ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Managing Advertising and Promotion for Long-Run Profitability
Authors: Kamel Jedidi, Carl F. Mela, Sunil Gupta
Venue: Marketing Science (1999)

In recent years, manufacturers have become increasingly disposed toward the use of sales promotions, often at the cost of advertising. Yet the long-term implications of these changes for brand profitability remain unclear. In this paper, we seek to offer insights into this important issue. We consider the questions of i) whether it is more desirable to ad-vertise or promote, ii) whether it is better to use frequent, shallow promotions or infrequent, deep promotions, and iii) how changes in regular prices affect sales relative to increases in price promotions. Additional insights regarding brand equity, the relative magnitude of short- and long-term effects, and the decomposition of advertising and promotion elasticities across choice and quantity decisions are obtained. To address these points, we develop a heteroscedastic, varying-parameter joint probit choice and regression quantity model. Our approach allows consumers' responses to short-term marketing activities to change in response to changes in marketing actions over the long term. We also accommodate the possibility of competitive reactions to policy changes of a brand. The model is estimated for a consumer packaged good category by using over eight years of panel data. The resulting parameters enable us to assess the effects of changes in advertising and promotion policies on sales and profits. Our results show that, in the long term, advertising has a positive effect on "brand equity" while promotions have a negative effect. Furthermore, we find price promotion elasticities to be larger than regular price elasticities in the short term, but smaller than regular price elasticities when long-term effects are considered. Consistent with previous research, we also find that most of the effect of a price cut is manifested in consumers' brand choice decisions in the short term, but when long-term effects are again considered, this result no longer holds. Last, we estimate that the long-term effects of promotions on sales are negative overall, and about two-fifths the magnitude of the positive short-term effects. Finally, making reasonable cost and margin assumptions, we conduct simulations to assess the relative profit impact of long-term changes in pricing, advertising, or promotion policies. Our results show regular price decreases to have a generally negative effect on the long-term profits of brands, advertising to be profitable for two of the brands, and increases in price promotions to be uniformly unprofitable.
The effective use of quicksort visualizations in the classroom
Authors: Tom Naps, Scott Grissom
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2002)

We first draw the distinction between two instructional modes of using algorithm visualization (AV). The first of these is to have students construct their own visualizations. The second is to have students view an algorithm animation created by an expert. We then describe an experiment designed to test whether AV can be an effective learning tool in this second mode of use. To encourage the student's active engagement with the visualization, the AV system we used required that students interactively predict the actions that the depiction of the algorithm would portray. Two groups used the system, along with their textbook, to study quick sort. The difference between the groups was that one group used the system only for studying one particular algorithm. The other group had AV integrated more thoroughly into their entire course. We found that the latter group performed significantly better.
Satisfiability of object-oriented database constraints with set and bag attributes
Authors: Anna Formica
Venue: Information Systems (2003)

The definition of methodologies for checking database constraint satisfiability, i.e., the absence of contradictions independently of any database state, is a fundamental and critical problem that has been marginally addressed in the literature. In this paper, a sound and complete algorithm is proposed for checking the satisfiability of a specific class of database integrity constraints in a simplified object-oriented model. Such a class includes cardinality constraints, set and bag attributes, and explicit integrity constraints involving comparison operators. The algorithm, conceived to support database schema design, allows the designer to distinguish among five different kinds of contradictions, each identified by an ad hoc procedure.
On the Smarandache double factorial function
Authors: Maohua Le
Venue: Smarandache notions (2002)

In this paper we discuss various problems and conjectures concerned the Smarandache double factorial function.
Optimizing a Ring-Based Private Line Telecommunication Network Using Tabu Search
Authors: Jiefeng Xu, Steve Y. Chiu, Fred Glover
Venue: Management Science (1999)

One of the private line network design problems in the telecommunications industry is to interconnect a set of customer locations through a ring of end offices so as to minimize the total tariff cost and provide reliability. We develop a Tabu Search method for the problem that incorporates long term memory, probabilistic move selections, hierarchical move evaluation, candidate list strategies and an elite solution recovery strategy. Computational results for test data show that the Tabu Search heuristic finds optimal solutions for all test problems that can be solved exactly by a branch-and-cut algorithm, while running about three orders of magnitude faster than the exact algorithm. In addition, for larger size problems that cannot be solved exactly, the tabu search algorithm outperforms the best local search heuristic currently available. The performance gap favoring Tabu Search increases significantly for more difficult problem instances.
Strategic Operations Research and the Edelman Prize Finalist Applications 1989--1998
Authors: Peter C. Bell, Chris K. Anderson, Stephen P. Kaiser
Venue: Operations Research (2003)

