Monitoring tools for robust estimation of cluster weighted models

In a robust approach to model fitting for the cluster weighted model, many choices are to be made by the statistician: specifying the shape of the clusters in the explanatory variables, assuming (or not) equal variance for the errors in the re- gression lines, and setting hyper-parameter values for the robust estimation to be protected from outliers and contamination. The most delicate hyper-parameter to specify is perhaps the percentage of trimming, or the amount of data to be excluded from the estimate, to ensure reliable inference. In this work we introduce diagnos- tic tools to help the professional, or the scientist who needs to group the data, to make an educated choice about this hyper-parameter, after a first exploration of the resulting model space

Nuovi modi di rappresentazione della Cina e dei Cinesi nel cinema e nella narrativa occidentali

In the last decade the representation of China and the Chinese in Western popular fiction has undergone changes from the oversimplified and stereotypical images that many critics in the USA and in Europe have treated in their works. This essay, through a detailed ex-amination of meaningful examples in Western mystery fiction and popular cinema, suggests that a connection among many different cultural levels is actually taking place. The analysisis developed through three main topics constituting the following subchapters: "Old and new myths" deals with the persistency of old stereotypes and the creation of new ones; "Good and bad Chinese" is focused on the dichotomy in the representation of the Chinese in popular culture and particularly in the roles played by Chinese stars in Hollywood movies and "Another language is possible" deals not only with the new usages of Chinese language in movies andfiction, but also with the transformation of the audience’s attitude in consuming languagerelated products

Socio-economic evaluation with ordinal variables: integrating counting and POSET approaches

The evaluation of material deprivation, quality of life and well-being very often requires to deal with multidimensional systems of ordinal variables, rather than with classical numerical datasets. This poses new statistical and methodological challenges, since classical evaluation tools are not designed to deal with this kind of data. The mainstream evaluation methodologies generally follow a counting approach, as in a recent proposal by Alkire and Foster pertaining to the evaluation of multidimensional poverty. Counting procedures are inspired by the composite indicator approach and share similar drawbacks with it, computing aggregated indicators that may be poorly reliable. A recent and alternative proposal is to address the ordinal evaluation problem through partial order theory which provides tools that prove more consistent with the discrete nature of the data. The goal of the present paper is thus to introduce the two proposals, showing how the evaluation methodology based on partial order theory can be integrated in the counting approach of Alkire and Foster

Iniziare prima, imparare meglio: il cinese nelle scuole superiori

This main purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of issues regarding the development of the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language in Italian high schools, a topic that was also thoroughly discussed in the latest meeting of the Italian Association of Chinese Studies, held in Rome in February 2007. After a brief introduction of the many aspects involved, as government regulations, the specificity of language teaching and learning in high school compared to university courses, the aims and perspectives of students, families and teachers, etc., the Author proposes a more structural and organized involvement of Italian University, Ministry od Education and Regional Committees in order to give a positive response to the demand of a very new opening to Asian languages and cultures in high schools’ programs and curricula. An overall confrontation is also recommended among many different experimental activities that have been undergone all over the Country in the past four years, where a meaningfully large number of high school students have been enthusiastically committed to such a demanding learning task

Venezia e il Canal Grande nella cultura popolare cinese

The main purpose of this essay is to provide the reader with a general overview of the many facets that Venice and her most representative landmark, the Grand Canal, have embodied in the popular culture of Chinese-speaking world of the last decades. Famous and less-known movies from both mainland China and Taiwan, pop-rock musical videoclips, articles in popular magazines and other examples concurr to build an image of the Italian city that has as little resemblance with Venice as the reinterpretation of her architectural and urbanistic features offered by many postmodern “Oriental Venices” (i.e. compounds and resorts in a so-called “Venetian style” that are developing in most suburban residential areas in China). This image of the city is essentially based on both ancient and new stereotypes, in most cases of literary origin, that still persist also in higher cultural domains. In this analysis, the Author also provocatively suggests that maybe these oversimplified represantions of Venice – probably parallel to similar stereotypes of China and the Chinese in Western culture – could have originated not in China but in the lagoon itself

Monitoring Tools in Robust CWM for the Analysis of Crime Data

Robust inference for the Cluster Weighted Model requires the specification of a few hyper-parameters. Their role is crucial for increasing the quality of the estimators, while arbitrary decisions about their value could severely hamper inferential results. To guide the user in the delicate choice of such parameters, a monitoring approach has been introduced in the recent literature, yielding an adaptive method. The approach is here exemplified, via the analysis of a dataset on the effect of punishment regimes on crime rates

Predicting and improving smart mobility: a robust model-based approach to the BikeMi BSS = Prevedere e migliorare la mobilita smart: un approccio robusto di classificazione applicato a BikeMi

I sistemi di Bike Sharing giocano un ruolo centrale nella mobilita sosteni- ` bile, uno dei sei pilastri che indentificano una Smart City. Motivati da un set di dati disponibile online, questo lavoro presenta l\u2019utilizzo di due modelli di classificazione robusta per prevedere il manifestarsi di situazioni in cui una bike station sia piena e/o vuota, cos`\u131 creando perdita di domanda ed insoddisfazione nei clienti. Esperimenti di classificazione sulle stazioni BikeMi nel centro di Milano evidenziano l\u2019efficacia dei metodi proposti.Bike Sharing Systems play a central role in what is identified to be one of the six pillars of a Smart City: smart mobility. Motivated by a freely available dataset, we discuss the employment of two robust model-based classifiers for pre- dicting the occurrence of situations in which a bike station is either empty or full, thus possibly creating demand loss and customer dissatisfaction. Experiments on BikeMi stations located in the central area of Milan are provided to underline the benefits of the proposed methods