Initiatives in Africa

Since the 1st oil crisis in 1973, the economies of sub-Saharan Africa have barely kept pace with their burgeoning populations. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa give birth more often than women in any other region of the world, with an average of more than 6.5 live births each. The region's natural increase average 2.5% a year in the 1960s, 2.7% in the 1970s, and in the mid-1980s, it is 3.1% per annum--a rate that will double the regions population in 22 years. National leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa were slow to consider population policy as a key component of the social and economic development effort. The neglect of population issues is reflected in the limited scope of public or private family planning programs in the sub-continent. Donor countries and institutions play an important role in developing the information base by providing technical training to government staff, supporting research, and disseminating information to a broad spectrum of political actors. Some examples of policy reconsiderations in Nigeria, Zambia, Liberia, and Niger are given. These countries are starting to give active consideration to population policies to reduce fertility and high rates of population growth by expanding family planning services, raising the age of marriage, improving the status of women, providing family-life education, and incorporating economic incentives for smaller families into the provision of social services. The highly centralized nature of African governments dictates that the acquiescence of the governmental elite must be obtained before any policy can take hold. Overall, high population growth rates in combination with a stagnating social and economic development effort throughout the region have provided the catalyst for a new look at Sub-Saharan Africa population policy. The ability of African nations to implement policies that reduce fertility is more open to question; no African nation has as yet done so, and the socioeconomics factors contributing to high fertility remain strong.     

A new approach for dealing with the startup problem in discrete event simulation

This article proposes a practical, data-based statistical procedure which can be used to reduce or remove bias owing to artificial startup conditions in simulations aimed at estimating steady-state means. We discuss results of experiments designed to choose good parameter values for this procedure, and present results of extensive testing of the procedure on a variety of stochastic models for which partial analytical results are available. The article closes with two illustrations of the application of the procedure to more complex statistical problems which are more representative of the kinds of purposes for which real-world steady-state simulation studies might be undertaken.     

Hu's precedence tree scheduling algorithm: A simple proof

This article presents a simple proof of Hu's algorithm for scheduling in minimum time a set of tasks constrained by precedence tree constraints, each task requiring a unit time to complete, and where m processors are available.     

Control charts for exponentially distributed product life

This paper introduces a special control chart procedure for exponentially distributed product life. Statistical control of product life in manufacturing requires continuing life tests of manufactured product so as to detect changes in product life and take appropriate corrective action. These life testing experiments may become exceedingly time consuming and thus can be both impractical because of serious time delays in implementing corrective action on the process when indicated, and quite uneconomical. It is desirable to inquire into the character of life testing by means of a control chart procedure based on the real time to first failure within given samples. Measuring the real minimum life provides a considerable reduction in duration of the testing procedure and in the number of specimens destroyed, yielding a considerable economy over the Shewhart's X control chart.     

A theory of ideal linear weights for heterogeneous combat forces

Detailed combat simulations can produce effectiveness tables which measure the effectiveness of each weapon class on one side of an engagement, battle, or campaign to each weapon class on the other. Effectiveness tables may also be constructed in other ways This paper assumes that effectiveness tables are given and shows how to construct from them a system of weapon weights each of which is a weighted average of the effects of a given weapon against each of the enemy's weapons. These weights utilize the Perron- Frobenius theory of eigenvectors of nonnegative matrices. Methods of calculation are discussed and some interpretations are given for both the irreducible and reducible cases.     

Postoptimality analysis in integer programming by implicit enumeration: The mixed integer case

This paper develops a method for doing postoptimality analysis on the mixed integer programming problem. The proposed procedures form a natural adjunct to enumerative I.P. algorithms that are linear programming based, and they are designed, in effect, to capitalize on insights generated as the problem is initially solved to do subsequent analysis upon it. In particular, limited ranging analysis is possible on selected parameters, as is the efficient resolving of the problem following parameter changes.     

Optimal and suboptimal procedures in group sequential sampling

This paper investigates the problem of choosing between two simple hypothesis, H₀ and H₁, in terms of independent, identically distributed random variables, when observations can be taken in groups. At any stage in the decision process it must be decided whether to stop and take action now or to continue, in which case the size of the next group of observations must be decided upon. The problem is to find an optimal procedure incorporating a stopping, group size (batch) and terminal action rule. It is proven, in general, that the optimal stopping and terminal action rule is of the sequential probability ratio type (SPRT). Fixed stopping rules of the SPRT type are studied and an iterative procedure of the policy improvement type, both with and without a value determination step, is developed. It is shown, for the general situation, that both the average risk and scheduling rule converge to the optima. Also, six suboptimal scheduling rules are considered with respect to the average risks they achieve. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the procedures.