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Description
By the von Neumann min-max theorem, a two person zero sum game with finitely many pure strategies has a unique value for each player (summing to zero) and each player has a non-empty set of optimal mixed strategies. If the payoffs are independent, identically distributed (iid) uniform (0,1) random variables, then with probability one, both players have unique optimal mixed strategies utilizing the same number of pure strategies with positive probability (Jonasson 2004). The pure strategies with positive probability in the unique optimal mixed strategies are called saddle squares. In 1957, Goldman evaluated the probability of a saddle point (a 1 by 1 saddle square), which was rediscovered by many authors including Thorp (1979). Thorp gave two proofs of the probability of a saddle point, one using combinatorics and one using a beta integral. In 1965, Falk and Thrall investigated the integrals required for the probabilities of a 2 by 2 saddle square for 2 × n and m × 2 games with iid uniform (0,1) payoffs, but they were not able to evaluate the integrals. This dissertation generalizes Thorp's beta integral proof of Goldman's probability of a saddle point, establishing an integral formula for the probability that a m × n game with iid uniform (0,1) payoffs has a k by k saddle square (k ≤ m,n). Additionally, the probabilities of a 2 by 2 and a 3 by 3 saddle square for a 3 × 3 game with iid uniform(0,1) payoffs are found. For these, the 14 integrals observed by Falk and Thrall are dissected into 38 disjoint domains, and the integrals are evaluated using the basic properties of the dilogarithm function. The final results for the probabilities of a 2 by 2 and a 3 by 3 saddle square in a 3 × 3 game are linear combinations of 1, π2, and ln(2) with rational coefficients.
ContributorsManley, Michael (Author) / Kadell, Kevin W. J. (Thesis advisor) / Kao, Ming-Hung (Committee member) / Lanchier, Nicolas (Committee member) / Lohr, Sharon (Committee member) / Reiser, Mark R. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Parallel Monte Carlo applications require the pseudorandom numbers used on each processor to be independent in a probabilistic sense. The TestU01 software package is the standard testing suite for detecting stream dependence and other properties that make certain pseudorandom generators ineffective in parallel (as well as serial) settings. TestU01 employs two basic schemes for testing parallel generated streams. The first applies serial tests to the individual streams and then tests the resulting P-values for uniformity. The second turns all the parallel generated streams into one long vector and then applies serial tests to the resulting concatenated stream. Various forms of stream dependence can be missed by each approach because neither one fully addresses the multivariate nature of the accumulated data when generators are run in parallel. This dissertation identifies these potential faults in the parallel testing methodologies of TestU01 and investigates two different methods to better detect inter-stream dependencies: correlation motivated multivariate tests and vector time series based tests. These methods have been implemented in an extension to TestU01 built in C++ and the unique aspects of this extension are discussed. A variety of different generation scenarios are then examined using the TestU01 suite in concert with the extension. This enhanced software package is found to better detect certain forms of inter-stream dependencies than the original TestU01 suites of tests.
ContributorsIsmay, Chester (Author) / Eubank, Randall (Thesis advisor) / Young, Dennis (Committee member) / Kao, Ming-Hung (Committee member) / Lanchier, Nicolas (Committee member) / Reiser, Mark R. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Solving partial differential equations on surfaces has many applications including modeling chemical diffusion, pattern formation, geophysics and texture mapping. This dissertation presents two techniques for solving time dependent partial differential equations on various surfaces using the partition of unity method. A novel spectral cubed sphere method that utilizes the windowed Fourier technique is presented and used for both approximating functions on spherical domains and solving partial differential equations. The spectral cubed sphere method is applied to solve the transport equation as well as the diffusion equation on the unit sphere. The second approach is a partition of unity method with local radial basis function approximations. This technique is also used to explore the effect of the node distribution as it is well known that node choice plays an important role in the accuracy and stability of an approximation. A greedy algorithm is implemented to generate good interpolation nodes using the column pivoting QR factorization. The partition of unity radial basis function method is applied to solve the diffusion equation on the sphere as well as a system of reaction-diffusion equations on multiple surfaces including the surface of a red blood cell, a torus, and the Stanford bunny. Accuracy and stability of both methods are investigated.
ContributorsIslas, Genesis Juneiva (Author) / Platte, Rodrigo (Thesis advisor) / Cochran, Douglas (Committee member) / Espanol, Malena (Committee member) / Kao, Ming-Hung (Committee member) / Renaut, Rosemary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one of the popular tools to study human brain functions. High-quality experimental designs are crucial to the success of fMRI experiments as they allow the collection of informative data for making precise and valid inference with minimum cost. The primary goal of this study is on identifying the best sequence of mental stimuli (i.e. fMRI design) with respect to some statistically meaningful optimality criteria. This work focuses on two related topics in this research field. The first topic is on finding optimal designs for fMRI when the design matrix is uncertain. This challenging design issue occurs in many modern fMRI experiments, in which the design matrix of the statistical model depends on both the selected design and the experimental subject's uncertain behavior during the experiment. As a result, the design matrix cannot be fully determined at the design stage that makes it difficult to select a good design. For the commonly used linear model with autoregressive errors, this study proposes a very efficient approach for obtaining high-quality fMRI designs for such experiments. The proposed approach is built upon an analytical result, and an efficient computer algorithm. It is shown through case studies that our proposed approach can outperform the existing method in terms of computing time, and the quality of the obtained designs. The second topic of the research is to find optimal designs for fMRI when a wavelet-based technique is considered in the fMRI data analysis. An efficient computer algorithm to search for optimal fMRI designs for such cases is developed. This algorithm is inspired by simulated annealing and a recently proposed algorithm by Saleh et al. (2017). As demonstrated in the case studies, the proposed approach makes it possible to efficiently obtain high-quality designs for fMRI studies, and is practically useful.
ContributorsZhou, Lin (Author) / Kao, Ming-Hung (Thesis advisor) / Welfert, Bruno (Thesis advisor) / Jackiewicz, Zdzislaw (Committee member) / Reiser, Mark R. (Committee member) / Stufken, John (Committee member) / Taylor, Jesse Earl (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017