In this paper a particular multicriteria decision aid approach is used in order to evaluate the creditworthiness of a set of about 14,000 Italian firms viewed as potential applicants for bank loans in the 2006-2008 period. The methodology is able to consider simultaneously all factors affecting...

In this paper we use an evolutionary approach in order to infer the values of the parameters (weights of criteria, preference, indifference and veto thresholds) for developing the multicriteria method MURAME. According to the logic of preference disaggregation, the problem consists in finding...

Counterfeiting is a well known world-wide phenomenon afflicting several real economies. Notwithstanding the importance of this topic, there are not many works about it in the literatute; moreover, these contributions mainly deal with counterfeiting employing a model developed in a static time...

We propose a class of preconditioners for symmetric linear systems arising from numerical analysis and nonconvex optimization frameworks. Our preconditioners are specifically suited for large indefinite linear systems and may be obtained as by-product of Krylov-subspace solvers, as well as by...

In this paper we analyze some issues related to the general problem of information spreading among individuals, where suitable assumptions on the information exchange are considered. In particular, starting from the scheme proposed in [5], which is based on a majority rule to treat the...

We consider the solution of bound constrained optimization problems, where we assume that the evaluation of the objective function is costly, its derivatives are unavailable and the use of exact derivativefree algorithms may imply a too large computational burden. There is plenty of real...

In this paper we introduce a parameter dependent class of Krylov-based methods, namely CD, for the solution of symmetric linear systems. We give evidence that in our proposal we generate sequences of conjugate directions, extending some properties of the standard Conjugate Gradient (CG) method,...

In this paper we introduce a parameter dependent class of Krylov-based methods, namely CD, for the solution of symmetric linear systems. We give evidence that in our proposal we generate sequences of conjugate directions, extending some properties of the standard Conjugate Gradient (CG) method,...

We consider an iterative preconditioning technique for non-convex large scale optimization. First, we refer to the solution of large scale indefinite linear systems by using a Krylov subspace method, and describe the iterative construction of a preconditioner which does not involve matrices...

In this paper we analyze the stochastic model proposed by Galam in [S. Galam, Modelling rumors: The no plane Pentagon French hoax case, Physica A 320 (2003), 571–580], for information spreading in a ‘word-of-mouth’ process among agents, based on a majority rule. Using the communications...