Improved Subset Autoregression: With R Package

The FitAR R (R Development Core Team 2008) package that is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network is described. This package provides a comprehensive approach to fitting autoregressive and subset autoregressive time series. For long time series with complicated autocorrelation behavior, such as the monthly sunspot numbers, subset autoregression may prove more feasible and/or parsimonious than using AR or ARMA models. The two principal functions in this package are SelectModel and FitAR for automatic model selection and model fitting respectively. In addition to the regular autoregressive model and the usual subset autoregressive models (Tong'77), these functions implement a new family of models. This new family of subset autoregressive models is obtained by using the partial autocorrelations as parameters and then selecting a subset of these parameters. Further properties and results for these models are discussed in McLeod and Zhang (2006). The advantages of this approach are that not only is an efficient algorithm for exact maximum likelihood implemented but that efficient methods are derived for selecting high-order subset models that may occur in massive datasets containing long time series. A new improved extended {BIC} criterion, {UBIC}, developed by Chen and Chen (2008) is implemented for subset model selection. A complete suite of model building functions for each of the three types of autoregressive models described above are included in the package. The package includes functions for time series plots, diagnostic testing and plotting, bootstrapping, simulation, forecasting, Box-Cox analysis, spectral density estimation and other useful time series procedures. As well as methods for standard generic functions including print, plot, predict and others, some new generic functions and methods are supplied that make it easier to work with the output from FitAR for bootstrapping, simulation, spectral density estimation and Box-Cox analysis.

Exciting Instrumental Data: Toward an Expanded Action-Oriented Ontology for Digital Music Performance

Musical performance using digital musical instruments has obfuscated the relationship between observable musical gestures and the resultant sound. This is due to the sound producing mechanisms of digital musical instruments being hidden within the digital music making system. The difficulty in observing embodied artistic expression is especially true for musical instruments that are comprised of digital components only. Despite this characteristic of digital music performance practice, this thesis argues that it is possible to bring digital musical performance further within our action-oriented ontology by understanding the digital musician through the lens of Lévi-Strauss’ notion of the bricoleur. Furthermore, by examining musical gestures with these instruments through a multi-tiered analytical framework that accounts for the physical computing elements necessarily present in all digital music making systems, we can further understand and appreciate the intricacies of digital music performance practice and culture

All the news that\u27s fit to print? : a comparative content analysis examining the effects of changing ownership on Chattanooga\u27s newspapers

For most of the 20*^ Century, Chattanoogans witnessed a relentless rivalry in which two family-owned, ideologically opposed newspapers were pitted against one another. Indeed, when WEHCO Media, Inc.—a privately held, family owned chain based in Little Rock—bought The Times and Free Press in 1988, Chattanooga was the last major city of its size in Tennessee—and one of the few in the Nation—to have two competing dailies. WEHCO, named for owner Walter E. Hussman, Jr., has pledged to maintain the best of both papers and, in the process, has created a hybrid paper that carries material from both its predecessors. A great deal of scholarly work has been done to assess changes in content quality resulting from newspaper buyouts and acquisitions. This study is an examination of the content changes that have resulted from the purchase and forced marriage of two long-time rival newspapers. (The author acknowledges a personal interest in this study since he was employed by The Times early in his career.) A content analysis of 30 issues, 10 each of The Times, the Free Press and the hybrid paper was conducted. The papers were assessed for the degree to which they evidenced established quality attributes. The results were coded and the content quality of each paper was compared. The results show that, while the hybrid paper has a larger news hole and ranks higher in most of the selected quality criteria, Chattanoogans may be getting something less than the sum of the papers that preceded it

Algorithms for Linear Time Series Analysis: With R Package

Our ltsa package implements the Durbin-Levinson and Trench algorithms and provides a general approach to the problems of fitting, forecasting and simulating linear time series models as well as fitting regression models with linear time series errors. For computational efficiency both algorithms are implemented in C and interfaced to R. Examples are given which illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the algorithms. We provide a second package FGN which illustrates the use of the ltsa package with fractional Gaussian noise (FGN). It is hoped that the ltsa will provide a base for further time series software.

