Photocopy of typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

No description available.

"Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration from the Naval Postgraduate School, June 2008." / Advisor(s): Euske, Kenneth J. ; Mutty, John E. "June 2008." "MBA professional report"--Cover. Description based on title screen as viewed on August 8, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1977. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-138). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

In experimental or quasi-experimental studies in which a repeated measures design is used, it is common to obtain scores on several dependent variables on each measurement occasion. Multivariate mixed model (MMM) analysis of variance (Thomas, 1983) is a recently developed alternative to the MANOVA procedure (Bock, 1975; Timm, 1980) for testing multivariate hypotheses concerning effects of a repeated factor (called occasions in this study) and interaction between repeated and non-repeated factors (termed group-by-occasion interaction here). If a condition derived by Thomas (1983), multivariate multi-sample sphericity (MMS), regarding the equality and structure of orthonormalized population covariance matrices is satisfied (given multivariate normality and independence for distributions of subjects' scores), valid likelihood-ratio MMM tests of group-by-occasion interaction and occasions hypotheses are possible. To date, no information has been available concerning actual (empirical) levels of significance of such tests when the MMS condition is violated. This study was conducted to begin to provide such information. Departure from the MMS condition can be classified into three types— termed departures of types A, B, and C respectively: (A) the covariance matrix for population ℊ (ℊ = 1,...G), when orthonormalized, has an equal-diagonal-block form but the resulting matrix for population ℊ is unequal to the resulting matrix for population ℊ' (ℊ ≠ ℊ'); (B) the G populations' orthonormalized covariance matrices are equal, but the matrix common to the populations does not have equal-diagonal-block structure; or (C) one or more populations has an orthonormalized covariance matrix which does not have equal-diagonal-block structure and two or more populations have unequal orthonormalized matrices. In this study, Monte Carlo procedures were used to examine the effect of each type of violation in turn on the Type I error rates of multivariate mixed model tests of group-by-occasion interaction and occasions null hypotheses. For each form of violation, experiments modelling several levels of severity were simulated. In these experiments: (a) the number of measured variables was two; (b) the number of measurement occasions was three; (c) the number of populations sampled was two or three; (d) the ratio of average sample size to number of measured variables was six or 12; and (e) the sample size ratios were 1:1 and 1:2 when G was two, and 1:1:1 and 1:1:2 when G was three. In experiments modelling violations of types A and C, the effects of negative and positive sampling were studied. When type A violations were modelled and samples were equal in size, actual Type I error rates did not differ significantly from nominal levels for tests of either hypothesis except under the most severe level of violation. In type A experiments using unequal groups in which the largest sample was drawn from the population whose orthogonalized covariance matrix has the smallest determinant (negative sampling), actual Type I error rates were significantly higher than nominal rates for tests of both hypotheses and for all levels of violation. In contrast, empirical levels of significance were significantly lower than nominal rates in type A experiments in which the largest sample was drawn from the population whose orthonormalized covariance matrix had the largest determinant (positive sampling). Tests of both hypotheses tended to be liberal in experiments which modelled type B violations. No strong relationships were observed between actual Type I error rates and any of: severity of violation, number of groups, ratio of average sample size to number of variables, and relative sizes of samples. In equal-groups experiments modelling type C violations in which the orthonormalized pooled covariance matrix departed at the more severe level from equal-diagonal-block form, actual Type I error rates for tests of both hypotheses tended to be liberal. Findings were more complex under the less severe level of structural departure. Empirical significance levels did not vary with the degree of interpopulation heterogeneity of orthonormalized covariance matrices. In type C experiments modelling negative sampling, tests of both hypotheses tended to be liberal. Degree of structural departure did not appear to influence actual Type I error rates but degree of interpopulation heterogeneity did. Actual Type I error rates in type C experiments modelling positive sampling were apparently related to the number of groups. When two populations were sampled, both tests tended to be conservative, while for three groups, the results were more complex. In general, under all types of violation the ratio of average group size to number of variables did not greatly affect actual Type I error rates. The report concludes with suggestions for practitioners considering use of the MMM procedure based upon the findings and recommends four avenues for future research on Type I error robustness of MMM analysis of variance. The matrix pool and computer programs used in the simulations are included in appendices. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to determine boundary conditions associated with the number of treatment groups (K), the common treatment group sample size (n), and an index of the extent to which the assumption of equality of treatment population variances is violated (Q) with regard to user confidence in application of the one-way analysis of variance F-test for determining equality of treatment population means. The study concludes that the analysis of variance F-test is robust when the number of treatment groups is less than seven and when the extreme ratio of variances is less than 1:5, but when the violation of the assumption is more severe or the number of treatment groups is seven or more, serious discrepancies between actual and nominal significance levels occur. It was also concluded that for seven treatment groups confidence in the application of the analysis of variance should be limited to the values of Q and n so that n is greater than or equal to 10 In (1/2)Q. For nine treatment groups, it was concluded that confidence be limited to those values of Q and n so that n is greater than or equal to (-2/3) + 12 ln (1/2)Q. No definitive boundary could be developed for analyses with five treatment groups.

