Enrique Castillo - Böcker

This book is a comprehensive guide to extreme value theory in engineering. Written for the end user with intermediate and advanced statistical knowledge, it covers classical methods as well as recent advances. A collection of 150 examples illustrates the theoretical results and takes the reader from simple applications through complex cases of dependence.

The concept of conditional specification is not new. It is likely that earlier investigators in this area were deterred by computational difficulties encountered in the analysis of data following con­ ditionally specified models. Readily available computing power has swept away that roadblock. A broad spectrum of new flexible models may now be added to the researcher's tool box. This mono­ graph provides a preliminary guide to these models. Further development of inferential techniques, especially those involving concomitant variables, is clearly called for. We are grateful for invaluable assistance in the preparation of this monograph. In Riverside, Carole Arnold made needed changes in grammer and punctuation and Peggy Franklin miraculously transformed minute hieroglyphics into immaculate typescript. In Santander, Agustin Manrique ex­ pertly transformed rough sketches into clear diagrams. Finally, we thank the University of Cantabria for financial support which made possible Barry C. Arnold's enjoyable and productive visit to S- tander during the initial stages of the project. Barry C. Arnold Riverside, California USA Enrique Castillo Jose Maria Sarabia Santander, Cantabria Spain January, 1991 Contents 1 Conditional Specification 1 1.1 Why? ............. ........ . 1 1.2 How may one specify a bivariate distribution? 2 1.3 Early work on conditional specification 4 1.4 Organization of this monograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 5 2 Basic Theorems 7 Compatible conditionals: The finite discrete case.

Efforts to visualize multivariate densities necessarily involve the use of cross-sections, or, equivalently, conditional densities. This book focuses on distributions that are completely specified in terms of conditional densities. They are appropriately used in any modeling situation where conditional information is completely or partially available. All statistical researchers seeking more flexible models than those provided by classical models will find conditionally specified distributions of interest.

The book provides the reader with the different types of functional equations that s/he can find in practice, showing, step by step, how they can be solved.A general methodology for solving functional equations is provided in Chapter 2. The different types of functional equations are described and solved in Chapters 3 to 8. Many examples, coming from different fields, as geometry, science, engineering, economics, probability, statistics, etc, help the reader to change his/her mind in order to state problems as functional equations as an alternative to differential equations, and to state new problems in terms of functional equations or systems.An interesting feature of the book is that it deals with functional networks, a powerful generalization of neural networks that allows solving many practical problems. The second part of the book, Chapters 9 to 13, is devoted to the applications of this important paradigm.The book contains many examples and end of chapter exercises, that facilitates the understanding of the concepts and applications.A general methodology for solving functional equations is provided in Chapter 2.It deals with functional networks, a powerful generalization of neural networksMany examples, coming from different fields, as geometry, science, engineering, economics, probability, statistics, etc, illustrate the concept of functional equationFunctional equations are presented as a powerful alternative to differential equationsThe book contains end of chapter exercises

Fundamental concepts of mathematical modelingModeling is one of the most effective, commonly used tools in engineering and the applied sciences. In this book, the authors deal with mathematical programming models both linear and nonlinear and across a wide range of practical applications.Whereas other books concentrate on standard methods of analysis, the authors focus on the power of modeling methods for solving practical problems-clearly showing the connection between physical and mathematical realities-while also describing and exploring the main concepts and tools at work. This highly computational coverage includes: Discussion and implementation of the GAMS programming systemUnique coverage of compatibilityIllustrative examples that showcase the connection between model and realityPractical problems covering a wide range of scientific disciplines, as well as hundreds of examples and end-of-chapter exercisesReal-world applications to probability and statistics, electrical engineering, transportation systems, and moreBuilding and Solving Mathematical Programming Models in Engineering and Science is practically suited for use as a professional reference for mathematicians, engineers, and applied or industrial scientists, while also tutorial and illustrative enough for advanced students in mathematics or engineering.

A unique, applied approach to problem solving in linear algebra Departing from the standard methods of analysis, this unique book presents methodologies and algorithms based on the concept of orthogonality and demonstrates their application to both standard and novel problems in linear algebra. Covering basic theory of linear systems, linear inequalities, and linear programming, it focuses on elegant, computationally simple solutions to real-world physical, economic, and engineering problems. The authors clearly explain the reasons behind the analysis of different structures and concepts and use numerous illustrative examples to correlate the mathematical models to the reality they represent. Readers are given precise guidelines for:* Checking the equivalence of two systems* Solving a system in certain selected variables* Modifying systems of equations* Solving linear systems of inequalities* Using the new exterior point method* Modifying a linear programming problem With few prerequisites, but with plenty of figures and tables, end-of-chapter exercises as well as Java and Mathematica programs available from the authors' Web site, this is an invaluable text/reference for mathematicians, engineers, applied scientists, and graduate students in mathematics.

