Estimation of MTPL claim frequency using GLM, GAM and XGBoost techniques

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to provide an overview of the XGBoost algorithm and examine its suitability to model the claim frequency of motor third party liability insurance. The first three chapters introduce generalized linear models, generalized additive models and the algorithms of gradient boosting and XGBoost. In the fourth chapter, the aforementioned methods are applied on the data of Estonian Motor Insurance Bureau to predict claim frequency

Information sharing architecture using internet\u27s XML and SOAP

Businesses should be able to share information among each other irrespective of the platform, operating systems and programming languages. Using Internet as the Information Systems Architecture has many values. Internet is affordable, easily available and is not tied to any specific vendor. Internet is simple and runs under any kind of operating system. Information sharing across the Internet is challenging but rewarding. Data Transfer using the Internet requires structure and discipline. To integrate diverse group of systems we need specialized protocols that can connect different platforms that use different languages together. Extensible Markup Language enables the creation of application dependent vocabulary which can be used to store data and information in a structured fashion. Simple Object Access Protocol can be used to carry information electronically from one end to the other. Simple Object Access Protocol uses the World Wide Web\u27s extensible Markup Language in encoding the message contents and its Hypertext Transport Protocol in carrying the message packet. This thesis work is focused upon sharing of information among enterprises using extensible Markup Language, Simple Object Access Protocol and decentralized database systems. An online Shopping cart application has been implemented using the notion of XML and SOAP. SOAP is used as a protocol to share information between AsiStore and its business partners Store 1 and Store2. XML have been used as a part of the application to drive the shopping cart, which users can view on the web browser

A Few Applications of Seismic Waves: Anisotropy Tomography and All That

Seismic anisotropy, the variation of seismic wave speed with direction, is an extremely important physical phenomena. When a certain type of seismic wave (shear wave) propagates in an anisotropic medium, the component polarized parallel to the fast direction (along which the speed is higher) begins to lead and the component polarized to the slow direction lags behind (analogous to the optical birefringence). This observation of seismic anisotropy may be used to infer several physical properties of the medium through which these waves are propagating. Fortunately, Earth\u27s upper mantle shows significant seismic anisotropy due to preferred crystallographic orientation of the constituent minerals. Therefore, it can provide crucial information regarding the convective flow and stress patterns in the upper mantle. To be more precise, seismic anisotropy can shed light on detail inner working of several geodynamic processes which are inherently anisotropic in nature and therefore insensitive to isotropic seismology. \\Owing to its simplicity, the classical ray theory based formulation is widely used to infer anisotropic structures of the upper mantle. However, due to the lack of vertical resolution of infinite frequency ray theory based methods and its numerous other shortcomings even in the simplified studies assuming isotropy, it is undesirable to use a ray theory based method in a fully anisotropic framework. The major portion of this thesis is devoted to developing anisotropy tomography method in a perturbative framework where the `finite-frequency\u27 or the full `wave\u27 feature is taken into account. Such technique is proven to be a substantial improvement in terms of localization of the anisotropy of upper mantle. After benchmarking, it is applied to infer the anisotropic structures beneath the High Lava Plains of Oregon and as such was able to provide an avenue for reconciling apparently contradictory constraints on anisotropic structures from different measurements. \\ In the last part of the thesis, we briefly discuss a technique (slightly tangential to the main theme of anisotropy however seems to enjoy a connection at a more fundamental level) we develop to obtain an effective description of the physical properties of a general heterogeneous medium (including pure randomness). This is motivated by the fact that when propagating through small heterogeneities, seismic waves naturally average the elastic properties of the medium and therefore only an effective physics is realized

Mass and infinite dimensional geometry

I unravel an elegant geometric meaning of the mass of the lowest energy excited state of a renormalizable quantized field theory by studying the weighted geometry of the classical configuration space of the theory. A suitably defined regularized Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature of these infinite dimensional spaces controls the spectra of the corresponding quantum Hamiltonians. The Ricci curvature part of the full Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature appears to be purely quantum in nature. This geometric contribution to the spectra in the context of quantum field theory has not been studied previously to my knowledge. Assuming the existence of rigorous quantization, I present a few problems starting from massive free particles to the non-abelian Yang-Mills theory. A remarkable property is observed in the large $N$ Yang-Mills theory, where a non-trivial mass gap is preserved. This occurs due to the fact that the regularized Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature that is responsible for the gap of the configuration space scales as $g^{2}_{YM}N=\lambda$ ('t Hooft coupling) that remains invariant.Comment: comments welcom

An Exploration of the Minimum Clue Sudoku Problem

This paper explores the ”Minimum Sudoku Problem,” that says there must be at least 17 clues in order for a Sudoku Board to have a unique solution. We prove uniqueness up to seven clues for 9x9 boards. We also take a look at the different patterns of 4x4 boards, and how graph theory and the coloring of a graph relates to solving a Sudoku puzzle