Ordinal Optimization has emerged as an efficient technique for simulation and optimization. Exponential convergence rates can be achieved in many cases. In this paper, we present a new approach that can further enhance the efficiency of ordinal optimization. Our approach determines a highly efficient number of simulation replications or samples and significantly reduces the total simulation cos...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND We determine efficient, equitable and mixed efficient-equitable allocations of a male circumcision (MC) intervention reducing female to male HIV transmission in South Africa (SA), as a case study of an efficiency-equity framework for resource allocation in HIV prevention. METHODS We present a mathematical model developed with epidemiological and cost data from the nin...

One of the main part of image compression is a quantization process which give a significant effect to the compression performance. However, image compression based on the quantization produces blocking effect or artifact image. This research proposes a novel bit allocation strategy which assigning an optimal budget of bits in image compression. The bit allocation is proposed to replace the rol...

This paper incorporates two-stage education in a political economy model to study the endogenous determination of public budget allocation across education stages. With hierarchical education, individuals’ benefits from higher education depend on their qualifications, and congestion arises when higher enrollment lowers schooling quality. In less developed economies, the top class has dominant p...

In this thesis, we examine stochastic techniques for overcoming game theoretic and computational issues in the collective decision making process of self-interested individuals. In particular, we examine truthful, stochastic mechanisms, for settings with a strong budget balance constraint (i.e. there is no net flow of money into or away from the agents). Building on past results in AI and compu...

Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA [email protected] [email protected] Abstract We present a simulation run allocation scheme for improving efficiency in simulation experiments for decision making under uncertainty. This scheme is called Optimal Computing Budget Allocation (OCBA). OCBA advances the state-of-the-art by intelligently ...