Judgmental forecasting: Factors affecting lay people's expectations of inflation

In this thesis, laypeople’s judgmental forecasting about inflation is reviewed and experimentally explored in six chapters. Inflation is defined as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) across the whole thesis. In Chapter 1, I review work on the formation of inflation expectations, drawing mainly from the economic literature. In Chapter 2, I review research on judgmental forecasting, drawing mainly from the literature in cognitive psychology and management science. In Chapter 3, three experiments are presented that were designed to determine how and when people employ internal information of experienced price changes to form inflation expectations. In Chapter 4, three experiments are used to investigate the effects of providing within-series and across-series historical information (inflation rates, interest rates and unemployment rates) on inflation expectations. In Chapter 5, two experiments are reported that examine how training using simple outcome feedback increases the accuracy of inflation judgments and improves the calibration of confidence in those judgments. Chapter 6 reports experiments designed to examine the effects of using different elicitation methods (point forecasts, interval forecasts and density forecasts) on the accuracy of inflation judgments. Chapter 7 is a concluding chapter that summarises findings from these experiments and suggests avenues for future work

Outcome feedback reduces over-forecasting of inflation and overconfidence in forecasts

Survey respondents over-forecast inflation: they expect it to be higher than it turns out to be. Furthermore, people are generally overconfident in their forecasts. In two experiments, we show that providing outcome feedback that informs people of the actual level of the inflation that they have forecast reduces both over-forecasting and overconfidence in forecasts. These improvements were preserved even after feedback had been withdrawn, a finding that indicates that they were not produced because feedback had a temporary incentive effect but because it had a more permanent learning effect. However, providing forecasters with more outcome feedback did not have a greater effect. Feedback appears to provide people with information about biases in their judgments and, once they have received that information, no additional advantage is obtained by giving it to themagain. Reducing over-forecasting also had no clear effect on overall error. This was because providing outcome feedback after every judgment also affected the noise or random error in forecasts, increasing it by a sufficient amount to cancel out the benefits provided by the reduction in over-forecasting

Point, interval, and density forecasts: Differences in bias, judgment noise, and overall accuracy

There are three main ways in which judgmental predictions are expressed: point forecasts; interval forecasts; probability density forecasts. Do these approaches differ solely in terms of their simplicity of elicitation and the detail they provide? We examined error in values of the central tendency extracted from these three types of forecast in a domain in which all of them are used: lay forecasts of inflation. A first experiment using a between-participant design showed that the mean level of forecasts and the bias in them are unaffected by the type of forecast but that judgment noise (and, hence, overall error) is higher in point forecasts than in interval or density forecasts. A second experiment replicated the difference between point and interval forecasts in a within-participant design (of the sort used in inflation surveys) and showed no effect of the order in which different types of forecast are made but revealed that people are more overconfident in interval than in point forecasts. A third experiment showed that volatility in past data increases bias in point but not interval forecasts, and that taking the average of two point forecasts made by an individual reduces judgment noise to the level found in interval forecasting

Fusions of CNN and SVM Classifiers for Recognizing Handwritten Characters

© Xiaoxiao Niu, 2011 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepare

Observer-Based Robust Tracking Control for a Class of Switched Nonlinear Cascade Systems

This paper is devoted to robust output feedback tracking control design for a class of switched nonlinear cascade systems. The main goal is to ensure the global input-to-state stable (ISS) property of the tracking error nonlinear dynamics with respect to the unknown structural system uncertainties and external disturbances. First, a nonlinear observer is constructed through state transformation to reconstruct the unavailable states, where only one parameter should be determined. Then, by virtue of the nonlinear sliding mode control (SMC), a discontinuous nonlinear output feedback controller is designed using a backstepping like design procedure to ensure the ISS property. Finally, an example is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Mapping of nighttime light trends and refugee population changes in Ukraine during the Russian–Ukrainian War

The nighttime lights accurately and coherently depict how humans live. This study uses nighttime light measurements to quantify changes in nighttime lighting and refugee population in Ukraine before and after the war. We combined the Theil–Sen estimator with the M-K test to explore the trends of nighttime light. In addition, we constructed a linear model using nighttime light data and a portion of the UNHCR refugee data. Our results reveal that 1 week after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the nighttime light area and the average nighttime light DN value in Ukraine exhibited a steep decline of about 50 percent. Our findings showed taht refugee population changes calculated through models and nighttime light data were mostly consistent with UNHCR data. We thought that the nighttime light data might be used directly to dynamically estimate changes in the refugee movement throughout the war. Nighttime light changes has significant implications for international humanitarian assistance and post-war reconstruction

Metagenomic characterization of the cecal microbiota community and functions in finishing pigs fed fermented Boehmeria nivea

