In spite of increasingly sophisticated workforce management tools, a significant gap remains between the goal of effective staffing and the present difficulty predicting the stochastic demand of inbound calls. We have investigated the hypothesized nonhomogeneous Poisson process model of modem pool callers of the University community. In our case, we tested if the arrivals could be approximated by a piecewise constant rate over short intervals. For each of 1 and 10-minute intervals, based on the close relationship between the Poisson process and the exponential distribution, the test results did not show any sign of homogeneous Poisson process. We have examined the hypothesis of a nonhomogeneous Poisson process by a transformed statistic. Quantitative and graphical goodness-of-fit tests have confirmed nonhomogeneous Poisson process. <p>Further analysis on the intensity function revealed that linear rate intensity was woefully inadequate in predicting time varying arrivals. For sinusoidal rate model, difficulty arose in setting the period parameter. Spline models, as an alternative to parametric modelling, had more control of balance between data fitting and smoothness, which was appealing to our analysis on call arrival process.

In statistical analysis, distributional assumptions are needed to apply parametric procedures. Assumptions about underlying distribution should be true for accurate statistical inferences. Goodness-of-fit tests are used for checking the validity of the distributional assumptions. To apply some of the goodness-of-fit tests, the unknown population parameters are estimated. The null distributions of test statistics become complicated or depend on the unknown parameters if population parameters are replaced by their estimators. This will restrict the use of the test. Goodness-of-fit statistics which are invariant to parameters can be used if the distribution under null hypothesis is a location-scale distribution. For location and scale invariant goodness-of-fit tests, there is no need to estimate the unknown population parameters. However, approximations are used in some of those tests. Different types of estimation and approximation techniques are used in this study to compute goodness-of-fit statistics for complete and censored samples from univariate distributions as well as complete samples from bivariate normal distribution. Simulated power properties of the goodness-of-fit tests against a broad range of skew and symmetric alternative distributions are examined to identify the estimation effects in goodness-of-fit tests. The main aim of this thesis is to modify goodness-of-fit tests by using different estimators or approximation techniques, and finally see the effect of estimation on the power of these tests.

In this study, the most prominent goodness-of-fit tests for censored samples are reviewed. Power properties of goodness-of-fit statistics of the null hypothesis that a sample which is censored from right, left and both right and left which comes from uniform, normal and exponential distributions are investigated. Then, by a similar argument extreme value, student t with 6 degrees of freedom and generalized logistic distributions are discussed in detail through a comprehensive simulation study. A variety of real life applications are given. Suitable test statistics for testing the above distributions for censored samples are also suggested in the conclusion.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-120).

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-120)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 263-266).

abstract: It is common in the analysis of data to provide a goodness-of-fit test to assess the performance of a model. In the analysis of contingency tables, goodness-of-fit statistics are frequently employed when modeling social science, educational or psychological data where the interest is often directed at investigating the association among multi-categorical variables. Pearson's chi-squared statistic is well-known in goodness-of-fit testing, but it is sometimes considered to produce an omnibus test as it gives little guidance to the source of poor fit once the null hypothesis is rejected. However, its components can provide powerful directional tests. In this dissertation, orthogonal components are used to develop goodness-of-fit tests for models fit to the counts obtained from the cross-classification of multi-category dependent variables. Ordinal categories are assumed. Orthogonal components defined on marginals are obtained when analyzing multi-dimensional contingency tables through the use of the QR decomposition. A subset of these orthogonal components can be used to construct limited-information tests that allow one to identify the source of lack-of-fit and provide an increase in power compared to Pearson's test. These tests can address the adverse effects presented when data are sparse. The tests rely on the set of first- and second-order marginals jointly, the set of second-order marginals only, and the random forest method, a popular algorithm for modeling large complex data sets. The performance of these tests is compared to the likelihood ratio test as well as to tests based on orthogonal polynomial components. The derived goodness-of-fit tests are evaluated with studies for detecting two- and three-way associations that are not accounted for by a categorical variable factor model with a single latent variable. In addition the tests are used to investigate the case when the model misspecification involves parameter constraints for large and sparse contingency tables. The methodology proposed here is applied to data from the 38th round of the State Survey conducted by the Institute for Public Policy and Michigan State University Social Research (2005) . The results illustrate the use of the proposed techniques in the context of a sparse data set. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Mathematics 2011

