We discuss the problem of constraining cosmological parameters with cosmic microwave background band–power estimates. Because these latter are variances, they do not have gaussian distribution functions and, hence, the standard χ 2 –approach is not strictly applicable. A general purpose approximation to experimental band–power likelihood functions is proposed, which requires only limited experi...

The t -distribution allows the incorporation of outlier robustness into statistical models while retaining the elegance of likelihood-based inference. In this paper we develop and implement a linear mixed model for the general design of the linear mixed model using the univariate t -distribution. This general design allows a considerably richer class of models to be fit than is possible with ex...

Magnetic fluctuations with a zero mean field in a random flow with a finite correlation time and a small yet finite magnetic diffusion are studied. Equation for the second-order correlation function of a magnetic field is derived. This equation comprises spatial derivatives of high orders due to a nonlocal nature of magnetic field transport in a random velocity field with a finite correlation t...

A method for building a statistical shape model of sulci of the human brain cortex is described. The model includes sulcal fundi that are defined on a spherical map of the cortex. The sulcal fundi are first extracted in a semi-automatic way using an extension of the fast marching method. They are then transformed to curves on the unit sphere via a conformal mapping method that maps each cortica...

SUMMARY The log-transformation is widely used in biomedical and psychosocial research to deal with skewed data. This paper highlights serious problems in this classic approach for dealing with skewed data. Despite the common belief that the log transformation can decrease the variability of data and make data conform more closely to the normal distribution, this is usually not the case. Moreove...

A two-parameter family of distributions on (0, 1) is explored which has many similarities to the beta distribution and a number of advantages in terms of tractability (it also, of course, has some disadvantages). The minimax distribution, so-called because of its genesis in terms of uniform order statistics, particularly has straightforward distribution and quantile functions which do not depen...

A nonparametric upper tolerance limit (UTL) bounds a specified percentage of the population distribution with specified confidence. The most common UTL is based on the largest order statistic (the maximum) where the number of samples required for a given confidence and coverage is easily derived for an infinitely large population. However, for other order statistics such as the second largest, ...

We study a generalized version of the protean graph (a probabilistic model of the World Wide Web) with a power law degree distribution, in which the degree of a vertex depends on its age as well as its rank. The main aim of this paper is to study the behaviour of the protean process near the connectivity threshold. Since even above the connectivity threshold it is still possible that the graph ...

The one-dimensional motion of N particles in the field of many incoherent waves is revisited numerically. When the wave complex amplitudes are independent, with a gaussian distribution, the quasilinear approximation is found to always overestimate transport and to become accurate in the limit of infinite resonance overlap.

In this paper a statistical model of the call holding time in Public Access Mobile Radio) PAMR systems is presented. For this purpose a scanning receiver has been used to monitor the call duration, and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test has been applied to measure the goodness of fit of the candidate distributions. The exponential distribution often used to model trunked systems with the M/M/C queue i...