Duration and Persistence in Multidimensional Deprivation: Methodology and Australian Application

This paper extends the recent literature on static multidimensional deprivation to propose dynamic deprivation measures that incorporate both the persistence and duration of deprivation across multiple dimensions. The paper then illustrates the usefulness of the extension by applying it to Australian panel data for the recent period, 2001-2008. The empirical application exploits the subgroup decomposability of the deprivation measures to identify the subgroups that are more deprived than others. The proposed measure is also decomposable by dimensions and is used to identify the dimensions where deprivation is more persistent. The comparison between the subgroups shows that the divide between homeowners and non-homeowners is one of the sharpest, with the latter suffering much more deprivation than the former. The results are robust to alternative schemes for weighting and aggregating the dimensions as well as to the choice of model parameters.Multidimensional Deprivation; Social Exclusion; Duration of Deprivation; Deprivation Persistence; Subgroup Decomposability.

Prediction of infectious disease epidemics via weighted density ensembles

Accurate and reliable predictions of infectious disease dynamics can be valuable to public health organizations that plan interventions to decrease or prevent disease transmission. A great variety of models have been developed for this task, using different model structures, covariates, and targets for prediction. Experience has shown that the performance of these models varies; some tend to do better or worse in different seasons or at different points within a season. Ensemble methods combine multiple models to obtain a single prediction that leverages the strengths of each model. We considered a range of ensemble methods that each form a predictive density for a target of interest as a weighted sum of the predictive densities from component models. In the simplest case, equal weight is assigned to each component model; in the most complex case, the weights vary with the region, prediction target, week of the season when the predictions are made, a measure of component model uncertainty, and recent observations of disease incidence. We applied these methods to predict measures of influenza season timing and severity in the United States, both at the national and regional levels, using three component models. We trained the models on retrospective predictions from 14 seasons (1997/1998 - 2010/2011) and evaluated each model's prospective, out-of-sample performance in the five subsequent influenza seasons. In this test phase, the ensemble methods showed overall performance that was similar to the best of the component models, but offered more consistent performance across seasons than the component models. Ensemble methods offer the potential to deliver more reliable predictions to public health decision makers.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure

EVALUATING THE DISTRIBUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF PRICE MOVEMENTS: METHODOLOGY, APPLICATION AND AUSTRALIAN EVIDENCE

This paper investigates the distributional implication of inflation in Australia. It proposes and applies a method of evaluating the nature and size of the inequality bias of price movements. In the process, the study introduces a new demographic demand model that yields sensible and well determined estimates of the general equivalence scale and the size economies of scale. The study finds that inflation in Australia during the 1990s had an inequality increasing bias and that this bias increased in the late 1990s and the first part of the new millennium. The study also provides evidence on the decomposition of overall inequality between demographic groups and compares the decomposition between the nominal and real expenditure inequalities.Price scaling, demographic demand, real expenditure inequality, inequality aversion.

An Empirical Analysis of Perceptual Judgments

This paper is a defense of Reformed Empiricism, especially against those critics who take Reformed Empiricism to be a viable account of empirical rationality only if it avails itself of certain rationalist assumptions that are inconsistent with empiricism. I argue against three broad types of criticism that are found in the current literature, and propose a way of characterising Gupta’s constraints for any model of experience as analytic of empiricism itself, avoiding the charge by some (e.g. McDowell, Berker, and Schafer) who think that the constraints are substantive

Dynamics of Mushy Layers on a Finite Domain

p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; } Mushy layers are regions of intermixed liquid and solid which can arise during the solidification of binary alloys, generally consisting of dendritic solids with solute-rich liquid in the interstices. They occur due to an instability resulting from the buildup of rejected solute along the solidification front. Liquid ahead of the front becomes supercooled, so disturbances to the interface grow more rapidly than the interface itself. A simple experiment has a tank filled with a uniform solution at uniform temperature being placed upon a cold surface. Early on, a small solid layer forms at the bottom capped by a rapidly advancing mushy layer. Typical modeling efforts have made at least one of two assumptions, that the tank is of infinite depth or that the diffusion of solute is negligible. This dissertation investigates the finite-domain problem in the presence of solute diffusion, highlighting new interfacial dynamics and other behaviors that arise in this case

Ordinary Empirical Judgments and our Scientific Knowledge: An Extension of Reformed Empiricism to the Philosophy of Science

This essay examines the relationship between ordinary empirical judgments and our scientific worldviews. It is concerned with how ordinary judgments (and the primitive frameworks in which they are formulated) might be usefully integrated into an account of epistemological progress, both of our personal views and scientific theories, such that the sciences (especially modern theories of space and time) can reasonably be thought as being informed by, and evolving out of, at least some of the various pre-scientific views they have replaced. We examine our normal perceptual judgments of magnitude, position, orientation, and displacement in the hope of uncovering the logical, conceptual, and empirical relations that exist between such judgments (as well as the views of the world they presuppose) and our sophisticated understandings of space, time, and motion in physical theory. This research contends that experience and a rich type of conceptual analysis—one that examines the presuppositions that make possible the application of concepts in empirical contexts—together provide the framework within which a rational account of such relations can be proposed. The project thus defends a form of empiricism, but one distinct from classical forms (be they British empiricism, Russellian empiricism, or logical empiricism)—rather a slightly modified version of Anil Gupta’s “Reformed Empiricism”. This empiricism is capable of avoiding the logical excesses and errors of earlier forms, whilst providing an account of how a set of basic empiricist principles might be extended from their context in general epistemology to recalcitrant problems in the philosophy of science, such as the problem of our formal knowledge, the problem of the communicability of observation, and the rationality of theoretical progress. Such an extension offers a comprehensive account both of our ordinary and scientific knowledge

