From cwou@npac.syr.edu Thu Apr 24 12:16:10 1997
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 22:10:08 -0400
From: Chao-Wei Ou <cwou@npac.syr.edu>
To: paulc@npac.syr.edu
Cc: cwou@npac.syr.edu, gcf@npac.syr.edu
Subject: A few notes for the ASKARI project.


Paul, could you verify the following notes I made
befor I took the vacation. THANKS.


Questions for Sailfish codes:

1. In dist.in (distribution input file), 
   "Estimated standard deviations of the disturbance vector (used to set the scale of Metropolis updates)"
   differs from code "Variance". 

2. Sailfish uses one distribution for all variables (rates).

3. If the user has correlation matrix (static for now), how I can specify or input
   this matrx?

4. What does "RateCoupling" mean?  rate correlation (Covariance)?

5. In VARCH and ARCH, are matrices (A and B) user inputs?


Questions for Askari requirements:

1. We need to generate more distribution modules. (e.g., Log-Normal, Bi-Nomial, etc)

2. In requirement 3
   > The available functional forms the distribution functions can take should
   > encompass generic distribution types, such as normal, lognormal or binomial
   > distributions and customized distributions, such as explicit
   > parameterizations of historical data.  The number of parameters needed to
   > define the distribution should not be limited.

   Does this mean "f(x1, x2, x3, ...) = a f1(x1) + b f2(x2) + c f3(x3) + ............."?
   Where a, b, c, ... are parameters to define the relationship among 
   distributions f1, f2, f3, ... on variables x1, x2, x3, ....

3. what is a dynamic drift term? How does this term get involved in MC?

4. What do you want to do about this?
   > The simulation process should be partitionable as a multi-threaded process
   > on a single machine and a set of distributable processes on many machines.

   To develop a multi-thread code on a single NT platform. But how about the
   distributable parallel code? Using MPI or others? If this is included in the
   Demo in June, I don't know about this. Maybe we should leave this requirement
   as a ?. 
   But at least, we can try.



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Chao-Wei Ou                                  Phone  315-443-5735
Northeast Parallel Architectures Center             315-443-1722
Syracuse University                          Fax    315-443-1973
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