The realm of manufacturing is replete with instances of uncertainties in job processing times, machine statuses (up or down), demand fluctuations, due dates of jobs and job priorities. These uncertainties stem from the inability to gather accurate information about the various parameters (e.g., processing times, product demand) or to gain complete control over the different manufacturing processes that are involved. Hence, it becomes imperative on the part of a production manager to take into account the impact of uncertainty on the performance of the system on hand. This uncertainty, or variability, is of considerable importance in the scheduling of production tasks. A scheduling problem is primarily to allocate the jobs and determine their start times for processing on a single or multiple machines (resources) for the objective of optimizing a performance measure of interest. If the problem parameters of interest e.g., processing times, due dates, release dates are deterministic, the scheduling problem is relatively easier to solve than for the case when the information is uncertain about these parameters. From a practical point of view, the knowledge of these parameters is, most often than not, uncertain and it becomes necessary to develop a stochastic model of the scheduling system in order to analyze its performance. Investigation of the stochastic scheduling literature reveals that the preponderance of the work reported has dealt with optimizing the expected value of the performance measure. By focusing only on the expected value and ignoring the variance of the measure used, the scheduling problem becomes purely deterministic and the significant ramifications of schedule variability are essentially neglected. In many a practical cases, a scheduler would prefer to have a stable schedule with minimum variance than a schedule that has lower expected value and unknown (and possibly high) variance. Hence, it becomes apparent to define schedule efficiencies in terms of both the expectation and variance of the performance measure used. It could be easily perceived that the primary reasons for neglecting variance are the complications arising out of variance considerations and the difficulty of solving the underlying optimization problem. Moreover, research work to develop closed-form expressions or methodologies to determine the variance of the performance measures is very limited in the literature. However, conceivably, such an evaluation or analysis can only help a scheduler in making appropriate decisions in the face of uncertain environment. Additionally, these expressions and methodologies can be incorporated in various scheduling algorithms to determine efficient schedules in terms of both the expectation and variance. In our research work, we develop such analytic expressions and methodologies to determine the expectation and variance of different performance measures of a schedule. The performance measures considered are both completion time and tardiness based measures. The scheduling environments considered in our analysis involve a single machine, parallel machines, flow shops and job shops. The processing times of the jobs are modeled as independent random variables with known probability density functions. With the schedule given a priori, we develop closed-form expressions or devise methodologies to determine the expectation and variance of the performance measures of interest. We also describe in detail the approaches that we used for the various scheduling environments mentioned earlier. The developed expressions and methodologies were programmed in MATLAB R12 and illustrated with a few sample problems. It is our understanding that knowing the variance of the performance measure in addition to its expected value would aid in determining the appropriate schedule to use in practice. A scheduler would be in a better position to base his/her decisions having known the variability of the schedules and, consequently, can strike a balance between the expected value and variance. / Master of Science

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health, 2008. / "May 2008" Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: B, page: 1084. Adviser: Wenyaw Chan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-40).

by Kwok-leung Tsui. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1981. / Bibliography: leaves 39-41.