A straightforward, practical guide to extreme value modeling for today's world Measuring and interpreting data for extreme values presents a unique and important challenge that has far-reaching implications for all aspects of modern engineering and science. Extreme Value and Related Models with Applications in Engineering and Science reflects the latest information in this growing field. The book incorporates illuminating real-world examples from such areas as structural engineering, hydraulics, meteorology, materials science, highway traffic analysis, environmetrics, and climatology, and is designed to help engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, and scientists gain a clearer understanding of extreme value theory and then translate that knowledge into practical applications within their own fields of research.The book provides: A unique focus on modern topics including data analysis and inferenceSpecific data in such areas as wind, flood, chain strength, electrical insulation, fatigue, precipitation, and wave heightsUseful techniques for addressing extreme value problems, including discrete, continuous, univariate, and multivariate modelsCoverage of order statistics, return period, exceedances and shortfalls, along with detailed explanations on how to obtain exact distributions for these statisticsAn in-depth look at asymptotic models and the limit distributions of maxima, minima, and other order statisticsEnhanced with numerous graphs and exercises, plus an extensive bibliography for further study, this text is an important reference source for engineers designing structures that will withstand even the most extreme circumstances.

This book introduces 'functional networks', a novel neural-based paradigm, and shows that functional network architectures can be efficiently applied to solve many interesting practical problems. Included is an introduction to neural networks, a description of functional networks, examples of applications, and computer programs in Mathematica and Java languages implementing the various algorithms and methodologies. Special emphasis is given to applications in several areas such as: Box-Jenkins AR(p), MA(q), ARMA(p,q), and ARIMA (p,d,q) models with application to real-life economic problems such as the consumer price index, electric power consumption and international airlines' passenger data. Random time series and chaotic series are considered in relation to the Henon, Lozi, Holmes and Burger maps, as well as the problems of noise reduction and information masking. Learning differential equations from data and deriving the corresponding equivalent difference and functional equations. Examples of a mass supported by two springs and a viscous damper or dashpot, and a loaded beam, are used to illustrate the concepts.The problem of obtaining the most general family of implicit, explicit and parametric surfaces as used in Computer Aided Design (CAD). Applications of functional networks to obtain general nonlinear regression models are given and compared with standard techniques. Functional Networks with Applications: A Neural-Based Paradigm will be of interest to individuals who work in computer science, physics, engineering, applied mathematics, statistics, economics, and other neural networks and data analysis related fields.

In this volume, several distinguished and active researchers will highlight some of the recent developments in statistical distribution theory, order statistics and their properties, and some inferential methods associated with them. The volume is classified into different parts according to the focus of the articles. Applications of the distributions and inferential procedures into survival analysis, reliability, quality control, and environmental problems will be highlighted. This comprehensive reference work will serve the statistical and applied mathematics communities as well as practitioners, researchers and grad students in applied probability and statistics, reliability engineering, and biostatistics.

This book is an attempt to provide a uni?ed methodology to derive models for fatigue life. This includes S-N, ?-N and crack propagation models. This is not a conventional book aimed at describing the fatigue fundamentals, but rather a book in which the basic models of the three main fatigue approaches, the stress-based, the strain-based and the fracture mechanics approaches, are contemplated from a novel and integrated point of view. On the other hand, as an alternative to the preferential attention paid to deterministic models based on the physical, phenomenological and empirical description of fatigue, their probabilistic nature is emphasized in this book, in which stochastic fatigue and crack growth models are presented. This book is the result of a long period of close collaborationbetween its two authors who, although of di?erent backgrounds, mathematical and mechanical, both have a strong sense of engineering with respect to the fatigue problem. When the authors of this book ?rst approached the fatigue ?eld in 1982 (twenty six years ago), they found the following scenario: 1. Linear, bilinear or trilinear models were frequently proposed by relevant laboratoriesandacademiccenterstoreproducetheW¨ ohler?eld. Thiswas the case of well known institutions, which justi?ed these models based on clientrequirementsorpreferences. Thisledtotheinclusionofsuchmodels and methods as, for example, the up-and-down, in standards and o?cial practical directives (ASTM, Euronorm, etc.), which have proved to be unfortunate.