La thèse est composée de trois parties. La partie I introduit les outils mathématiques et statistiques appropriés pour l'étude des dépendances, ainsi que des tests statistiques d'adéquation pour des distributions de probabilité empiriques. Je propose deux extensions des tests usuels lorsque de la dépendance est présente dans les données, et lorsque la distribution des observations a des queues larges. Le contenu financier de la thèse commence à la partie II. J'y présente mes travaux concernant les dépendances transversales entre les séries chronologiques de rendements journaliers d'actions, c'est à dire les forces instantanées qui relient plusieurs actions entre elles et les fait se comporter collectivement plutôt qu'individuellement. Une calibration d’un nouveau modèle à facteurs est présentée ici, avec une comparaison à des mesures sur des données réelles. Finalement, la partie III étudie les dépendances temporelles dans des séries chronologiques individuelles, en utilisant les mêmes outils et mesures de corrélations. Nous proposons ici deux contributions à l'étude du « volatility clustering », de son origine et de sa description: l'une est une généralisation du mécanisme de rétro-action ARCH dans lequel les rendements sont auto-excitants, et l'autre est une description plus originale des auto-dépendances en termes de copule. Cette dernière peut être formulée sans modèle et n'est pas spécifique aux données financières. En fait, je montre ici aussi comment les concepts de récurrences, records, répliques et temps d'attente, qui caractérisent la dynamique dans les séries chronologiques, peuvent être écrits dans la cadre unifié des copules. / The thesis is composed of three parts. Part I introduces the mathematical and statistical tools that are relevant for the study of dependences, as well as statistical tests of Goodness-of-fit for empirical probability distributions. I propose two extensions of usual tests when dependence is present in the sample data and when observations have a fat-tailed distribution. The financial content of the thesis starts in Part II. I present there my studies regarding the “cross-sectional” dependences among the time series of daily stock returns, i.e. the instantaneous forces that link several stocks together and make them behave somewhat collectively rather than purely independently. A calibration of a new factor model is presented here, together with a comparison to measurements on real data. Finally, Part III investigates the temporal dependences of single time series, using the same tools and measures of correlation. I propose two contributions to the study of the origin and description of “volatility clustering”: one is a generalization of the ARCH-like feedback construction where the returns are self-exciting, and the other one is a more original description of self-dependences in terms of copulas. The latter can be formulated model-free and is not specific to financial time series. In fact, I also show here how concepts like recurrences, records, aftershocks and waiting times, that characterize the dynamics in a time series can be written in the unifying framework of the copula.

Thesis (MComm (Statistics and Actuarial Science))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / The goodness-of- t of a statistical model describes how well it ts a set of observations. Measures of goodness-of- t typically summarize the discrepancy between observed values and the values expected under the model in question. Such measures can be used in statistical hypothesis testing, for example to test for normality, to test whether two samples are drawn from identical distributions, or whether outcome frequencies follow a speci ed distribution. Goodness-of- t for copulas is a special case of the more general problem of testing multivariate models, but is complicated due to the di culty of specifying marginal distributions. In this thesis, the goodness-of- t test statistics for general distributions and the tests for copulas are investigated, but prior to that an understanding of copulas and their properties is developed. In fact copulas are useful tools for understanding relationships among multivariate variables, and are important tools for describing the dependence structure between random variables. Several univariate, bivariate and multivariate test statistics are investigated, the emphasis being on tests for normality. Among goodness-of- t tests for copulas, tests based on the probability integral transform, Rosenblatt's transformation, as well as some dimension reduction techniques are considered. Bootstrap procedures are also described. Simulation studies are conducted to rst compare the power of rejection of the null hypothesis of the Clayton copula by four di erent test statistics under the alternative of the Gumbel-Hougaard copula, and also to compare the power of rejection of the null hypothesis of the Gumbel-Hougaard copula under the alternative of the Clayton copula. An application of the described techniques is made to a practical data set.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Mathematics and Statistics. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.