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In this article, we make inferences for the Weibull parameters and propose two test statistics for the comparison of two Weibull distributions based on interval-censored data. However, the distributions of the two statistics are unknown and not easy to obtain, therefore a simulation study is necessary. An urn model in the simulation of interval-censored data was proposed by Lee (1999) to select random intervals. Then we propose a simulation procedure with urn model to obtain approximately the quantiles of the two statistics. We demonstrate an example in AIDS study to illustrate how the tests can be applied to the infection time distributions of AIDS.

This PhD thesis consists of a summary and four papers which deal with stochastic approximation algorithms and first-passage percolation. Paper I deals with the a.s. limiting properties of bounded stochastic approximation algorithms in relation to the equilibrium points of the drift function. Applications are given to some generalized Pólya urn processes. Paper II continues the work of Paper I and investigates under what circumstances one gets asymptotic normality from a properly scaled algorithm. The algorithms are shown to converge in some other circumstances, although the limiting distribution is not identified. Paper III deals with the asymptotic speed of first-passage percolation on a graph called the ladder when the times associated to the edges are independent, exponentially distributed with the same intensity. Paper IV generalizes the work of Paper III in allowing more edges in the graph as well as not having all intensities equal.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:31:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Roberto Gondo Macedo.pdf: 4206008 bytes, checksum: 0bfc7a868e8147d49a77c18612a2de97 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-15 / The speed of information and knowledge in contemporary society introduced a constant search for improved information processes, in order to ensure more rapid processing and results. In the world public, the requirements go a similar way, under the gaze of the citizen voter, so the research proposal is to provide a panorama of Brazilian electronic voting system, specifically the electronic ballot box and carried the project from conception of the ides 90´s to the present time, pointing to a scientific look at the communication actions of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, to promote campaigns to raise awareness of the computerized system of voting by electors, supposedly faster and more efficient. The research used for descriptive purposes multiple views of a communication: through the body maintainer, politicians directly involved in competitive elections and political consultants, working backstage in the strategies of electoral campaigns. This diversity of views and positions regarding the credibility of the system aims to provide a character study of macro understanding of the impacts of a computerized system in a democratic environment. / A velocidade da informação e do conhecimento instaurou na sociedade contemporânea uma constante busca pela melhoria dos processos informacionais, com vistas a garantir maior rapidez nos processamentos e resultados. No universo público, as exigências caminham de modo similar, sob o olhar do eleitor cidadão, portanto, a proposta da pesquisa é promover um panorama do sistema eletrônico de votação brasileiro, mais precisamente a Urna Eletrônica e transitar desde a concepção do projeto nos idos da década de 90 até o momento atual, apontando um olhar científico para as ações comunicacionais do Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE), no sentido de promover campanhas publicitárias para fomentar a conscientização do sistema informatizado de voto pelos eleitores, supostamente mais rápido e eficiente. A pesquisa utiliza para fins descritivos múltiplas visões da comunicação da urna: por intermédio do órgão mantenedor, os políticos, diretamente envolvidos no pleito competitivo e os consultores políticos, atuantes nas estratégias de bastidores das campanhas eleitorais. Essa diversidade de visões e posições acerca da credibilidade do sistema busca propiciar a pesquisa um caráter de macro compreensão dos impactos de um sistema informatizado em um ambiente democrático.(AU)

This contribution analyzes and discusses formal and chronological characteristics of the house urns in the Collection of prehistoric artefacts of the University of Leipzig. / In dem Beitrag werden die in der Sammlung Ur- und Frühgeschichte der Universität Leipzig aufbewahrten Hausurnen vorgestellt. Es handelt sich um eine Kopie und ein Original.

Several philosophical problems are based on an analogy between a real situation and a probabilistic model. Such problems are based on urn analogies. The present dissertation aims to describe and implement a methodology oriented towards the resolution of philosophical problems based on an urn analogy. This methodology is based on the use of the n-universes. To this end, I describe first the n-universes in a detailed way. I also discuss the difficulties of the theory of n-universes related to the demultiplication of the criteria and to the relation one/many between the objects and a given criterion.On the one hand, I present an application of the framework of n-universes to the Doomsday argument and to the problems recently appeared in the literature in keeping with the Doomsday argument. My concern is also with showing how the application of the framework of n-universes to several problems and thought experiments related to the Doomsday argument helps clarifying the problem data and making disappear the associated ambiguity. I present then an analysis of the following problems related to the Doomsday argument: the two urn case, God's Coin Toss, the Sleeping Beauty Problem, the Presumptuous Philosopher, Lazy Adam, and the Shooting-Room Paradox. I present lastly a solution to the Doomsday argument, based on a third route, by contrast to two types of solutions classically described.On the other hand, I present an application of the framework of n-universes to Goodman's paradox. I replace first Goodman's statement in the framework of n-universes. I propose then a solution to the paradox, based on a distinction between two different modelizations of Goodman's statement in two structurally different n-universes.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:58:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcelo Rivelino Rodrigues.pdf: 515906 bytes, checksum: 0b54cbbd6b99bd2a08b96bb98277ace9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-05-31 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / In this work I am considering the use of the Urn of Bernoulli, as a basic model in the education of Probability. For the concrete representation of the urn I will use the so called activity The Bottle of Brousseau . The theoretical basis present in this research is composed by two main theories: The Conceptual Fields Theory, which belongs to Gerard Vergnaud, and the Theory of the Situations, developed by Guy Brousseau. The present research was accomplished with students of the last series of the room cycle of Basic Education in order to verify if they, through an education sequence, can be able to construct the probabilistic concepts of base, when these concepts are boarded for two approaches: the Laplaciano approach and the frequency approach / Neste trabalho propomos a utilização da Urna de Bernoulli como modelo fundamental no ensino de Probabilidade. Para a representação concreta da urna, usarei a atividade denominada Garrafa de Brousseau . A base que permea este trabalho foi composta por duas teorias: a de Campos Conceituais , de Gerard Vergnaud, e a Teoria das Situações , de Guy Brousseau. Realizamos esta pesquisa com alunos da última série do quarto ciclo do Ensino Fundamental, com o intuito de verificar se esses alunos, por meio de uma seqüência de ensino, puderam construir os conceitos probabilísticos de base quando estes são abordados por dois enfoques: o laplaciano e o freqüentista

