• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.201-220
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• 2011

This study investigates levels of thinking of elementary and middle school students doing their tasks of explaining and dealing with variability. According to results, on the task of explaining variability in the measurement settings five levels of thinking were identified: a lack of understanding of explanation of the causes, an insufficient understanding of the causes, an offer of physical causes, consideration of unexplained causes as the source of variability, and consideration of unexplained causes as quasi-chance variability. Also, in the chance settings five levels of thinking were identified: a lack of understanding of explanation of the causes, an insufficient understanding of the causes, an offer of physical causes, recognition of chance variability, and consideration of causes of distribution. On the task of dealing with variability in both the measurement and chance settings five levels of thinking were identified: a lack of understanding of dealing with variability, no physical control and improper statistical control, no physical control and proper statistical control, physical control and improper statistical control, and physical control and proper statistical control.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.727-737
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• 2010

Together with the Young's modulus the Poisson's ratio is another independent material parameter that governs the behavior of a structural system. Therefore, it is meaningful to evaluate separately the influence of the parameter on the random response of the structural system. To this end, a formulation dealing with the spatial randomness in the Poisson's ratio in laminated composite plates is proposed. The main idea of the paper is to transform the fraction form of the constitutive coefficients into the expanded form in an ascending order of the stochastic field function. To validate the adequacy of the formulation, a square plate is chosen and the computation results are compared with those obtained using conventional Monte Carlo simulation. It is observed that the results show good agreement with those by the Monte Carlo simulation(MCS).

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.167-178
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• 2021

Spatial variability is an inherent uncertainty of soil properties. Current reliability analyses generally incorporate random field theory and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) when dealing with spatial variability, in which the computational efficiency is a significant challenge. This paper proposes a KL-FORM algorithm to improve the computational efficiency. In the proposed KL-FORM, Karhunen-Loeve (KL) expansion is used for discretizing random fields, and first-order reliability method (FORM) is employed for reliability analysis. The KL expansion and FORM can be used in conjunction, through adopting independent standard normal variables in the discretization of KL expansion as the basic variables in the FORM. To illustrate the effectiveness of this KL-FORM, it is applied to a case study of a strip footing in spatially variable unsaturated soil under rainfall, in which the bearing capacity of the footing is computed by numerical simulation. This case study shows that the KL-FORM is accurate and efficient. The parametric analyses suggest that ignoring the spatial variability of the soil may lead to an underestimation of the reliability index of the footing.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.33-53
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• 2010

When purchase prices of a raw material fluctuate over time, the total purchasing cost is mainly affected by reordering time. Existing researches focus on deciding the right time when the demand for each period is replenished at the lowest cost. However, the decision is based on expected future prices which usually turn out to include some error. This discrepancy between expected prices and actual prices deteriorates the performance of inventory models dealing with fluctuating purchase prices. In this paper, we propose a new inventory model which incorporates not only cost but also risk into making up a replenishment schedule to meet each period's demand. For each replenishment schedule, the risk is defined to be the variance of its total cost. By introducing the risk into the objective function, the variability of the total cost can be mitigated, and eventually more stable replenishment schedule will be obtained. According to experimental results from crude oil inventory management, the proposed model showed better performance over other models in respect of variability and cost.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.93-106
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• 2024

The present paper investigates the spatial variability effect of soil property on the three-dimensional probabilistic characteristics of the bearing capacity factor (i.e., mean and coefficient of variation) of a circular footing resting on clayey soil where both mean and standard deviation of undrained shear strength increases with depth, keeping the coefficient of variation constant. The mean trend of undrained shear strength is defined by introducing the dimensionless strength gradient parameter. The finite difference method along with the random field and Monte Carlo simulation technique, is used to execute the numerical analyses. The lognormal distribution is chosen to generate random fields of the undrained shear strength. In the study, the potential failure of the structure is represented through the failure probability. The influences of different vertical scales of fluctuation, dimensionless strength gradient parameters, and coefficient of variation of undrained shear strength on the probabilistic characteristics of the bearing capacity factor and failure probability of the footing, along with the probability and cumulative density functions, are explored in this study. The variations of failure probability for different factors of safety corresponding to different parameters are also illustrated. The results are presented in non-dimensional form as they might be helpful to the practicing engineers dealing with this type of problem.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.20-26
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• 2000

