make evident that Galois connections, which are at the heart of some of the generalizations of Formal Concept Analysis, can be interpreted as fuzzy incidents. Thus knowledge processing, discovery, exploration and visualization as well as data mining are new research areas for fuzzy implications as they are areas where Formal Concept Analysis has a niche.F.J. Valverde-Albacete—was partially supported by EU FP7 project LiMoSINe, (contract 288024). C. Peláez-Moreno—was partially supported by the Spanish Government-CICYT project 2011-268007/TEC.Publicad
Detecting Features from Confusion Matrices using Generalized Formal Concept Analysis
We claim that the confusion matrices of multiclass problems can be analyzed by means of a generalization of Formal Concept Analysis to obtain symbolic information about the feature sets of the underlying classification task.We prove our claims by analyzing the confusion matrices of human speech perception experiments and comparing our results to those elicited by experts.This work has been supported by Spanish Government-Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología TEC2008-02473/TEC y TEC2008-06382/TEC.Publicad
Synthesizing Systems with Optimal Average-Case Behavior for Ratio Objectives
We show how to automatically construct a system that satisfies a given
logical specification and has an optimal average behavior with respect to a
specification with ratio costs.
When synthesizing a system from a logical specification, it is often the case
that several different systems satisfy the specification. In this case, it is
usually not easy for the user to state formally which system she prefers. Prior
work proposed to rank the correct systems by adding a quantitative aspect to
the specification. A desired preference relation can be expressed with (i) a
quantitative language, which is a function assigning a value to every possible
behavior of a system, and (ii) an environment model defining the desired
optimization criteria of the system, e.g., worst-case or average-case optimal.
In this paper, we show how to synthesize a system that is optimal for (i) a
quantitative language given by an automaton with a ratio cost function, and
(ii) an environment model given by a labeled Markov decision process. The
objective of the system is to minimize the expected (ratio) costs. The solution
is based on a reduction to Markov Decision Processes with ratio cost functions
which do not require that the costs in the denominator are strictly positive.
We find an optimal strategy for these using a fractional linear program.Comment: In Proceedings iWIGP 2011, arXiv:1102.374
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