Thesis (B.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaf 71. / by David Mark Ryter. / B.S.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 231-242. / by Ellen Louise Hahne. / M.S.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1979. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Jeannine Mosely. / M.S.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Joseph A. Amram. / M.S.

Sequential decision making problems are ubiquitous in a number of research areas such as operations research, finance, engineering and computer science. The main challenge with these problems comes from the fact that, firstly, there is uncertainty about the future. And secondly, decisions have to be made over a period of time, sequentially. These problems, in many cases, are modeled as Markov Decision Process (MDP). Most real-life MDPs are ‘high dimensional’ in nature making them challenging from a numerical point of view. We consider a number of such high dimensional MDPs. In some cases such problems can be approximately solved using Approximate Dynamic Programming. In other cases problem specific analysis can be solved to device tractable policies that are near-optimal. In Chapter 2, we presents a novel and practical non-parametric approximate dynamic programming (ADP) algorithm that enjoys graceful, dimension-independent approximation and sample complexity guarantees. In particular, we establish both theoretically and computationally that our proposal can serve as a viable replacement to state of the art parametric ADP algorithms, freeing the designer from carefully specifying an approximation architecture. We accomplish this by ‘kernelizing’ a recent mathematical program for ADP (the ‘smoothed’ approximate LP) proposed by [Desai et al., 2011]. In Chapter 3, we consider a class of stochastic control problems where the action space at each time can be described by a class of matching or, more generally, network flow polytopes. Special cases of this class of dynamic matching problems include many problems that are well-studied in the literature, such as: (i) online keyword matching in Internet advertising (the adwords problem); (ii) the bipartite matching of donated kidneys from cadavers to recipients; and (iii) the allocation of donated kidneys through exchanges over cycles of live donor-patient pairs. We provide an approximate dynamic program (ADP) algorithm for dynamic matching with stochastic arrivals and departures. Our framework is more general than the methods prevalent in the literature in that it is applicable to a broad range of problems characterized by a variety of action polytopes and generic arrival and departure processes. In Chapter 4, we consider the problem of A-B testing when the impact of the treatment is marred by a large number of covariates. Randomization can be highly inefficient in such settings, and thus we consider the problem of optimally allocating test subjects to either treatment with a view to maximizing the efficiency of our estimate of the treatment effect. Our main contribution is a tractable algorithm for this problem in the online setting, where subjects arrive, and must be assigned, sequentially. We characterize the value of optimized allocations relative to randomized allocations and show that this value grows large as the number of covariates grows. In particular, we show that there is a lot to be gained from ‘optimizing’ the process of A-B testing relative to the simple randomized trials that are the mainstay of A-B testing in the ‘big data’ regime of modern e-commerce applications, where the number of covariates is often comparable to the number of experimental trials.

Thesis. 1975. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 187-192. / Ph.D.

