1,721,139 research outputs found
Mercato obbligazionario, spesa pubblica ed inflazione: un modello stocastico multivariato
No full textA skewness-based clustering method
Full text linkPartitive clustering methods represent one of the earlier and most famous sets of strategy in the field
of clustering. The name comes from their main feature: all these methods start from an initial
partition and modify it at every step of the process according to a known criterion, until a given
convergence rule is satisfied. In other words, as pointed out by Äyrämö and Kärkkäinen (2006),
they work essentially as iterative allocation algorithms. In this framework, we do not only focus on
“canonical” approaches such as K-means and fuzzy C-means, but discuss some recent symmetrybased
partitive clustering methods, mostly developed in the context of computer science and
engineering. As it will be shown, these approaches seem to provide encouraging results, especially
in the field of image recognition and some related applications, and for this reason, they represent a
starting point for our work.
In this respect, we are particularly interested in the case of overlapping clusters. As we will clarify,
this case may represent a critical aspect for most clustering methods we have considered. In
particular, we started our analysis by noting that, in a case of high-dimensional data with
overlapping clusters, it may be difficult to choose the component-specific distributions, and no
graphical device can help us. So, we decided to investigate non parametric approaches to clustering.
In this framework, we focused on the case of clusters with elliptical shapes, and in Gaussian
mixtures as a special case. Then, we realized that for elliptical shapes the symmetry could be a
“natural” choice. So, we searched for such clustering approaches, and we found the symmetrybased
methods cited above. But, surprisingly, none of them was intended to focus on elliptical
clusters, since their aim is essentially at handling image recognition of different symmetric shapes.
So, we decided to discuss this issue, and to test whether a suitable function of symmetry could
improve clustering results in the case of elliptical overlapping clusters.
Since we are interested in elliptical shapes, from a clustering point of view, another broad subject
that we will discuss is the Gaussian mixture model. In this context, our interest is in the EM-based
Mclust algorithm from the R library mclust, see Fraley and Raftery (1999). Thus, our work address
both of these topics, partitive clustering methods (with a focus on the symmetry-based approach)
and Gaussian model-based clustering.
The main reason of such a choice, that is to address two partially different subjects, derives from the
essential features of our proposal: a symmetry-based partitive method which is intended to deal with
elliptical clusters (with Gaussian being a special case). In this sense, we provide an evaluation of
our clustering performances by proposing a comparison with the Gaussian mixture model
implemented in the Mclust library, see Fraley and Raftery (1999). This is surely a challenging task,
since this method has home-court advantage in the case of Gaussian clusters. In this framework, as
pointed out before, we are mainly interested in the case of overlapping clusters. In this sense, a
starting point for our work was the assumption that Mclust (also in its “natural” framework, that is
Gaussian mixtures) could have problems in centroid estimation when clusters are highly
overlapping. Quite obviously, this drawback could be related to its dependency on the mutivariate
Gaussian density. So, we searched for a non parametric skewness-based method, which could be
appropriate for elliptical distribution (including Gaussian) in the case of overlapping clusters. This
was exactly the framework of the proposed Sbam (Skewness-Based Allocation Method) algorithm
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Optimization of UMTS Network Planning Using Genetic Algorithms
No full textThe continuously growing of cellular networks complexity, which followed the introduction of UMTS tech-nology, has reduced the usefulness of traditional design tools, making them quite unworthy. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a design tool for UMTS optimized net planning based on genetic algorithms. In par-ticular, some utilities for 3G net designers, useful to respect important aspects (such as the environmental one) of the cellular network, are shown
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