We use a hierarchical Bayesian approach to model user preferences in different contexts or settings. Unlike many previous recommenders, our approach is content-based. We assume that for each context, a user has a different set of preference weights which are linked by a common, “generic context” set of weights. The approach uses Expectation Maximization (EM) to estimate both the generic context...

in the early stages of a construction project, the reliability and accuracy of conceptual cost estimates are major concerns for clients and cost engineers. previous studies applied scoring methods and established common rules or mathematical methods to assess the quality of cost estimates. however, those approaches have some limitations in adapting to real-world projects or require understandin...

Several important complex network measures that helped discovering common patterns across real-world networks ignore edge weights, an important information in real-world networks. We propose a new methodology for generalizing measures of unweighted networks through a generalization of the cardinality concept of a set of weights. The key observation here is that many measures of unweighted netwo...

The annual response variable in an ecological monitoring study often relates linearly to the weighted cumulative effect of some daily covariate, after adjusting for other annual covariates. Here we consider the problem of non-parametrically estimating the weights involved in computing the aforementioned cumulative effect, with a panel of short and contemporaneously correlated time series whose ...

BACKGROUND In 2002, the World Health Organization published a health system performance ranking for 191 member countries. The ranking was based on five indicators, with fixed weights common to all countries. METHODS We investigate the feasibility and desirability of using mathematical programming techniques that allow weights to vary across countries to reflect their varying circumstances and...

Balance in the covariate distributions is crucial for an unconfounded descriptive or causal comparison between different groups. However, lack of overlap in the covariates is common in observational studies. This article focuses on weighting strategies for balancing covariates. We propose a general class of weights---the balancing weights---that balance the expectation of the covariates in the ...

human fascioliasis due to unknown species and animal fascioliasis caused by both or one of fasciola spp. are commonly seen in iran. to compare electrophoretic patterns of somatic and excretory-secretory antigens of f. hepatica and f. gigantica  by sodium dodecyl sulphate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (sds-page), the adult flukes were collected from infected slaughtered bovine livers. e/s a...

In this paper, we introduce the notion of generalized pair weights an $[n, k]$ -linear code over finite field notation="LaTeX">$\mathbb {F}_{q}$ and notation="LaTeX">$r$ -equiweight codes, where notation="LaTeX">$1\le r\le k-1$ . Some...