In an earlier study we examined the available evidence on the Edelman Prize finalist applications 1989--1998. This study concluded that 13 of the 42 private sector applications provide examples of strategic operations research (SOR) when SOR is defined as operations research that creates a sustainable competitive advantage. In a follow-up study we tested our classifications, gathering longitudinal information on the continued success of the Edelman applications. We contacted people who were familiar with all the private sector applications that were Edelman finalists 1989--1996 and had at least five years of history since the competition. We describe the post-Edelman history of these applications and use this data to reassess their strategic role. We found that the longitudinal data provides evidence to support our original classification, but also suggests that several additional applications were more strategic than was originally apparent. We conclude that almost 60% (20 of 34) of these applications created a sustainable competitive advantage for their firms and provide examples of SOR.
A Method for Strategic Asset-Liability Management with An Application to the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York
Authors: S. Seshadri, A. Khanna, F. Harche, R. Wyle
Venue: Operations Research (1999)

Strategic asset-liability management is a primary concern in today's banking environment. In this paper, we present a methodology to assist in the process of asset-liability selection in a stochastic interest rate environment. In our approach, a quadratic optimizer is embedded in a simulation model and used to generate patterns of dividends, market value and duration of capital, for randomly generated interest rate scenarios. This approach can be used to formulate, test, and refine asset-liability strategies. We present results of applying this methodology to data from the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York.
Building on the Past: Enacting Established Personal Identities in a New Work Setting
Authors: Janice M. Beyer, David R. Hannah
Venue: Organization Science (2002)

A qualitative, longitudinal study of two groups of experienced professionals beginning work in a research organization provided insights into how newcomers with work experience adjust to and become assimilated into new jobs and work settings. Multiple methods were used to collect data on the newcomers' work experiences before and after assuming their new jobs. Repeated interviews with them during their first six months in their new jobs revealed that their past experience affected their assimilation in three primary ways: through the personal identities they had developed and carried with them, through the know-how they had acquired in past jobs and how well it fit with their new jobs, and through the personal tactics they had learned for managing their work and managing change. In general, newcomers with diverse experience adjusted better than those with narrow experience because (1) they found it easier to enact dimensions of their personal identities that allowed them to function effectively in the new situation, (2) they more easily found a fit between know-how gleaned from that experience and their new jobs, and (3) they could draw on a wider variety of personal tactics that they had previously used to help them adjust.
Designing Networks with Error Detection Properties through the Fault-Error Relation
Authors: Cristiana Bolchini, Donatella Sciuto, Fabio Salice
Venue: 1997 Workshop on Defect and Fault-Tolerance in VLSI Systems (1997)

The paper proposes an approach for designing TSC networks by means of error detecting code application, based on the analysis of the desired fault-error relation. The network structure is analyzed by taking into account each possible fault, belonging to the adopted fault set, and by verifying if the produced error is detectable with respect to the adopted encoding. If undetectable faults are located, the network is locally modified, so that area overheads for TSC designs is limited.
Finite-dimensional approximation for a class of elliptic obstacle problems
Authors: Yisheng Huang, Yuying Zhou
Venue: Nonlinear Analysis: Theory, Methods Applications (2003)

In this paper we study the finite-dimensional approximation for a class of elliptic obstacle problems involving unbounded domains by using the Galerkin method. The convergence of the approximation is deduced.
Risk-Sensitive Optimal Control for Markov Decision Processes with Monotone Cost
Authors: V. S. Borkar, S. P. Meyn
Venue: Mathematics of Operations Research (2002)

The existence of an optimal feedback law is established for the risk-sensitive optimal control problem with denumerable state space. The main assumptions imposed are irreducibility and anear monotonicity condition on the one-step cost function. A solution can be found constructively using either value iteration or policy iteration under suitable conditions on initial feedback law.
Book Reviews
Authors: Benjamin Lev, Mark Kaiser, B. Adenso-Díaz Adenso-Díaz, Robert B. Cooper, Antanas Zilinskas
Venue: Interfaces (2000)

The range of books reviewed is wide, covering theory and applications in operations research, statistics, management science, econometrics, mathematics, computers, and information systems (no software is reviewed). In addition, we include books in other fields that emphasize technical applications. Publishers who wish to have their books reviewed should send them to Professor Benjamin Lev. We list the books received; not all books received can be reviewed because space and time are limited. Those who would like to review books are urged to send me their names, addresses, and specific areas of expertise. We commission all reviews and do not accept unsolicited book reviews. Readers are encouraged to suggest books that might be reviewed or to ask publishers to send me copies of such books.
Knowledge-based approaches to project risk management
Authors: T. Andersen
Venue: Civil and structural engineering computing: 2001 (2001)