In speaker verification system the HMM(hidden Markov model) parameter updating using small amount of data and the priori threshold decision are crucial factor for dealing with long-term variability in people voices. In the paper we present the speaker model updating technique which can be adaptable to the session-to-intra speaker variability and the priori threshold determining technique. The proposed technique decreases verification error rates which the session-to-session intra-speaker variability can bring by adapting new speech data to speaker model parameter through Baum Welch re-estimation. And in this study the proposed priori threshold determining technique is decided by a hybrid score measurement which combines the world model based technique and the cohen model based technique together. The results show that the proposed technique can lead a better performance and the difference of performance is small between the posteriori threshold decision based approach and the proposed priori threshold decision based approach.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.270-279
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• 2003

Parametric studies have been conducted into the variability of the factors affecting the ultrasonic testing applied to weldments. The influence of ultrasonic equipment, transducer parameters, test technique, job parameters, defect type and characteristics on reliability far defect detection and sizing was investigated by experimentation. The investigation was able to build up substantial bank of information on the reliability of manual ultrasonic method for testing weldments. The major findings of the study separate into two parts, one dealing with correlation between ultrasonic techniques, equipment and defect parameters and inspection performance effectiveness and other with human factors. Defect detection abilities are dependent on the training, experience and proficiency of the UT operators, the equipment used, the effectiveness of procedures and techniques.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.166-168
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• 2015

Line of Balance (LOB) method is suitable to schedule construction projects composed of repetitive activities. Since existing LOB based repetitive project scheduling methods are deterministic, they do not lend themselves to handle uncertainties involved in repetitive construction process. Indeed, existing LOB scheduling dose not handle variability of project performance indicators. In order to bridge the gap between reality and estimation, this study provides a stochastic LOB based scheduling method that allows schedulers for effectively dealing with the uncertainties of a construction project performance. The proposed method retrieves an appropriate probability distribution function (PDF) concerning project completion times, and determines favorable start times of activities. A case study is demonstrated to verify and validate the capability of the proposed method in a repetitive construction project planning.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.30 no.sup2
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• pp.254-258
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• 2001

Objective : The terminology of degenerative disc disease lacks official standardization. Lacks of such standardization may provoke some clinical and litigation problems. The authors investigated interobserver and intraobserver variability in interpretation of lumbar disc abnormality. Methods : Magnetic resonance imaging studies of the lumbar spine performed prospectively in 50 patients, were read blindly by three doctors dealing spinal disorders, using two nomenclature. Nomenclature I was normal, bulging, protrusion, extrusion. Nomenclature II was normal, bulging, herniation without neural compression, with neural compression. Intraobserver and interobserver variation were measured statistically. Results : Interobserver agreement was 70.4-80.8% for nomenclature I, 76.2-80.2% for nomenclature II. Intraobserver agreement was 84.0-88.0% for nomenclature I, 79.2-86.8% for nomenclature II. Interobserver Kappa statistic was 0.53-0.56 for nomenclature I, 0.54-0.57 for nomenclature II. Intraobserver Kappa statistic was 0.60-0.85 for nomenclature I, 0.53-0.72 for nomenclature II. Conclusion : Experienced doctors showed only moderate interobserver agreement when interpreting disc status on lumbar magnetic resonance imaging. Intraobserver agreement was superior to interbserver. The standardization of nomenclatures for lumbar disc extension beyond interspace are needed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.335-347
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• 2010

Recent advances in hardware and instrumentation technology have allowed the possibility of deploying very large sensor arrays on structures. Exploiting the huge amount of data that can result in order to perform vibration-based structural health monitoring (SHM) is not a trivial task and requires research into a number of specific problems. In terms of pressing problems of interest, this paper discusses: the design and optimisation of appropriate sensor networks, efficient data reduction techniques, efficient and automated feature extraction methods, reliable methods to deal with environmental and operational variability, efficient training of machine learning techniques and multi-scale approaches for dealing with very local damage. The paper is a result of the ESF-S3T Eurocores project "Smart Sensing For Structural Health Monitoring" (S3HM) in which a consortium of academic partners from across Europe are attempting to address issues in the design of automated vibration-based SHM systems for structures.