A Dual Measure of Uncertainty: The Deng Extropy

The extropy has recently been introduced as the dual concept of entropy. Moreover, in the context of the Dempster–Shafer evidence theory, Deng studied a new measure of discrimination, named the Deng entropy. In this paper, we define the Deng extropy and study its relation with Deng entropy, and examples are proposed in order to compare them. The behaviour of Deng extropy is studied under changes of focal elements. A characterization result is given for the maximum Deng extropy and, finally, a numerical example in pattern recognition is discussed in order to highlight the relevance of the new measure

Imbedding estimates and elliptic equations with discontinuous coefficients in unbounded domains

In this paper we deal with the multiplication operator u ∈ W^{k,p} (Ω) → gu ∈ L^q (Ω), with g belonging to a space of Morrey type. We apply our results in order to establish an a-priori bound for the solutions of the Dirichlet problem concerning elliptic equations with discontinuous coefficients

Welfare analysis of fiscal reforms in Europe: Does the representation of family decision processes matter? Evidence from Italy

This paper adopts a "piece-meal" approach to empirically identify, on a sample of Italian households, a collective model where both nonparticipation and non-convex budget sets are allowed for. Two tax reforms, i.e. the 2002 tax changes recently introduced in Italy and a revenue neutral linear income tax are evaluated by the collective framework derived. The predictions obtained for individual labour supplies, income and welfare distribution are then compared with those of a traditional unitary model. The exercise provide an assessment of the distortion introduced in positive and normative analyses when individuals are assumed to behave as if in a unitary, rather than in a collective world. The results suggest that further efforts should be devoted to the analysis of intra-household decision models.collective models; intra household allocation; tax reform

Cumulative measures of information and stochastic orders

In this paper we present some known results on cumulative measures of information, study their properties and relate these definitions to concepts of reliability theory. We give some relations of these measures of discrimination with some well-known stochastic orders and with the relative reversed hazard rate order. We investigate also a stochastic comparison among the empirical cumulative measures that can be related to the cumulative measures. Large part of this paper is a survey article; however, in the last section, we define a new measure of discrimination between residual lifetimes and study some of its properties

A Shift-Dependent Measure of Extended Cumulative Entropy and Its Applications in Blind Image Quality Assessment

Recently, Tahmasebi and Eskandarzadeh introduced a new extended cumulative entropy (ECE). In this paper, we present results on shift-dependent measure of ECE and its dynamic past version. These results contain stochastic order, upper and lower bounds, the symmetry property and some relationships with other reliability functions. We also discuss some properties of conditional weighted ECE under some assumptions. Finally, we propose a nonparametric estimator of this new measure and study its practical results in blind image quality assessment

Some mathematical properties of the ROC curve and their applications

In this paper we present ROC methodology and analyze the ROC curve. We describe first the historical background and its relation with signal detection theory. Some mathematical properties of this curve are given, and in particular the relation with stochastic orders and statistical hypotheses testing are described. We present also a medical application of the Neymann–Pearson lemma

Competing risks within shock models

We consider a competing risks model, in which system failures are due to one out of two mutually exclusive causes, formulated within the framework of shock models driven by bivariate Poisson process. We obtain the failure densities and the survival functions as well as other related quantities under three different schemes. Namely, system failures are assumed to occur at the first instant in which a random constant threshold is reached by (a) the sum of received shocks, (b) the minimum of shocks, (c) the maximum of shocks.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, 3 table

Comparison results for inactivity times of k-out-of-n and general coherent systems with dependent components

Coherent systems, i.e., multicomponent systems where every component monotonically affects the working state or failure of the whole system, are among the main objects of study in reliability analysis. Consider a coherent system with possibly dependent components having lifetime T , and assume we know that it failed before a given time t > 0. Its inactivity time t −T can be evaluated under different conditional events. In fact, one might just know that the system has failed and then consider the inactivity time (t − T |T ≤ t), or one may also know which ones of the components have failed before time t, and then consider the corresponding system’s inactivity time under this condition. For all these cases, we obtain a representation of the reliability function of system inactivity time based on the recently defined notion of distortion functions. Making use of these representations, new stochastic comparison results for inactivity times of systems under the different conditional events are provided. These results can also be applied to order statistics which can be seen as particular cases of coherent systems (k-out-of-n systems, i.e., systems which work when at least k of their n components work)