Project risk management has not yet really penetrated into the construction industry as opposed to other industries where risk management is a common element in management. Empirical studies show a large savings potential, but at the same time, some important "technical" barriers to a successful introduction of project risk management. An important issue is the absence of structured knowledge sources about construction risks. Knowledge is essential for a proper risk management, and this paper outlines some guidance in how to move on towards knowledge-based project risk management in construction. A number of approaches are presented and important research issues are outlined and discussed. We tentatively conclude that construction risk knowledge is likely to be case-based, likewise we suggest that further development in this field is depending on a deeper understanding of the nature of construction risk knowledge.
A class of perfect graphs containing P6
Authors: Gérard Cornuéjols, Xinming Liu
Venue: Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series B (2003)

Let P6 denote the induced path on six nodes. We prove that if a perfect graph G contains P6 as an induced subgraph but not two families introduced by Conforti and Cornuéjols then G is bipartite or disconnected, or G has a star cutset.
Noise propagation and failure criteria for VLSI designs
Authors: V. Zolotov, D. Blaauw, S. Sirichotiyakul, M. Becer, C. Oh, R. Panda, A. Grinshpon, R. Levy
Venue: Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE/ACM international conference on Computer-aided design (2002)

Noise analysis has become a critical concern in advanced chip designs. Traditional methods suffer from two common issues. First, noise that is propagated through the driver of a net is combined with noise injected by capacitively coupled aggressor nets using linear summation. Since this ignores the non-linear behavior of the driver gate the noise that develops on a net can be significantly underestimated. We therefore propose a new linear model that accurately combines propagated and injected noise on a net and which maintains the efficiency of linear simulation. After the propagated and injected noise are correctly combined on a victim net, it is necessary to determine if the noise can result in a functional failure. This is the second issue that we discuss in this paper. Traditionally, noise failure criteria have been based on unity gain points of the DC or AC transfer curves. However, we will show that for digital designs, these approaches can result in a pessimistic analysis in some cases, while in other cases, they allow circuit operation that is extremely close to regions that are unstable and do not allow sufficient margin for error in the analysis. In this paper, we compare the effectiveness of the discussed noise failure criteria and also present a propagation based method, which is intended to overcome these drawbacks. The proposed methods were implemented in a noise analysis tool and we demonstrate results on industrial circuits.
Measuring information spatial densities
Authors: Michele Bezzi, Inés Samengo, Stefan Leutgeb, Sheri J. Mizumori
Venue: Neural Computation (2002)

A novel definition of the stimulus-specific information is presented, which is particularly useful when the stimuli constitute a continuous and metric set, as, for example, position in space. The approach allows one to build the spatial information distribution of a given neural response. The method is applied to the investigation of putative differences in the coding of position in hippocampus and lateral septum.
Hardware courses and the undergraduate computer science curriculum at small colleges
Authors: Lubomir Ivanov
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2003)

Hardware courses have always been a part of the undergraduate Computer Science (CS) curriculum at small colleges. However, these courses are often viewed by many faculty members either as a necessity to satisfy accreditation requirements or, at best, as a traditional but useless part of the CS program in liberal arts settings. The material in these courses is often considered self-contained, and the relationship with other courses in the CS curriculum is rarely emphasized. In this paper we take a closer look at the place and relevance of hardware courses in the CS curriculum of small colleges.
Consequences of Order Crossover Under Order-Up-To Inventory Policies
Authors: Lawrence W. Robinson, James R. Bradley, L. Joseph Thomas
Venue: Manufacturing Service Operations Management (2001)

Order crossover occurs whenever replenishment orders do not arrive in the sequence in which they were placed. This paper argues that order crossover is becoming more prevalent and analyzes the dangers of ignoring it. We present an exact iterative algorithm for computing the distribution of the number of orders outstanding, and formulae for the inventory shortfall distribution (the quantity of inventory in replenishment at the start of a period) and the more common lead-time demand distribution, which are different when order crossover is possible. The lead-time demand distribution can have much higher variability than the shortfall distribution. We show that basing inventory policies on the lead-time demand distribution--rather than the shortfall distribution--can lead to significantly higher inventory cost, even if the probability of order crossover is small. We give an alternative proof to that of Zalkind (1976), which shows that the variance of shortfall is less than the variance of the standard lead-time demand.
Integrated scheduling of tasks and messages in distributed real-time systems
Authors: G. Manimaran, Shashidhar Merugu, Anand Manikutty, C. Siva Ram Murthy
Venue: Engineering of distributed control systems (2001)

