In this paper, we propose a simple approach for approximating small sample distributions based on the method of Maximum Entropy (maxent) density. Unlike previous studies that use the maxent method as a curve-fitting tool, we focus on the “small sample asymptotics” of the approximation. We show that this method obtains the same asymptotic order of accuracy as that of the classical Edgeworth expa...

We propose a novel modeling framework for automatic diacritization of Arabic text. The framework is based on Markov modeling where each grapheme is modeled as a state emitting a diacritic (or none) from the diacritic space. This space is exactly defined using 13 diacritics and a null-diacritic and covers all the diacritics used in any Arabic text. The state emission probabilities are estimated ...

Animals select habitat resources at multiple spatial scales. Thus, explicit attention to scale dependency in species–habitat relationships is critical to understand the habitat suitability patterns as perceived by organisms in complex landscapes. Identification of the scales at which particular environmental variables influence habitat selection may be as important as the selection of variables...

Culex tritaeniorhynchus is the primary vector of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) throughout much of the tropical and temperate climates of Asia. Several recent papers have used ecological niche modeling programs, e.g., Maxent and GARP, to predict the distribution of disease vectors (e.g. Peterson and Shaw 2003, Moffett et al. 2007). In this on-going study, we used the Maxent program to model ...

Maximum entropy (Maxent) is useful in many areas. Iterative scaling (IS) methods are one of the most popular approaches to solve Maxent. With many variants of IS methods, it is difficult to understand them and see the differences. In this paper, we create a general and unified framework for IS methods. This framework also connects IS and coordinate descent (CD) methods. Besides, we develop a CD...

Through completing an underspeciied probability model, Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) supports non-monotonic inferences. Some major aspects of how this is done by MaxEnt can be understood from the background of two principles of rational decision: the concept of Indiierence and the concept of Independence. In a formal speciication MaxEnt can be viewed as (conservative) extension of these principles; ...

Predictive modeling of habitat distribution of range plant species and identification of their potential habitats play important roles in the restoration of disturbed rangelands. This study aimed to predict the geographical distribution of Artemisia sieberi and find the influential variables in the distribution of A. sieberi in the desert rangelands of central Iran. Maps of environmental variab...

Ill-posed inverse problems of the form y = Xp where y is J-dimensional vector of a data, p is m-dimensional probability vector which can not be measured directly and matrix X of observable variables is a known J ×m matrix, J < m, are frequently solved by Shannon’s entropy maximization (MaxEnt, ME). Several axiomatizations were proposed (see for instance [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], a...