Kernel methods provide an attractive framework for aggregating and learning from ranking data, and so understanding the fundamental properties of kernels over permutations is a question of broad interest. We provide a detailed analysis of the Fourier spectra of the standard Kendall and Mallows kernels, and a new class of polynomial-type kernels. We prove that the Kendall kernel has exactly two ...

The Laboratory Standardization Panel of the National Cholesterol Education Program recommends that cholesterol method accuracy ideally be within 3% of the true value determined by the Abell-Kendall Reference Method, a component of the National Reference System for Cholesterol. As one of the Abell-Kendall network laboratories established to facilitate cholesterol standardization, the approach we...

Microcontrollers, the brains of embedded systems, have found their way into every aspect of our lives including medical devices such as pacemakers. Pacemakers provide life supporting functions to people therefore it is critical for these devices to meet their timing constraints. This thesis examines the use of hardware co-processing to accelerate the calculation time associated with the critica...

By using well known properties of elliptical distributions we show that the relation between Kendall's tau and the linear correlation coefficient for bivariate normal distributions holds more generally (subject to only slight modifications) for the class of elliptical distributions.

This report describes the results of experiments with accelerated ray tracing on a virtual shared-memory parallel computer. The machine used, the Kendall Square Research KSR1, is described in sufficient detail for its novel features to be appreciated. The report describes a new ray tracer written specifically to capitalise on the KSR1’s features. Models used in the experiments include well-know...

The non-parametric Mann-Kendall method and Sliding t-test were applied in this study to analyze the spatial and temporal patterns of trends of the precipitation in the Loess Plateau from 1958 to 2007. The main trends of the precipitation in this region is downward, only four upward time series have not reach the significant level. Most of the abrupt changes happened in northeast of Loess Platea...

We propose one parametric and one non-parametric method for detection of monotone trends in nutrient concentrations in brackish waters. Both methods take into account that temporal variation in the quality of such waters can be strongly influenced by mixing of salt and fresh water, thus salinity is used as a classification variable in the trend analysis. With the non-parametric approach, Mann-K...

Climate variability and change is threatening water resources around the world. One hundred and fourtheen (114) stations from Reference Hydrometric Basin Network (RHBN) around Canada with at least 30 years continuous data (up to 2011) were selected to study the trend in mean annual runoff for different periods of 30 to 100 years in step 10 years by non-parametric Mann-Kendall test. Effect of sh...