The demand for more and more complex real-time applications which require high computational needs with timing constraints, and geographical distribution of computational entities (tasks) of these applications, have led to the choice of distributed systems as a natural candidate for supporting such real-time applications, due to their potential for high performance and reliability. The distributed real-time system considered here consists of uniprocessor or multiprocessor nodes connected through a multihop network. Scheduling of tasks in such a system involves scheduling of dynamically arriving tasks within a node (local scheduling), migration of tasks across the network (global scheduling) if it is not possible to schedule them locally, and (iii) scheduling of messages on communication links (message scheduling) to support inter-task communication and task migration. Most of the existing schemes on scheduling in distributed real-time systems have addressed each of these issues in isolation. Moreover, these schemes consider the load on the processors at a node as the basis to migrate tasks from a heavily loaded node (sender) to a lightly loaded node (receiver). We believe that the identification of a receiver node should be based not only on the load on its processors, but also on the availability of a path, which satisfies the bandwidth required for the task migration, from the sender to that receiver. In this paper, we present an integrated framework for scheduling dynamically arriving real-time tasks in distributed real-time systems. Our proposal consists of (i) algorithms for global scheduling and (ii) interactions among the three schedulers in a way to improve the schedulability of the system. The effectiveness of the proposed framework has been evaluated through simulation by comparing it with existing schemes.
Statistical Analysis of Computational Tests of Algorithms and Heuristics
Authors: Marie Coffin, Matthew J. Saltzman
Venue: INFORMS Journal on Computing (2000)

Statistical analysis is a powerful tool to apply when evaluating the performance of computer implementations of algorithms and heuristics. Yet many computational studies in the literature do not use this tool to maximum effectiveness. This paper examines the types of data that arise in computational comparisons and presents appropriate techniques for analyzing such data sets. Case studies of computational tests from the open literature are re-evaluated using the proposed methods in order to illustrate the value of statistical analysis for gaining insight into the behavior of the tested algorithms.
Incorporating Observed and Unobserved Heterogeneity in Urban Work Travel Mode Choice Modeling
Authors: Chandra R. Bhat
Venue: Transportation Science (2000)

An individual's intrinsic mode preference and responsiveness to level-of-service variables affects her or his travel mode choice for a trip. The mode preference and responsiveness will, in general, vary across individuals based on observed (to an analyst) and unobserved (to an analyst) individual characteristics. The current paper formulates a multinomial logit-based model of travel mode choice that accommodates variations in mode preferences and responsiveness to level-of-service due to both observed and unobserved individual characteristics. The model parameters are estimated using a maximum simulated log-likelihood approach. The model is applied to examine urban work travel mode choice in a multiday sample of workers from the San Francisco Bay area.
Improved validated bounds for Taylor coefficients and for Taylor remainder series
Authors: M. Neher
Venue: Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics (2003)

This paper presents methods for the validated computation of bounds for Taylor coefficients and bounds for Taylor remainder series of analytic functions. These bounds are derived from modifications of Cauchy's estimate. The proposed methods have been implemented in mathematical software called ACETAF. Interval arithmetic is used to restore mathematical rigour to practical calculations. The performance of ACETAF is demonstrated with numerical examples.
Coordination and Flexibility in Supply Contracts with Options
Authors: Dawn Barnes-Schuster, Yehuda Bassok, Ravi Anupindi
Venue: Manufacturing Service Operations Management (2002)

We investigate the role of options (contingent claims) in a buyer-supplier system. Specifically using a two-period model with correlated demand, we illustrate how options provide flexibility to a buyer to respond to market changes in the second period. We also study the implications of such arrangements between a buyer and a supplier for coordination of the channel. We show that, in general, channel coordination can be achieved only if we allow the exercise price to be piecewise linear. We develop sufficient conditions on the cost parameters such that linear prices coordinate the channel. We derive the appropriate prices for channel coordination which, however, violate the individual rationality constraint for the supplier. Contrary to popular belief (based on simpler models) we show that credit for returns offered by the supplier does not always coordinate the channel and alleviate the individual rationality constraint. Credit for returns are useful only on a subset of the feasibility region under which channel coordination is achievable with linear prices. Finally, we demonstrate (numerically) the benefits of options in improving channel performance and evaluate the magnitude of loss due to lack of coordination.
Teaching linked lists and recursion without conditionals or null
Authors: Stephen Bloch
Venue: Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges (2003)

We describe a natural and principled approach to teaching linked data structures and recursion in CS0, CS1 or CS2, and compare the difficulty of using this approach in C++, Java, and Scheme.