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Zhu Yu. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-104). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter CHAPTER 1 --- lNTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1. --- Speech and its temporal structure --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2. --- Previous work on the modeling of temporal structure --- p.1 / Chapter 1.3. --- Integrating explicit duration modeling in HMM-based ASR system --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4. --- Thesis outline --- p.3 / Chapter CHAPTER 2 --- BACKGROUND --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1. --- Automatic speech recognition process --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2. --- HMM for ASR --- p.6 / Chapter 2.2.1. --- HMM for ASR --- p.6 / Chapter 2.2.2. --- HMM-based ASR system --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3. --- General approaches to explicit duration modeling --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3.1. --- Explicit duration modeling --- p.13 / Chapter 2.3.2. --- Training of duration model --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3.3. --- Incorporation of duration model in decoding --- p.18 / Chapter CHAPTER 3 --- CANTONESE CONNECTD-DlGlT RECOGNITION --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1. --- Cantonese connected digit recognition --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1.1. --- Phonetics of Cantonese and Cantonese digit --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2. --- The baseline system --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2.1. --- Speech corpus --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2.2. --- Feature extraction --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.3. --- HMM models --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2.4. --- HMM decoding --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3. --- Baseline performance and error analysis --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3.1. --- Recognition performance --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3.2. --- Performance for different speaking rates --- p.28 / Chapter 3.3.3. --- Confusion matrix --- p.30 / Chapter CHAPTER 4 --- DURATION MODELING FOR CANTONESE DIGITS --- p.41 / Chapter 4.1. --- Duration features --- p.41 / Chapter 4.1.1. --- Absolute duration feature --- p.41 / Chapter 4.1.2. --- Relative duration feature --- p.44 / Chapter 4.2. --- Parametric distribution for duration modeling --- p.47 / Chapter 4.3. --- Estimation of the model parameters --- p.51 / Chapter 4.4. --- Speaking-rate-dependent duration model --- p.52 / Chapter CHAPTER 5 --- USING DURATION MODELING FOR CANTONSE DIGIT RECOGNITION --- p.57 / Chapter 5.1. --- Baseline decoder --- p.57 / Chapter 5.2. --- Incorporation of state-level duration model --- p.59 / Chapter 5.3. --- Incorporation word-level duration model --- p.62 / Chapter 5.4. --- Weighted use of duration model --- p.65 / Chapter CHAPTER 6 --- EXPERIMENT RESULT AND ANALYSIS --- p.66 / Chapter 6.1. --- Experiments with speaking-rate-independent duration models --- p.66 / Chapter 6.1.1. --- Discussion --- p.68 / Chapter 6.1.2. --- Analysis of the error patterns --- p.71 / Chapter 6.1.3. --- "Reduction of deletion, substitution and insertion" --- p.72 / Chapter 6.1.4. --- Recognition performance at different speaking rates --- p.75 / Chapter 6.2. --- Experiments with speaking-rate-dependent duration models --- p.77 / Chapter 6.2.1. --- Using true speaking rate --- p.77 / Chapter 6.2.2. --- Using estimated speaking rate --- p.79 / Chapter 6.3. --- Evaluation on another speech database --- p.80 / Chapter 6.3.1. --- Experimental setup --- p.80 / Chapter 6.3.2. --- Experiment results and analysis --- p.82 / Chapter CHAPTER 7 --- CONCLUSIONS AND FUTUR WORK --- p.87 / Chapter 7.1. --- Conclusion and understanding of current work --- p.87 / Chapter 7.2. --- Future work --- p.89 / Chapter A --- APPENDIX --- p.90 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.100

Designing distributed algorithms for optimizing system-wide performances of large scale communication networks is a challenging task. The key part of this design involves a lot of combinatorial network optimization problems, which are computationally intractable in general and hard to approximate even in a centralized manner. Inspired by the seminal work of Jiang-Walrand, Markov approximation framework was proposed for synthesizing distributed algorithms for general combinatorial network optimization problems. To provide performance guarantees, convergence properties of these distributed algorithms are of significance. / First, we consider instances of the designed Markov chain over resource allocation algorithms. We focus on the convergence issues. We find several examples such that the related convergence results can be applied directly. These examples include optimal path (or tree) selection for wireline networks, optimal neighboring selection for peer-to-peer networks, and optimal channel (or power) assignment for wireless local area networks. / In this thesis, we first review Markov approximation framework and further develop this framework by studying convergence properties of distributed algorithms. These system-wide algorithms consist of the designed Markov chain and resource allocation algorithms. We concentrate on two general scenarios: the designed Markov chain over resource allocation algorithms and resource allocation algorithms over the designed Markov chain. With imprecise measurements of network parameters and without the time-scale separation assumption, we prove convergence to near-optimal solutions for both scenarios under mild conditions. Then we apply Markov approximation framework and associated convergence results to various combinatorial network optimization problems. / Second, we consider instances of resource allocation algorithms over the designed Markov chain. We focus on the system-wide performances. Two instances are investigated: cross-layer optimization for wireless networks with deterministic channel model and wireless networks with network coding. For both instances, guided by Markov approximation framework, we design distributed schemes to achieve maximum utilities. These schemes include primal-dual flow control algorithms, Markov chain based scheduling algorithms, and routing (or network coding) algorithms. Under time-dependent step sizes and update intervals, we show that these distributed schemes converge to the optimal solutions with probability one. Further, under constant step sizes and constant update intervals, we prove that these distributed schemes also converge to a bounded neighborhood of optimal solutions with probability one. These analytical results are validated by numerical results as well. / Shao, Ziyu. / Adviser: Shou Yen Robert Li. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-140). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

Huang Changquan. / "April 2002." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-71). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.