Robust regression is a commonly required approach in industrial studies like data mining, quality control and improvement, and finance areas. Among the robust regression methods / Least Median Squares, Least Trimmed Squares, Mregression, MM-method, Least Absolute Deviations, Locally Weighted Scatter Plot Smoothing and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines are compared under contaminated normal distributions with each other and Ordinary Least Squares with respect to the multiple outlier detection performance measures. In this comparison / a simulation study is performed by changing some of the parameters such as outlier density, outlier locations in the x-axis, sample size and number of independent variables. In the comparison of the methods, multiple outlier detection is carried out with respect to the performance measures detection capability, false alarm rate and improved mean square error and ratio of improved mean square error. As a result of this simulation study, the three most competitive methods are compared on an industrial data set with respect to the coefficient of multiple determination and mean square error.

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The pharmacy industry in Taiwan has produced a succession of great changes in recent years, for example: The National Health Insurance, the division of medical treatment & medication, Join the World Trade Organization(WTO) which were putting into practice. However, the competent authority which protects the medicine price and nuclear price policying, bringing a large impact to the pharmaceutical factory. So the promotion sales are effected first. So, for be able to improve the sales¡¦ performance & understand the releationship of human resources management activities & sales¡¦ performance, this research attempts to take one pharmacy company for an example, and using Multiple Regression Anylysis to research the effect of Selection, Traing & Education, Salary & Welfare, Position Alternation & Employees Participating to Sales Amount, Achievement Rat of Sales, Leave Application & Customer Developing. Besides this, it also using the Analysis of Variance to understand the difference of sales¡¦ performance under the situation of Cost Reducing & Human Resource Promoting. So according to the Multiple Regression Anylysis & Analysis of Variance, this research get the results as follow: 1.Traing & Education, Salary & Welfare, Employees Participating, the three Human Resource Management Activities have the significance effect to Sales¡¦ Performance. So the hypothesis H-1, H1-3 & H1-5 are all supported. 2.Selection also has the significance effect to Sales¡¦ Performance, but not all of factors can anticipate the Sales¡¦ Performance. So in accordance with the hypothesis H1-1 just present a partical supported result. 3.Position Alternation just has the significance effect to Sales Amount, Leave Application & Customer Developing, but not has the significance effect to Achievement Rat of Sales. So in accordance with the hypothesis H1-4 just present a partical supported result. 4.Under the difference Type of Human Resource Management, The sales¡¦s performance not only has the significance effect to Sales Amount & Customer Developing, but also has the higher performance. However, there are no significance about this difference. So in accordance with the hypothesis H2-1 & H2-2 just present a partical supported result. According to above-mentioned results, if we want to enhance some of sales¡¦ performances, we should enforance some of the optional human resources activities. This research also discover that: The higher salary & welfare structure & The type of human resources promoting, which have the significance effect to increase the sales¡¦ performance.

<p>This essay casts light on the quantitative aspect of the media representation of foreign news. The purpose of the essay is not only to describe the media representation of the countries of the world, but also to explain the representation out of structures that are mirrored by the mass media. Four hypotheses are stated that are operationalized in the research. These are treating four different factors that are believed to affect the representation, economy, geographical distance, cultural distance and the size of the population. A fifth hypothesis is stating that economy is the most influential of the factors. The factors are tested by using multiple regression analyses. Four Swedish newspapers have been selected for the study, two morning papers, one evening paper and one free daily newspaper. The representation is measured by the number of articles retrieved by searching a database containing the four newspapers. The search have included 183 countries and all articles from 2007 for these countries.</p><p>The results shows that economy, geographical distance and size of population are the most important factors for the media representation. Economy is evinced to be the most influential of the factors.</p>

The purpose of this research study was to (a) analyze perceptions of parent involvement across raters (i.e., seventh grade students versus their parents) and across ethnicity (i.e., African American versus European American), and (b) examine how perceptions of parent involvement are related to academic achievement. A subsample of archival survey data collected in one central Florida school district was analyzed for the current study. Findings revealed a positive but weak relationship between students' and parents' perceptions of parent involvement regardless of ethnicity. Significant differences were found in the perceived levels of involvement by ethnicity, even when controlling for SES. In general, there was a positive but weak relationship between perceptions of parent involvement and student academic achievement regardless of ethnicity and while controlling for SES. It is suggested that the weak relationships between parent involvement and student achievement found in this study may be due to the types of items used in the surveys, which focused on limited aspects of parent involvement (e.g., PTA membership and help with homework). Further research exploring how the construct of home-school collaboration is best operationalized among diverse groups of families is needed.

For many years researchers have been troubled with the evaluation of Information Systems (IS) concluding to a lack of understanding as to the time, methods and tools for measuring the impact of IS on organisational performance. Motivated by this lacuna in the literature, this thesis explored the relationship between Information Systems’ Effectiveness and Organisational Performance. The theoretical framework is based on the Delone and McLean’s (D&M) IS success model which is widely adopted in the IS research. Based on a comprehensive literature review on the older and more recent studies the research framework incorporated several new items used by researchers for the measurement of the D&M dimensions. Following a web survey on 168 Greek firms this study sheds some light into the IS field by focusing on how IS effectiveness measures affect Organisational Performance. Data for this study was collected by means of a web-link questionnaire and a sample of 700 companies of different sizes operating in various industries. Many descriptive statistics of academic and managerial importance were produced. Following a correlation analysis and Exploratory Factor Analysis, 15 factors were used for Multiple Regression analysis conducted to test a number of hypotheses around the relationship between the dependent construct (organisational performance) and the independent construct (IS effectiveness). This thesis contributes to existing research in the following ways. First, this study extends our knowledge on IS effectiveness as we adapted and modified DeLone and McLean's model of IS success to incorporate new variables from recent research. The results indicate a significant statistical link between IS effectiveness and performance measures. Second, it provides a holistic framework for measuring Organisational Performance with financial and non-financial variables. Finally, the study presents findings from Greek companies that have adopted IS providing practioners with advice for the practices that can lead to possible and realistic benefits.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between cigarette smoking and socio-demographic variables based on the empirical literature and the primitive theories in the field. Two regression approaches, logistic regression and linear multiple regression, were conducted on the two most recent Arizona Adult Tobacco Surveys to test the hypothesized models. The results showed that cigarette smokers in Arizona are mainly residents who have not completed a four-year college degree, who are unemployed, White, non-Hispanic, or young to middle-aged adults. Among the socio-demographic predictors of interest, education is the most important variable in identifying cigarette smokers, even though the predictive power of these socio-demographic variables is small. Practical and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.

