Visualizing Online Auctions

Online auctions have been the subject of many empirical research efforts in the fields of economics and information systems. These research efforts are often based on analyzing data from Web sites such as eBay.com which provide public information about sequences of bids in closed auctions, typically in the form of tables on HTML pages. The existing literature on online auctions focuses on tools like summary statistics and more formal statistical methods such as regression models. However, there is a clear void in this growing body of literature in developing appropriate visualization tools. This is quite surprising, given that the sheer amount of data that can be found on sites such as eBay.com is overwhelming and can often not be displayed informatively using standard statistical graphics. In this article we introduce graphical methods for visualizing online auction data in ways that are informative and relevant to the types of research questions that are of interest. We start by using profile plots that reveal aspects of an auction such as bid values, bidding intensity, and bidder strategies. We then introduce the concept of statistical zooming (STAT-zoom) which can scale up to be used for visualizing large amounts of auctions. STAT-zoom adds the capability of looking at data summaries at various time scales interactively. Finally, we develop auction calendars and auction scene visualizations for viewing a set of many concurrent auctions. The different visualization methods are demonstrated using data on multiple auctions collected from eBay.com.     

风险决策方法在工程投标报价中的应用

在竞争性招标中 ,投标报价决策对于投标的成败和工程承包的盈亏起着决定性作用 .阐述了选择投标项目和确定工程报价的决策理论与方法 .在讨论投标报价理论依据的基础上 ,结合工程案例 ,应用贝叶斯法和期望值法等进行风险决策分析 .可以帮助施工企业迅速合理地做出投标与报价决策 .     

Multiattribute electronic procurement using goal programming

One of the key challenges of current day electronic procurement systems is to enable procurement decisions transcend beyond a single attribute such as cost. Consequently, multiattribute procurement have emerged as an important research direction. In this paper, we develop a multiattribute e-procurement system for procuring large volume of a single item. Our system is motivated by an industrial procurement scenario for procuring raw material. The procurement scenario demands multiattribute bids, volume discount cost functions, inclusion of business constraints, and consideration of multiple criteria in bid evaluation. We develop a generic framework for an e-procurement system that meets the above requirements. The bid evaluation problem is formulated as a mixed linear integer multiple criteria optimization problem and goal programming is used as the solution technique. We present a case study for which we illustrate the proposed approach and a heuristic is proposed to handle the computational complexity arising out of the cost functions used in the bids.     

Residential relocation dynamics: A microeconomic model based on agents’ socioeconomic change and learning

This article develops a mathematical model for residential location choice in which previous experience is considered via a dynamic learning process and each agent evaluates location decisions according to their utility. Agents’ idiosyncratic behavior is modeled, assuming a stochastic willingness to pay based on dwelling and neighborhood attributes and households’ socioeconomics. Additionally, the willingness to pay is affected by the agent’s experience of the urban context in previous periods. Numerical examples are given, and simulations are conducted using linear bid functions. Additionally, concepts of urban dynamics are used in the long-term, assuming quasi-equilibrium in the bids considering the externalities of urban configurations. The results are compared with a static outcome corresponding to the equilibrium model of land use. The comparison is performed using indices of urban segregation and both short- and long-term configurations. The studied dynamics show that static modeling does not explain all the features associated with such a configuration of the urban system (in both short and long term).     

Hedging insurance books

Complex insurance risks typically have multiple exposures. If available, options on multiple underliers with a short maturity can be employed to hedge this exposure. More precisely, the present value of aggregate payouts is hedged using least squares, ask price minimization, and ask price minimization constrained to long only option positions. The proposed hedges are illustrated for hypothetical Variable Annuity contracts invested in the nine sector ETF’s of the US economy. We simulate the insurance accounts by simulating risk-neutrally the underliers by writing them as transformed correlated normals; the physical and risk-neutral evolution is taken in the variance gamma class as a simple example of a non-Gaussian limit law. The hedges arising from ask price minimization constrained to long only option positions delivers a least cost and most stable result.     