Improved Subset Autoregression: With R Package

The FitAR R (R Development Core Team 2008) package that is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network is described. This package provides a comprehensive approach to fitting autoregressive and subset autoregressive time series. For long time series with complicated autocorrelation behavior, such as the monthly sunspot numbers, subset autoregression may prove more feasible and/or parsimonious than using AR or ARMA models. The two principal functions in this package are SelectModel and FitAR for automatic model selection and model fitting respectively. In addition to the regular autoregressive model and the usual subset autoregressive models (Tong 1977), these functions implement a new family of models. This new family of subset autoregressive models is obtained by using the partial autocorrelations as parameters and then selecting a subset of these parameters. Further properties and results for these models are discussed in McLeod and Zhang (2006). The advantages of this approach are that not only is an efficient algorithm for exact maximum likelihood implemented but that efficient methods are derived for selecting high-order subset models that may occur in massive datasets containing long time series. A new improved extended {BIC} criterion, {UBIC}, developed by Chen and Chen (2008) is implemented for subset model selection. A complete suite of model building functions for each of the three types of autoregressive models described above are included in the package. The package includes functions for time series plots, diagnostic testing and plotting, bootstrapping, simulation, forecasting, Box-Cox analysis, spectral density estimation and other useful time series procedures. As well as methods for standard generic functions including print, plot, predict and others, some new generic functions and methods are supplied that make it easier to work with the output from FitAR for bootstrapping, simulation, spectral density estimation and Box-Cox analysis

Scotland and the Liberal Party, 1880-1900 : Church, Ireland and empire : A family affair

At the turn of the century, Scottish Literalism had coma a great distance from where it had stood in the glory days of Midlothian. Battered and riven with factional divisions, it had loner since lost its old position as the national party of Scotland. By the end of 1900, it would even have ceased to be the majority party of Scotland. The very nature of politics had changed. No longer were parties lead by titans as they had been in 1880. Instead, leadership had fallen into the hands of lesser beings who, in the case of the Liberals seemed wholely engaged in an endless and tiresome series of sectional feuds. Politics increasingly divided upon class lines. While the active politicians of the Liberal Party in Scotland tended to continue to be drawn from the middle and upper ranks of society, their electoral support was now almost entirely drawn from the lower orders. The old issues were gone. In the place of struggles for free trade and free, institutions were the rising demands of social reform and working class politics. As a result, political controversy in Scotland, by 1900, had become almost indistinquishable from that of England. In 1880, matters could turn on things specifically Scottish but twenty years later, "Scottish politics" had been reduced to disputes between Scots over issues identical in Birmingham or Glasgow. For Liberalism, the 1890's were at once a period of steady disintegration and of fundamental re-orientation. Between the crash of 1886 and the resurqent triumph of 1906 the intellectual essence of the party was recast. in the midst of these movements it is not surprising that many of the years in between display an appearance of enormous and desperate confusion, Labels, terminology and identifications were all thrown open to the wind as old and new, insuirgent and relic fought for the spoils of the future. In Scotland, the particular strength of the Roseber-yites, the weakness of Lib-Labism, the enduring influence of the old middle class radicals, the strength of national feeling and the depth of emergent talent such a C-B and Sir Robert Reid lent a particularly powerful cast to this whirl of confused alarms and excursions. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Liberalism in Scotland after the Khaki election of 1900 was that the party should have survived as well as it did. While loss of majority status was a tremendous psychological below, the overall pattern of results, given the circumstances, was not all that discouraging. In the face of a campaign of vilification well beyond any of the Home Rule battles, compounded by the stab in the back of the Irish schools question, the Liberals had managed to generally hold their own outside of the Clyde and the Highlands where special factors dominated. That they managed to accomplish this without the benefit of an accented leadership or even much in the way of party unity speaks well of their residual strength. what the party lacked was a 'calling' , a new sense of purpose and direction, and a leader to sew the party together behind it. It was not to be long before a Scotsman, Campbell-Bannerman would voice the cry of methods of barbarian' to begin the long road back. But for Scotland, even in the flush of the triumph of 1906, and a cabinet filled with her sons, the age of independent Scottish political life was nearly over, drowned in tide flood tide of the new politics

Algorithms for Linear Time Series Analysis: With R Package

Our ltsa package implements the Durbin-Levinson and Trench algorithms and provides a general approach to the problems of fitting, forecasting and simulating linear time series models as well as fitting regression models with linear time series errors. For computational efficiency both algorithms are implemented in C and interfaced to R. Examples are given which illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the algorithms. We provide a second package FGN which illustrates the use of the ltsa package with fractional Gaussian noise (FGN). It is hoped that the ltsa will provide a base for further time series software