Transactive Discourse During Assessment Conversations on Science Learning by Homer A. Russell III It has been argued that development of science knowledge is the result of social interaction and adoption of shared understandings between teachers and students. A part of understanding that process is determining how student reasoning develops in groups. Transactive discussion is a form of negotiation between group members as they interpret the meaning of their logical statements about a topic. More importantly, it is a form of discourse that often leads to cognitive change as a result of the interaction between group participants as they wrestle with their different perspectives in order to achieve a common understanding. The research reported here was a correlational study designed to investigate the relationship between the various forms of transactive discussion and learning outcome performance seen in an investigation involving 24 students in a middle-SES high school located in southwest Atlanta, Georgia. Pretest and posttest measures of genetics reasoning, as well as curriculum content test data, were used in this study. Group discussion was captured on videotape and analyzed to determine whether transactional discussion was present and whether or not it had an effect on learning outcome measures. Results of this study showed that participant use of transactive discussion played a role in development of reasoning abilities in the area of genetics. It is suggested that teachers should monitor classroom discourse for the presence of transactive discussion as such discourse plays a role in fostering performance outcomes.

Issues of Disinfection By-Product (DBP) formation in response to chlorination in drinking water treatment systems is a common issue encountered by WTP operators. Efforts to minimize DBP formation are complicated by the presence of zebra mussels, which may inhabit the raw water intake of WTPs. While chlorination at the intake to control zebra mussel populations is effective, the formation of DBPs is exacerbated. Methods for reducing DBPs are explored, including adjusting the location for chlorine additions in the treatment sequence. Multivariate models for Total Trihalomethane (TTHM) and Haloacetic Acid (HAA) subspecies are employed to show that in some instances pre-chlorination can be reduced to lower DBP formation, while post-chlorination can be increased. A Regression model (R2 of 0.75) predicts that DBP levels can be lowered by post-chlorination rather than pre-chlorinating raw water for portions of the year except during the combatable life stage to assist in zebra mussel control. A second multivariate regression model for TTHM (R2 = 0.91) which includes bromide, a variable which, due to lack of data, was previously unused, is described and demonstrates that DBP levels can be reduced by lowering pre-chlorination levels. Finally, a Bayesian network is developed using the Webweavr-IV Toolkit, utilizing causal relationships between raw water quality parameters in the form of conditional probabilities. The results show that the average cancer risk can be decreased by while still maintaining zebra mussel control and simultaneously decreasing the incremental cancer risk, which currently fluctuates between 1 in 50,000 to 100,000 in Ontario. / Canada Research Chair Program, Ontario Research Foundation

In New Zealand, a formal tree improvement and breeding programme for Pinus radiata (D.Don) commenced in 1952. A countrywide series of progeny trials was progressively established on over seventy sites, and is managed by the Radiata Pine Breeding Company (RPBC). Diameter at breast height data from the series were used to investigate genotype x environment interaction with a view to establishing the need for partitioning breeding and deployment efforts for P. radiata. Nearly 300,000 measurements made this study one of the largest for genotype x environment interaction ever done. Bivariate analyses were conducted between all pairs of sites to determine genetic correlations between sites. Genetic correlations were used to construct a proximity matrix by subtracting each correlation from unity. The process of constructing the matrix highlighted issues of low connectivity between sites; whereby meaningful correlations between sites were established with just 5 % of the pairs. However, nearly two-thirds of these genetic correlations were between -1.0 and 0.6, indicating the presence of strong genotype x environment interactions. A technique known as multiple regression on resemblance matrices was carried out by regressing a number of environmental correlation matrices on the diameter at breast height correlation matrix. Genotype x environment interactions were found to be driven by extreme maximum temperatures (t-statistic of 2.03 against critical t-value of 1.96 at 95 % confidence level). When tested on its own, altitude was significant with genetic correlations between sites at the 90 % confidence level (t-statistic of 1.92 against critical t-value of 1.645). In addition, a method from Graph Theory using proximity thresholds was utilised as a form of clustering. However, this study highlighted the existence of high internal cohesion within trial series, and high external isolation between trial series. That is, grouping of sites (in terms of diameter) was observed to be a reflection of the series of trials for which each site was established. This characteristic is particularly unhelpful for partitioning sites into regions of similar propensity to genotype x environment interaction, as the genotype x environment effect is effectively over-ridden by the genotype effect. Better cohesion between past, present and future trial series, and more accurate bioclimatic data should allow more useful groupings of sites to be extracted from the data. Given this, however, it is clear that there are a large number of interactive families contained in the RPBC dataset. It is concluded that partitioning of New Zealand’s P. radiata breeding programme cannot be ruled out as an advantageous option.