Correlation matrices have many applications, particularly in marketing and financial economics. The need to forecast demand for a group of products in order to realize savings by properly managing inventories requires the use of correlation matrices. In many cases, due to paucity of...

In simulation we often have to generate correlated random variables by giving a reference intercorrelation matrix, R or Q. The matrix R is positive definite and a valid correlation matrix. The matrix Q may appear to be a correlation matrix but it may be invalid (negative definite). With R(m,m)...

The nearest correlation matrix problem is to find a valid (positive semidefinite) correlation matrix, R(m,m), that is nearest to a given invalid (negative semidefinite) or pseudo-correlation matrix, Q(m,m); m larger than 2. In the literature on this problem, 'nearest' is invariably defined in...

Correlation matrices have many applications, particularly in marketing and financial economics - such as in risk management, option pricing and to forecast demand for a group of products in order to realize savings by properly managing inventories, etc. Various methods have been proposed by...

In this paper we have proposed a method to conduct the ordinal canonical correlation analysis (OCCA) that yields ordinal canonical variates and the coefficient of correlation between them, which is analogous to (and a generalization of) the rank correlation coefficient of Spearman. The ordinal...

Keane’s bump function is considered as a standard benchmark for nonlinear constrained optimization. It is highly multi-modal and its optimum is located at the non-linear constrained boundary. The true minimum of this function is, perhaps, unknown. We intend in this paper to optimize Keane’s...

Our day-to-day experience suggests that certain variables are local in their effects. The influence of such variables is limited within the boundaries of the spatial entity (district) where they are physically located. In contrast, the effects of some other variables are percolating or pervasive...