We are delighted to be associated as guest editors with the publication of this special issue of the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Decision Sciences, in honour of our esteemed colleague Professor Jeffrey J. Hunter. This special issue marks Jeff 's retirement from Massey University, although Jeff plans to continue his research. It also acknowledges Jeff 's many contributions to probability ...

We consider a probability based approach according to which the similarity of two values (in the same domain) is the probability of value pairs whose components are rather apart than the two values under consideration. Similarities across the attributes of the heterogeneous data are combined using Fisher transformation. Results of applying this approach to an image retrieval problem are also pr...

Topics in Tropical Linear Algebra and Applied Probability by Ngoc Mai Tran Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics University of California, BERKELEY Professor Bernd Sturmfels, Chair Tropical linear algebra is the study of classical linear algebra problems with arithmetic done over the tropical semiring, namely with addition replaced by max, and multiplication replaced by addition. It allows one to ...

Two-Stage Problems with Stochastic Order Constraints. Darinka Dentcheva, Department of Mathematical Science, Stevens Institute of Technology. Abstract: We consider two-stage risk-averse stochastic optimization problems with a stochastic-order constraint on the second stage decisions. The usual stochastic order, the increasing convex order and a multivariate stochastic order will be discussed. W...

In linguistic modelling, a number of probability distributions must be modified because of different individual influences on the data and gradual shifts to new attractors. Several kinds of modifications, estimations and tests of already published models are presented for fitting purposes. *Address correspondence to: Gejza Wimmer, Mathematical Institute SAS, Stefánikova 49, SK81473 Bratislava, ...

Despite many improvements in the recognition of graphical elements, even the best implementations of Optical Music Recognition (OMR) introduce inaccuracies in the resultant score. These errors, particularly rhythmic errors, are time consuming to fix. Most musical compositions repeat rhythms between parts and at various places throughout the score. Information about rhythmic selfsimilarity, howe...

We consider the following stochastic model for a mobile service scenario. Consider a stationary Poisson process in R, with its points radially ordered with respect to the origin (the anchor); if d = 2, the points may correspond to locations of e.g. restaurants. A user, with a location different from the origin, asks for the location of the first Poisson point and keeps asking for the location o...