In this paper we describe and analyze LOCMEDBOOST, an algorithm that boosts regressors with input dependent weights. The algorithm is a synthesis of median boosting [1] and localized boosting [2, 3, 4], and unifies the advantages of the two approaches. We prove boostingtype convergence of the algorithm and give clear conditions for the convergence of the robust training error, where robustness ...

CONTEXT Children's exposure to violence, alcohol, tobacco and other substances, and sexual messages in the media are a source of public health concern; however, content in video games commonly played by children has not been quantified. OBJECTIVES To quantify and characterize the depiction of violence, alcohol, tobacco and other substances, and sex in video games rated E (for "Everyone"), ana...

In propositional learning, boosting has been a very popular technique for increasing the accuracy of classification learners. In firstorder learning, on the other hand, surprisingly little attention has been paid to boosting, perhaps due to the fact that simple forms of boosting lead to loss of comprehensibility and are too slow when used with standard ILP learners. In this paper, we show how b...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To analyse the predictive power of self rated health for mortality in different socioeconomic groups. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS Analysis of mortality rates and risk ratios of death during follow up among 170 223 respondents aged 16 years and above in the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions 1975-1997, in relation to self rated health stated at the interview, by age, sex, so...

Using the 1980 to 2002 General Social Survey, a repeated cross-sectional study that has been linked to the National Death Index through 2008, this study examines the changing relationship between self-rated health and mortality. Research has established that self-rated health has exceptional predictive validity with respect to mortality, but this validity may be deteriorating in light of the ra...

Despite flourishing research on the relationship between emotion and literal language, and despite the pervasiveness of figurative expressions in communication, the role of figurative language in conveying affect has been underinvestigated. This study provides affective and psycholinguistic norms for 619 German idiomatic expressions and explores the relationships between affective and psycholin...

This study assesses the prevalence of poor self-rated health and investigates its association with individual and environmental characteristics in adults with and without reported morbidity. A household survey assessed 4,048 adults in two districts of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. We used Poisson regression with robust variance stratified by the presence of reported morbidity. Pre...

Understanding social inequalities in health is of great importance; it provides the conceptual frame for investigating the social factors that affect health, together with empirical evidence for improving population health. Individual and socioeconomic data, disease related conditions and self rated health (SRH) ratings were collected from a representative sample of 1,000 participants in order ...

Objectives: In analyses concerned with self-rated health it is common to dichotomise an ordinal-scale health measure and compare different subgroups of a population on basis of odds ratios from logistic regression models. Selfrated health is often explored also in wide age intervals. Since people’s health correlates strongly with their age, that approach is empirically problematic, particularly...