Ramie (Boehmeria nivea, BN) is used as livestock forage through suitable silage fermentation owing to its nutritional value. To date, relatively few studies have investigated the effects of dietary fermented BN (FBN) on gut health in finishing pigs. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with 20% FBN on intestinal morphology, gene expression, and the functional response of the gut microbiota in finishing pigs. We found that FBN did not significantly affect serum antioxidant enzyme activities, ileal morphology, or the expression of genes encoding antioxidant enzymes, inflammatory cytokines, or tight junction proteins in the liver of the pigs. However, the gene expression levels of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) and interleukin 6 (IL6) were significantly downregulated in the ileum. A metagenomic analysis demonstrated that, compared with that seen in the control group, the cecal microbiota of pigs in the FBN treatment group was more closely clustered and contained a greater number of unique microbes. Bacteria were the predominant kingdom in the cecal microbiota, while Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Proteobacteria were the dominant phyla, and Streptococcus, Lactobacillus, and Prevotella were the dominant genera. Dietary FBN significantly increased the abundance of the probiotic bacterium Roseburia inulinivorans (p < 0.05). Functional analysis of the cecal microbiota showed that ABC transporter levels and glycolysis/gluconeogenesis-associated functions were diminished in FBN-fed pigs. Meanwhile, CAZyme analysis revealed that dietary FBN significantly downregulated the contents of carbohydrate-active enzymes, such as GT2, GH1, GH25, and GH13_31. In addition, cytochrome P450 analysis revealed that the abundance of CYP51 and CYP512 decreased with FBN treatment. An assessment of antibiotic resistance based on the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD) annotation indicated that the cecal microbes from pigs in the FBN treatment group had increased resistance to lincosamide, streptogramin, and chloramphenicol and reduced resistance to amikacin, isepamicin, neomycin, lividomycin, gentamicin, paromomycin, ribostamycin, and butirosin. Finally, virulence factor-related analysis showed that putative hemolysin-associated functions were decreased, whereas fibronectin-binding protein, flagella, and alginate-associated functions were increased. Taken together, our data showed that FBN supplementation exerted only minor effects on intestinal morphology and microbial community composition, suggesting that it is potentially safe for use as a supplement in the diets of finishing pigs. However, more studies are needed to validate its functionality

Experimental Research on the Matching Characteristics of the Compound VGT-STC System with a V-Type Diesel Engine

In order to improve the performance of a V-type diesel engine at low and medium speeds, the compound VGT-STC turbocharger system was proposed. First, the compound VGT-STC turbocharger system bench was established, which allowed to switch between the VGT and STC boosting systems. Then, the load characteristic tests with a variable VGT vane opening were conducted at different speeds in the 1TC and the 2TC, respectively. The results showed that the VGT-1TC could provide much more air into the cylinder than the VGT-2TC at 1000 r/min, and the maximum torque was increased by 4000 Nm (80%), and the BSFC decreased by 20.1 g/kWh on average. The matching characteristics are analyzed for three boosting control strategy systems, including the VGT, STC, and the compound VGT-STC. The results show that the VGT system has a steady increase of the maximum torque in both low and medium speeds, while the STC system has a large increase in torque at 1000 r/min and begins to decline when speed is greater than 1200 r/min, and the compound VGT-STC system combines the advantages of the VGT and STC, which can maintain 9000 Nm (83% rated torque at 1800 rpm) and a lower BSFC at both low and medium speeds. As a result, with the compound VGT-STC boosting control strategy system, the operating range has expanded by 10%, and its smoke opacity, BSFC, and exhaust temperature are reduced by 0.057, 8.2 g/kWh, and 64 °C, respectively

Temperature Sensing Utilizing Stimulate Brillouin Scattering Fast Light in Liquid-Filled Photonic Crystal Fibers

A novel temperature sensor designed on stimulate Brillouin scattering fast light in liquid-filled photonic crystal fibers is proposed. The time advancement and the Brillouin frequency shift of fast light are simulated according to the three-wave coupling equations of stimulate Brillouin scattering, and the temperature sensing characteristics of the fast light in liquid-filled hexagonal photonic crystal fibers with three different air filling factors are simulated from 20 °C to 70 °C by using the full-vector finite element method. The alcohol-filled photonic crystal fibers exhibit rather sensitive responses to temperature. With temperature varying from 20 °C to 70 °C, the variation of the effective mode area is 2.75 µm at the air filling factor of 0.6, the Brillouin frequency shift is about 11 GHz and its average modification is 1.15 MHz. The time advancement increases with the rise of temperature, its increment can reach up to 4.53 ns at the air filling factor of 0.6 and the pump power of 60 mW, the temperature sensitivity of the time advancement is 0.272 ns/°C