The Influence of Northern Hemisphere Teleconnections on the Geography of Pacific Tropical Cyclone Genesis

The research in this thesis used statistical and spatial analysis methods to test the influence of six Northern Hemisphere teleconnection patterns on the latitude and longitude components of tropical cyclogenesis occurring in the eastern and western North Pacific Ocean basins for the period 1979-2016. The Pacific-North American (PNA), West Pacific (WP), El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), and Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO) teleconnection patterns were examined independently and in combination for association with variations in cyclogenesis geography. Four of the six teleconnection patterns were found to exert an influence on cyclogenesis latitude and/or longitude in their respective areas of dominance during independent testing; the PNA and WP patterns were not found to be significant explanatory variables for cyclogenesis latitude or longitude. Overall, the teleconnection patterns explained a greater portion of the variance in cyclogenesis latitude than longitude for both the eastern and western North Pacific basins. Patterns of cyclogenesis cluster shifting in positive, neutral, and negative phases of each teleconnection were identified for the study area using kernel density analysis. Furthermore, the teleconnection combination analysis was used to test the influence of multiple teleconnection patterns on the geography of tropical cyclones in positive and negative phases. Although the analysis provided statistically significant results, the combination analysis was inefficient at explaining variance in cyclogenesis geography

Nietzsche, Foucault, Power: A Study of Paradox and Ontology in Nietzsche

This thesis investigates a paradox at the heart of Nietzsche and utilizes Foucault as an instrument to understand this dilemma. The paradox is the synthesis of Nietzsche\u27s doctrine of perspectivism and his ontological doctrine of the will to power. Put simply his doctrine of perspectivism says there can be no ontological facts yet Nietzsche articulates the will to power as an ontological matter of fact. This thesis explores the First Essay of Nietzsche\u27s Genealogy of Morals to demonstrate the existence of this paradox. Further, I will conduct a Foucauldian cross-examination to further flesh out this paradox, where and why it arises, and what it means for philosophy

Tragedy and otherness: Sophocles, Shakespeare, psychoanalysis

The thesis is concerned with the relationship between psychoanalysis and tragedy, and the way in which psychoanalysis has structured its theory by reference to models from tragic drama - in particular, those of Sophocles and Shakespeare. It engages with some of the most recent thinking in contemporary French psychoanalysis, most notably the work of Jean Laplanche, so as to interrogate both Freudian metapsychology and the tragic texts in which it claims to identify its prototypes. Laplanche has ventured an ‘other-centred’ re-reading of the Freudian corpus which seeks to go beyond the tendency of Freud himself, and psychoanalysis more generally, to unify and centralise the human subject in a manner which strays from and occults some of the most radical elements of the psychoanalytic enterprise. The (occulted) specificity of the Freudian discovery, Laplanche proposes, lies in the irreducible otherness of the subject to himself and therefore of the messages by which subjects communicate their desires. I argue that Freud’s recourse to literary models is inextricably bound up with the ‘goings-astray’ in his thinking. Laplanche’s work, I suggest, offers an important perspective from which to consider not only the function which psychoanalysis cells upon them to perform, but also that within them for which Freud and psychoanalysis have remained unable to account. Taking three tragic dramas which, more or less explicitly, have borne a formative impact on Freud’s thought, and which have often been understood to articulate the emergence of ‘the subject’, I attempt to set alongside Freud’s own readings of them, the argument that each figures not the unifying or centralising but the radical decentring of its principal protagonists and their communicative acts. By close textual analyses of these three works, and by reference to their historical and cultural contexts, the crucial Freudian motif of parricide (real or symbolic) which structures and connects them is shown ultimately to be an inescapable and inescapably paradoxical gesture: one of liberty and autonomy at the cost of self-division, and of a dependence at the cost of a certain autonomy

Predictive Validation of Interaction Terms in PLS-SEM

The use of interaction terms in partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) risks overfitting models to small samples and producing poor out-of-sample generalizability. But the added complexity of interactions in PLS-SEM is not captured by in-sample fit metrics, and we propose that interaction terms in PLS-SEM should be assessed by out-of-sample methods and metrics. However, out-of-sample predictive methods like PLSpredict do not yet account for interaction terms. We start by providing a formal procedure for generating out-of-sample predictions from such models. We then empirically demonstrate that interactions produce far higher Type I error than that expected by researchers, and that out-of-sample predictive metrics indeed offer more accurate assessment of the validity of interaction terms for PLS-SEM. We also show that two-stage estimation of interactions is superior to other popular methods of operationalizing interactions in PLS-SEM, when the generalizability of interactions is of concern