We develop a measure of compactness based on the distance between voters within the same district relative to the minimum distance achievable, which we coin the relative proximity index. Any compactness measure that satisfies three desirable properties (anonymity of voters, efficient clustering, and invariance to scale, population density, and number of districts) ranks districting plans identi...

This paper describes a Bayesian method for optimum accelerated life test planning with one accelerating variable, when the acceleration model is linear in the parameters, based on censored data from a log-location-scale distribution. We use a Bayesian criterion based on estimation precision of a distribution quantile at a specified use condition and use this criterion to find optimum test plans...

Given an adequate simulation model of the task environment and payoff function that measures the quality of partially successful plans, competition-based heuristics such as genetic algorithms can develop high performance reactive rules for interesting sequential decision tasks. We have previously described an implemented system, called SAMUEL, for learning reactive plans and have shown that the...