While many books on quality espouse the Taguchi loss function, they do not examine its impact on statistical quality control (SQC). But using the Taguchi loss function sheds new light on questions relating to SQC and calls for some changes. This book covers SQC in a way that conforms with the need to minimize loss. Subjects often not covered elsewhere include: (i) measurements, (ii) determining how many points to sample to obtain reliable control charts (for which purpose a new graphic tool, diffidence charts, is introduced), (iii) the connection between process capability and tolerances, (iv) how to adapt Deming's kp rule to quadratic loss, (v) how to adjust without tampering. We also discuss the efficiency of various statistics and how control chart constants are derived.

During the past three decades, the development of nonlinear analysis, dynamical systems and their applications to science and engineering has stimulated renewed enthusiasm for the theory of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE).This useful book, which is based around the lecture notes of a well-received graduate course, emphasizes both theory and applications, taking numerous examples from physics and biology to illustrate the application of ODE theory and techniques.Written in a straightforward and easily accessible style, this volume presents dynamical systems in the spirit of nonlinear analysis to readers at a graduate level and serves both as a textbook or as a valuable resource for researchers.

This is the first book to cover comprehensively the mathematical theory of nonblocking switching networks since Beneš' book published 30 years ago. Not only is the material on the classical theory of nonblocking and rearrangeable networks updated, but the modern topics on multicast and multirate switching are also surveyed. The author had spent more than 25 years working on switching networks at Bell Laboratories before he started teaching the course at Chiao-Tung University. He has published about 40 papers and obtained a dozen patents on multistage interconnection networks.

Inverse problems arise in practical applications whenever one needs to deduce unknowns from observables. This monograph is a valuable contribution to the highly topical field of computational inverse problems. Both mathematical theory and numerical algorithms for model-based inverse problems are discussed in detail. The mathematical theory focuses on nonsmooth Tikhonov regularization for linear and nonlinear inverse problems. The computational methods include nonsmooth optimization algorithms, direct inversion methods and uncertainty quantification via Bayesian inference.The book offers a comprehensive treatment of modern techniques, and seamlessly blends regularization theory with computational methods, which is essential for developing accurate and efficient inversion algorithms for many practical inverse problems.It demonstrates many current developments in the field of computational inversion, such as value function calculus, augmented Tikhonov regularization, multi-parameter Tikhonov regularization, semismooth Newton method, direct sampling method, uncertainty quantification and approximate Bayesian inference. It is written for graduate students and researchers in mathematics, natural science and engineering.

Combinatorial mathematicians and statisticians have made a wide range of contributions to the development of block designs, and this book brings together much of that work. The designs developed for a specific problem are used in a variety of different settings. Applications include controlled sampling, randomized response, validation and valuation studies, intercropping experiments, brand cross-effect designs, lotto and tournaments.The intra- and inter- block, nonparametric and covariance analysis are discussed for general block designs, and the concepts of connectedness, orthogonality, and all types of balances in designs are carefully summarized. Readers are also introduced to the designs currently playing a prominent role in the field: alpha designs, trend-free designs, balanced treatment-control designs, nearest neighbor designs, and nested designs.This book provides the important background results required by researchers in block designs and related areas and prepares them for more complex research on the subject.

The need for optimal partition arises from many real-world problems involving the distribution of limited resources to many users. The clustering problem, which has recently received a lot of attention, is a special case of optimal partitioning. This book is the first attempt to collect all theoretical developments of optimal partitions, many of them derived by the authors, in an accessible place for easy reference. Much more than simply collecting the results, the book provides a general framework to unify these results and present them in an organized fashion. Many well-known practical problems of optimal partitions are dealt with. The authors show how they can be solved using the theory OCo or why they cannot be. These problems include: allocation of components to maximize system reliability; experiment design to identify defectives; design of circuit card library and of blood analyzer lines; abstraction of finite state machines and assignment of cache items to pages; the division of property and partition bargaining as well as touching on those well-known research areas such as scheduling, inventory, nearest neighbor assignment, the traveling salesman problem, vehicle routing, and graph partitions. The authors elucidate why the last three problems cannot be solved in the context of the theory.

The need of optimal partition arises from many real-world problems involving the distribution of limited resources to many users. The “clustering” problem, which has recently received a lot of attention, is a special case of optimal partitioning. This book is the first attempt to collect all theoretical developments of optimal partitions, many of them derived by the authors, in an accessible place for easy reference. Much more than simply collecting the results, the book provides a general framework to unify these results and present them in an organized fashion.Many well-known practical problems of optimal partitions are dealt with. The authors show how they can be solved using the theory — or why they cannot be. These problems include: allocation of components to maximize system reliability; experiment design to identify defectives; design of circuit card library and of blood analyzer lines; abstraction of finite state machines and assignment of cache items to pages; the division of property and partition bargaining as well as touching on those well-known research areas such as scheduling, inventory, nearest neighbor assignment, the traveling salesman problem, vehicle routing, and graph partitions. The authors elucidate why the last three problems cannot be solved in the context of the theory.

This book is a very timely exposition of part of an important subject which goes under the general name of “inverse problems”. The analogous problem for continuous media has been very much studied, with a great deal of difficult mathematics involved, especially partial differential equations. Some of the researchers working on the inverse conductivity problem for continuous media (the problem of recovering the conductivity inside from measurements on the outside) have taken an interest in the authors' analysis of this similar problem for resistor networks.The authors' treatment of inverse problems for electrical networks is at a fairly elementary level. It is accessible to advanced undergraduates, and mathematics students at the graduate level. The topics are of interest to mathematicians working on inverse problems, and possibly to electrical engineers. A few techniques from other areas of mathematics have been brought together in the treatment. It is this amalgamation of such topics as graph theory, medial graphs and matrix algebra, as well as the analogy to inverse problems for partial differential equations, that makes the book both original and interesting.

Group testing has been used in medical, chemical and electrical testing, coding, drug screening, pollution control, multiaccess channel management, and recently in data verification, clone library screening and AIDS testing. The mathematical model can be either combinatorial or probabilistic. This book summarizes all important results under the combinatorial model, and demonstrates their applications in real problems. Some other search problems, including the famous counterfeit-coins problem, are also studied in depth. There are two reasons for publishing a second edition of this book. The first is the usual need to update the text (after six years) and correct errors. The second - and more important - reason is to accommodate the recent sudden growth of interest in applying the idea of group testing to clone library screening. This development is much more than just a new application, since the new application brings with it new objectives which require a new twist of theory. It also embraces the growing importance of two topics: nonadaptive algorithms and error tolerance. Two new chapters, one on clone library screening and the other on error tolerance, have been added. Also included is a new chapter on counterfeit coins, the most famous search problem historically, which recently drew on an unexpected connection to some deep mathematical theory to yield new results. Finally, the chapters have been reorganized into parts to provide focuses and perspectives.

Written in a straightforward and easily accessible style, this volume is suitable as a textbook for advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate students in mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering. The aim is to provide students with a strong background in the theories of Ordinary Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems and Boundary Value Problems, including regular and singular perturbations. It is also a valuable resource for researchers.This volume presents an abundance of examples in physical and biological sciences, and engineering to illustrate the applications of the theorems in the text. Readers are introduced to some important theorems in Nonlinear Analysis, for example, Brouwer fixed point theorem and fundamental theorem of algebras. A chapter on Monotone Dynamical Systems takes care of the new developments in Ordinary Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems.In this third edition, an introduction to Hamiltonian Systems is included to enhance and complete its coverage on Ordinary Differential Equations with applications in Mathematical Biology and Classical Mechanics.