Der Vortrag wurde auf dem 5. Workshop DissOnline: Abschlussworkshop des DFG-Projektes "Aufbau einer Koordinierungsstelle für elektronische Hochschulschriften" am 25. Februar 2005 gehalten. Der Datentransfer elektronischer Hochschulschriften an die Deutsche Bibliothek (DDB) sowie den Südwestdeutschen Bibliotheksverbund (SWB) ist erläutert. Die Technologie zur Erfassung, Aufbereitung und Datenübermittlung ist für das Meldeinterface DDB und SWB äquivalent. Dabei erfolgt die automatische Vergabe von Persistent Identifiern (URN) für jedes Dokument. Die per Onlineformular vom Autor eingetragenen Metadaten werden zur Abholung und Speicherung auf dem Server der Deutschen Bibliothek in das Format XMetaDiss transformiert und über die OAI Schnittstelle zum Download bereitgestellt. Für die in MONARCH achivierten Dissertationen und Habilitationen ist die Langzeitverfügbarkeit und der persistente Zugriff auf den Volltext gesichert.

Context: Organizations strive to improve their business processes, and adaptive business processes have recently attracted much attention in that context. However, much research in that area has a narrow focus and does not consider a comprehensive view of the organization and its goals. In addition, Business Intelligence-based monitoring methods are useful for business process improvement but they often present information in a format that is not entirely suited for decision making. Objectives: The main objectives of this thesis are to provide: • A framework to model goals, processes, performance, situations, and improvement patterns using one modeling notation, in an iterative and incremental manner; • A method for the modeling and analysis of cause-effect relationships between indicators used to measure goal satisfaction; and • A technique allowing the detection of undesirable, sub-optimal conditions and the application of improvement patterns to the context Method: We develop an iterative framework based on the User Requirements Notation (URN) for modeling, monitoring and improving business organizations and their business processes. In addition, we introduce a formula-based evaluation algorithm allowing better analysis of the relationships between the business performance model elements (namely indicators). Furthermore, we use a profiled version of the Aspect-oriented URN (AoURN) with extensions (Business Process Pattern profile), for detecting undesirable conditions and for business process adaptation. We validate the novelty and feasibility of our approach by performing a systematic literature review, by assessing it against Zellner’ mandatory elements of a method, by developing tool support, by performing a pilot experiment and by using real-life examples from different sectors (healthcare and retail). Results: The two examples show that through the framework’s iterative approach, organizations at different levels of maturity in their business improvement journey can benefit from the framework. Furthermore, our systematic literature review shows that although there are existing works that enable our vision, most of them have a narrow focus and do not cover the three organization views that are of interest in this research. AoURN allows analysts to find repeated patterns in a context and bundle goal, performance and process models as a self-contained unit. AoURN hence enables the modeling of complex circumstances together with analysis techniques for what-if analysis and process adaptation, all using a unified and integrated modeling language. Finally, the pilot experiment suggests that, with some level of documentation and training, users who are already familiar with URN can use the profiled AoURN provided in this thesis as well as the discussed improvement patterns.

Context: Organizations strive to improve their business processes, and adaptive business processes have recently attracted much attention in that context. However, much research in that area has a narrow focus and does not consider a comprehensive view of the organization and its goals. In addition, Business Intelligence-based monitoring methods are useful for business process improvement but they often present information in a format that is not entirely suited for decision making. Objectives: The main objectives of this thesis are to provide: • A framework to model goals, processes, performance, situations, and improvement patterns using one modeling notation, in an iterative and incremental manner; • A method for the modeling and analysis of cause-effect relationships between indicators used to measure goal satisfaction; and • A technique allowing the detection of undesirable, sub-optimal conditions and the application of improvement patterns to the context Method: We develop an iterative framework based on the User Requirements Notation (URN) for modeling, monitoring and improving business organizations and their business processes. In addition, we introduce a formula-based evaluation algorithm allowing better analysis of the relationships between the business performance model elements (namely indicators). Furthermore, we use a profiled version of the Aspect-oriented URN (AoURN) with extensions (Business Process Pattern profile), for detecting undesirable conditions and for business process adaptation. We validate the novelty and feasibility of our approach by performing a systematic literature review, by assessing it against Zellner’ mandatory elements of a method, by developing tool support, by performing a pilot experiment and by using real-life examples from different sectors (healthcare and retail). Results: The two examples show that through the framework’s iterative approach, organizations at different levels of maturity in their business improvement journey can benefit from the framework. Furthermore, our systematic literature review shows that although there are existing works that enable our vision, most of them have a narrow focus and do not cover the three organization views that are of interest in this research. AoURN allows analysts to find repeated patterns in a context and bundle goal, performance and process models as a self-contained unit. AoURN hence enables the modeling of complex circumstances together with analysis techniques for what-if analysis and process adaptation, all using a unified and integrated modeling language. Finally, the pilot experiment suggests that, with some level of documentation and training, users who are already familiar with URN can use the profiled AoURN provided in this thesis as well as the discussed improvement patterns.