The “Essential Tension” at Work in Qualitative Analysis: A Case Study of the Opposite Points of View of Poincaré and Enriques on the Relationships between Analysis and Geometry

An analysis of the different philosophic and scientific visions of Henri Poincaré and Federigo Enriques relative to qualitative analysis provides us with a complex and interesting image of the “essential tension” between “tradition” and “innovation” within the history of science. In accordance with his scientific paradigm, Poincaré viewed qualitative analysis as a means for preserving the nucleus of the classical reductionist program, even though it meant “bending the rules” somewhat. To Enriques's mind, qualitative analysis represented the affirmation of a synthetic, geometrical vision that would supplant the analytical/quantitative conception characteristic of 19th-century mathematics and mathematical physics. Here, we examine the two different answers given at the turn of the century to the question of the relationship between geometry and analysis and between mathematics, on the one hand, and mechanics and physics, on the other.Copyright 1998 Academic Press.Un'analisi delle diverse posizioni filosofiche e scientifiche di Henri Poincaré e Federigo Enriques nei riguardi dell'analisi qualitativa fornisce un'immagine complessa e interessante della “tensione essenziale” tra “tradizione” e “innovazione” nell'ambito della storia della scienza. In linea con il proprio paradigma scientifico, Poincaré vedeva nell'analisi qualitativa un mezzo per preservare il nucleo del programma riduzionista calssico, anche se cio comportava una lieve “distorsione delle regole”. Nella mente di Enriques, l'analisi qualitativa rappresentava l'affermazione di un punto di vista sintetico e geometrico che avrebbe soppiantato la concezione analitico-quantitativa caratteristica della matematica e della fisica matematica del 19° secolo. Il nostro scopo principale è di esaminare due diverse risposte date a cavallo del secolo alla questione dei rapporti tra geometria e analisi e tra matematica da un lato e meccanica e fisica dall'altro.Copyright 1998 Academic Press.AMS subject classification: 01A55     

On divisible designs and local algebras

We study the action of the group PGL(m,A) on the projective space PG(m − 1,A) over a finite commutative local algebra A in order to construct a class of divisible designs, denoted by D_m(d,A), which is the classical one of 2-designs (of points and of flats of fixed projective dimension) in the case where A is a field. We also study the constructed divisible designs with particular care for the case where d = m − 1. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A methodology for measuring the relative effectiveness of healthcare services

^** Email: giorgio.vittadini{at}unimib.it^*** Email: simona.minotti{at}unicatt.it In this paper we propose a methodology for measuring the ‘relativeeffectiveness’ of healthcare services (i.e. the effectof hospital care on patients) under general conditions, in which:) a healthcare outcome underlies qualitative and quantitativeobservable indicators; ß) we are interested in studyingthe simultaneous dependency of multiple outcomes on covariates(where the outcomes can also be correlated to each other); )the relative effectiveness is adjusted for hospital-specificcovariates; ) we hypothesise a general distribution for randomdisturbances and the random parameters of relative effectiveness.For this topic, a generalisation of the SURE (seemingly unrelatedregression equations) multilevel model is proposed. The solutionsare obtained by means of Bayesian inference methods. Since thereis currently no software available to estimate this model, anSAS procedure based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods hasbeen developed by the authors, in line with Goldstein &Spiegelhalter (1996, J. R. Stat. Soc. Ser. A, 159, 385–443),Spiegelhalter et al. (1996, Bayesian Using Gibbs Sampling Manual.Cambridge: MRC Biostatistic Unit, Institute of Public Health)and Albert & Chib (1997, J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 92, 916–925).In addition, a new theoretical result regarding the joint posteriordistribution for the parameters is provided. The model proposedhas been implemented for an effectiveness study of a selectionof Lombard hospitals.     

A characterization of affine hyperquadrics

In this paper, using the existence of special exhaustions that satisfy the complex homogeneous Monge–Ampère equation and curvature properties are given characterizations of the affine hyperquadric and other special Stein manifolds. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000) 32W20, 32V40     

Ethics in OR/MS: Past,present and future

The pervasiveness and impact on society and on every day human life of technology has led to a growing awareness that science and technology cannot be considered above or beyond the realm of value judgements and hence of ethics. This is especially true for Operations Research / Management Science (OR/MS), that particular science which is concerned with methodologies for scientifically deciding how to design and operate man-machine systems in an optimal way, usually under conditions requiring the allocation of scarce resources. Here we try to give a historical account of the growing interest for ethics within the OR/MS community from its birth to present days. Starting from attempts to define models and codes of ethical behaviour in our profession, the OR/MS community has arrived at more fundamental questions about the ethical responsibility it faces in a world of growing inequalities and in which the ever greater stress that human activities impose on the environment puts at risk the very survival of human kind.     