Artificial intelligence and expert systems have seen a great deal of research in recent years, much of which has been devoted to methods for incorporating uncertainty into models. This book is devoted to providing a thorough and up-to-date survey of this field for researchers and students.

Artificial neural networks have been recognized as a powerful tool to learn and reproduce systems in various fields of applications. Neural net­ works are inspired by the brain behavior and consist of one or several layers of neurons, or computing units, connected by links. Each artificial neuron receives an input value from the input layer or the neurons in the previ­ ous layer. Then it computes a scalar output from a linear combination of the received inputs using a given scalar function (the activation function), which is assumed the same for all neurons. One of the main properties of neural networks is their ability to learn from data. There are two types of learning: structural and parametric. Structural learning consists of learning the topology of the network, that is, the number of layers, the number of neurons in each layer, and what neurons are connected. This process is done by trial and error until a good fit to the data is obtained. Parametric learning consists of learning the weight values for a given topology of the network. Since the neural functions are given, this learning process is achieved by estimating the connection weights based on the given information. To this aim, an error function is minimized using several well known learning methods, such as the backpropagation algorithm. Unfortunately, for these methods: (a) The function resulting from the learning process has no physical or engineering interpretation. Thus, neural networks are seen as black boxes.

Efforts to visualize multivariate densities necessarily involve the use of cross-sections, or, equivalently, conditional densities. This book focuses on distributions that are completely specified in terms of conditional densities. They are appropriately used in any modeling situation where conditional information is completely or partially available. All statistical researchers seeking more flexible models than those provided by classical models will find conditionally specified distributions of interest.

A general introduction to expert systems dealing with uncertainty and learning methods; describing the most common methods and pointing out their deficiencies.

This textbook, deals with tensors that are treated as vectors, and has a practical orientation. In addition to dealing with the classical topics of tensor books, new tensor concepts are introduced, such as the rotation of tensors, the transposer tensor, the eigentensors, the permutation tensor structure, etc. The book covers an existing gap between the classic theory of tensors and the possibility of solving tensor problems with a computer. In fact, the computational algebra is formulated in matrix form to facilitate its implementation on computers. For the first time tensor contraction is formulated in terms of matrix operations. A computer package , written in Mathematica, is available through Internet at: http://personales.unican.es/castie/tensors that complements the book. In summary, the book is not a standard book on tensors because of its orientation, the many novel contributions included in it, the careful notation and the stretching-condensing techniques used for most of the transformations used in the book.

Optimization plainly dominates the design, planning, operation, and c- trol of engineering systems. This is a book on optimization that considers particular cases of optimization problems, those with a decomposable str- ture that can be advantageously exploited. Those decomposable optimization problems are ubiquitous in engineering and science applications. The book considers problems with both complicating constraints and complicating va- ables, and analyzes linear and nonlinear problems, with and without in- ger variables. The decomposition techniques analyzed include Dantzig-Wolfe, Benders, Lagrangian relaxation, Augmented Lagrangian decomposition, and others. Heuristic techniques are also considered. Additionally, a comprehensive sensitivity analysis for characterizing the solution of optimization problems is carried out. This material is particularly novel and of high practical interest. This book is built based on many clarifying, illustrative, and compu- tional examples, which facilitate the learning procedure. For the sake of cl- ity, theoretical concepts and computational algorithms are assembled based on these examples. The results are simplicity, clarity, and easy-learning. We feel that this book is needed by the engineering community that has to tackle complex optimization problems, particularly by practitioners and researchersinEngineering,OperationsResearch,andAppliedEconomics.The descriptions of most decomposition techniques are available only in complex and specialized mathematical journals, di?cult to understand by engineers. A book describing a wide range of decomposition techniques, emphasizing problem-solving, and appropriately blending theory and application, was not previously available.

This textbook for students and practitioners presents a practical approach to decomposition techniques in optimization. It provides an appropriate blend of theoretical background and practical applications in engineering and science, which makes the book interesting for practitioners, as well as engineering, operations research and applied economics graduate and postgraduate students. "Decomposition Techniques in Mathematical Programming" is based on clarifying, illustrative and computational examples and applications from electrical, mechanical, energy and civil engineering as well as applied mathematics and economics. It addresses decomposition in linear programming, mixed-integer linear programming, nonlinear programming, and mixed-integer nonlinear programming, and provides rigorous decomposition algorithms as well as heuristic ones. Practical applications are developed up to working algorithms that can be readily used. The theoretical background of the book is deep enough to be of interest to applied mathematicians. It includes end of chapter exercises and the solutions of the even numbered exercises are included as an appendix.