Improved bid prices for choice-based network revenue management

One of the latest developments in network revenue management (RM) is the incorporation of customer purchase behavior via discrete choice models. Many authors presented control policies for the booking process that are expressed in terms of which combination of products to offer at a given point in time and given resource inventories. However, in many implemented RM systems—most notably in the hotel industry—bid price control is being used, and this entails the problem that the recommended combination of products as identified by these policies might not be representable through bid price control. If demand were independent from available product alternatives, an optimal choice of bid prices is to use the marginal value of capacity for each resource in the network. But under dependent demand, this is not necessarily the case. In fact, it seems that these bid prices are typically not restrictive enough and result in buy-down effects.We propose (1) a simple and fast heuristic that iteratively improves on an initial guess for the bid price vector; this first guess could be, for example, dynamic estimates of the marginal value of capacity. Moreover, (2) we demonstrate that using these dynamic marginal capacity values directly as bid prices can lead to significant revenue loss as compared to using our heuristic to improve them. Finally, (3) we investigate numerically how much revenue performance is lost due to the confinement to product combinations that can be represented by a bid price.The heuristic is not restricted to a particular choice model and can be combined with any method that provides us with estimates of the marginal values of capacity. In our numerical experiments, we test the heuristic on some popular networks examples taken from peer literature. We use a multinomial logit choice model which allows customers from different segments to have products in common that they consider to purchase. In most problem instances, our heuristic policy results in significant revenue gains over some currently available alternatives at low computational cost.     

单子叶植物叶片双向反射分布的测量与分析

作物的生物含量与作物的光学特性有直接的关系,而植物叶片的双向反射分布函数(BRDF)又直接影响植物的光学特性。植物叶片的BRDF体现了叶片在各个方向不同的能量反射能力,直接影响植物叶片的光谱检测结果,也是植被冠层宏观光学特征的影响因素之一。对植物叶片的BRDF光学特性及表现出的规律性展开研究和讨论,能够有效提高植物无损检测光谱模型的稳定性和可靠性,提升利用作物光谱模型反演理化特性的准确性和可靠性。首先介绍了植物叶片的BRDF快速获取方法及自主研发的方向性光谱检测仪器,该仪器能够在入射光的方位角和天顶角、接收探头的方位角和天顶角这四个维度进行调整,实现多入射角和反射角的反射光谱数据采集。单子叶植物的叶脉呈纵向分布,因而体现出较为显著的各向异性,玉米和小麦是两种较为典型的单子叶农作物。通过自主研发仪器获取不同波段范围下的玉米和小麦的反射光谱信息,并分析总结其反射分布规律。采用文中所介绍的BRDF计算方法对光谱数据以及白板校正数据进行计算,再结合MATLAB程序对光谱反射数据的图像映射,对反射结果与叶绿素含量和叶片含水量这两个叶片典型理化参数的相关性进行分析,最后探讨了采用ANIX系数对叶片的各向异性进行量化分析的方法。选取小麦在可见光波段以及玉米在近红外波段的数据,结果表明,小麦和玉米在各波段下的fr分布均关于入射天顶角两侧微小空间对称,在相同波段下,不同入射天顶角下的fr值大小基本一致;在相同入射天顶角下,小麦在800 nm波段下的fr值最大,680 nm波段下的fr值最小,这是由于680 nm波长附近是叶绿素强吸收的特征波段,而800 nm附近是叶绿素反射的特征波段,且在相同波段下,叶绿素浓度的升高会导致fr值的增大;在水的强吸收特征波段1 450 nm下,玉米的fr值随着含水量的升高而增长。分析表明,作物的BRDF特性能够有效反映叶片主要生物含量的变化,同时计算所得到的各向异性指数也体现出一致的变化规律,为建立稳定且可靠的作物光谱定量分析模型提供了理论和实践基础。     

化学与申奥

本文探讨了化学在申奥中的意义,分别介绍了绿色奥运、科技奥运、人文奥运中的化学问题。