A MIP approach for some practical packing problems: Balancing constraints and tetris-like items

This paper considers packing problems with balancing conditions and items consisting of clusters of parallelepipeds (mutually orthogonal, i.e. tetris-like items). This issue is quite frequent in space engineering and a real-world application deals with the Automated Transfer Vehicle project (funded by the European Space Agency), at present under development. A Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) approach is proposed. The three-dimensional single bin packing problem is considered. It consists of orthogonally placing, with possibility of rotation, the maximum number of parallelepipeds into a given parallelepiped. A MIP formulation of the problem is reported together with a MIP-based heuristic approach. Balancing conditions are furthermore examined, as well as the orthogonal placement (with rotation) of tetris-like items into a rectangular domain.Received: September 2003, Revised: February 2004, AMS classification: 90B99, 05B40, 90C90, 90C59Thanks are due to T. A. Ciriani for the important suggestions given for the whole paper and to S. Gliozzi (IBM, Business Consulting Services) for the significant support offered, in particular in discussing the topics presented in Sect. 2.1.     

On the Dealer's Randomness Required in Secret Sharing Schemes

In this paper we provide upper and lower bounds on the randomness required by the dealer to set up a secret sharing scheme for infinite classes of access structures. Lower bounds are obtained using entropy arguments. Upper bounds derive from a decomposition construction based on combinatorial designs (in particular, t-(v,k,) designs). We prove a general result on the randomness needed to construct a scheme for the cycle Cn; when n is odd our bound is tight. We study the access structures on at most four participants and the connected graphs on five vertices, obtaining exact values for the randomness for all them. Also, we analyze the number of random bits required to construct anonymous threshold schemes, giving upper bounds. (Informally, anonymous threshold schemes are schemes in which the secret can be reconstructed without knowledge of which participants hold which shares.)     

Asymptotic Convergence of Conjugate Gradient Methods for the Partial Symmetric Eigenproblem

Recently an efficient method (DACG) for the partial solution of the symmetric generalized eigenproblem A x = δB x has been developed, based on the conjugate gradient (CG) minimization of the Rayleigh quotient over successive deflated subspaces of decreasing size. The present paper provides a numerical analysis of the asymptotic convergence rate ρ_j of DACG in the calculation of the eigenpair λ_j, u _j, when the scheme is preconditioned with A⁻¹. It is shown that, when the search direction are A-conjugate, ρ_j is well approximated by 4/ξ_j, where ξ_j is the Hessian condition number of a Rayleigh quotient defined in appropriate oblique complements of the space spanned by the leftmost eigenvectors u ₁, u ₂,…, u _j−1 already calculated. It is also shown that 1/ξ_j is equal to the relative separation between the eigenvalue λ_j currently sought and the next higher one λ_j+1 and the next higher one λ_{j + 1}. A modification of DACG (MDACG) is studied, which involves a new set of CG search directions which are made M-conjugate, with M-conjugate, with M-conjugate, with M a matrix approximating the Hessian. By distinction, MDACG has an asymptotic rate of convergence which appears to be inversely proportional to the square root of ξ_j, in complete agreement with the theoretical results known for the CG solution to linear systems. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A generalization of the normal rational curve in $$\mathop {\mathrm{PG}}(d,q^n)$$ and its associated non-linear MRD codes

Let A and B be two points of \(\mathop {\mathrm{PG}}(d,q^n)\) and let \(\Phi \) be a collineation between the stars of lines with vertices A and B, that does not map the line AB into itself. In this paper we prove that if \(d=2\) or \(d\ge 3\) and the lines \(\Phi ^{-1}(AB), AB, \Phi (AB) \) are not in a common plane, then the set \(\mathcal{C}\) of points of intersection of corresponding lines under \(\Phi \) is the union of \(q-1\) scattered \({\mathbb {F}}_{q}\)-linear sets of rank n together with \(\{A,B\}\). As an application we will construct, starting from the set \(\mathcal{C}\), infinite families of non-linear \((d+1, n, q;d-1)\)-MRD codes, \(d\le n-1\), generalizing those recently constructed in Cossidente et al. (Des Codes Cryptogr 79:597–609, 2016) and Durante and Siciliano (Electron J Comb, 2017).