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Software development organizations measure their real-world processes, products, and resources to achieve the goal of improving their practices. Accurate and useful measurement relies on explicit models of the real-world processes, products, and resources. These explicit models assist with planning measurement, interpreting data, and assisting developers with their work. However, little work has been done on the joint use of measurem(int and process technologies. We hypothesize that it is possible to integrate measurement and process technologies in a way that supports automation of measurement-based feedback. Automated support for measurementbased feedback means that software developers and maintainers are provided with on-line, detailed information about their work. This type of automated support is expected to help software professionals gain intellectual control over their software projects. The dissertation offers three major contributions. First, an integrated measurement and
process modeling framework was constructed. This framework establishes the necessary foundation for integrating measurement and process technologies in a way that will permit automation. Second, a process-centered software engineering environment was developed to support measurement-based feedback. This system provides personnel with information about the tasks expected of them based on an integrated set of measurement and process views. Third, a set of assumptions and requirements about that system were examined in a controlled experiment. The experiment compared the use of different levels of automation to evaluate the acceptance and effectiveness of measurement-based feedback.
In this paper we show how Metropolis Light Transport can be extended both in the underlying theoretical framework and the algorithmic implementation to incorporate volumetric scattering.
We present a generalization of the path integral formulation thathandles anisotropic scattering in non-homogeneous media. Based on this framework we introduce a new mutation strategy that is
specifically designed for participating media. It exploits the locality of light propagation by perturbing certain interaction points within the medium. To efficiently sample inhomogeneous media a new ray marching method has been developed that avoids aliasing artefacts and is significantly faster than stratified sampling. The resulting global illumination algorithm provides a physically correct simulation of light transport in the presence of participating media that includes effects such as volume caustics and multiple volume scattering. It is not restricted to certain classes of geometry and scattering models and has minimal memory requirements. Furthermore, it is unbiased and robust, in the sense that it produces satisfactory results for a wide range of input scenes and lighting situations within acceptable time bounds. In particular, we found that it is weil suited for complex scenes with many light sources.
Monte Carlo & Beyond
(2002)
We study the problem of global solution of Fredholm integral equations. This means that we seek to approximate the full solution function (as opposed to the local problem, where only the value of the solution in a single point or a functional of the solution is sought). We analyze the Monte Carlo complexity, i.e. the complexity of stochastic solution of this problem. The framework for this analysis is provided by information based complexity theory. Our investigations complement previous ones on stochastic complexity of local solution and on deterministic complexity of
both local and global solution. The results show that even in the global case Monte Carlo algorithms can perform better than deterministic ones, although the difference is not as large as in the local case.
The Monte Carlo complexity of computing integrals depending on a parameter is analyzed for smooth integrands. An optimal algorithm is developed on the basis of a multigrid variance reduction technique. The complexity analysis implies that our algorithm attains a higher convergence rate than any deterministic algorithm. Moreover, because of savings due to computation on multiple grids, this rate is also higher than that of previously developed Monte Carlo algorithms for parametric integration.
Intellectual control over software development projects requires the existence of an integrated set of explicit models of the products to be developed, the processes used to develop them, the resources needed, and the productivity and quality aspects involved. In recent years the development of languages, methods and tools for modeling software processes, analyzing and enacting them has become a major emphasis of software engineering research. The majority of current process research concentrates on prescriptive modeling of small, completely formalizable processes and their execution entirely on computers. This research direction has produced process modeling languages suitable for machine rather than human consumption. The MVP project, launched at the University of Maryland and continued at Universität Kaiserslautern, emphasizes building descriptive models of large, real-world processes and their use by humans and computers for the purpose of understanding, analyzing, guiding and improving software development projects. The language MVP-L has been developed with these purposes in mind. In this paper, we
motivate the need for MVP-L, introduce the prototype language, and demonstrate its uses. We assume that further improvements to our language will be triggered by lessons learned from applications and experiments.
In this article we present a method to generate random objects from a large variety of combinatorial classes according to a given distribution. Given a description of the combinatorial class and a set of sample data our method will provide an algorithm that generates objects of size n in worst-case runtime O(n^2) (O(n log(n)) can be achieved at the cost of a higher average-case runtime), with the generated objects following a distribution that closely matches the distribution of the sample data.
The CAD/CAM-based design of free-form surfaces is the beginning of a chain of operations, which ends with the numerically controlled (NC-) production of the designed object. During this process the shape control is an important step to amount efficiency. Several surface interrogation methods already exist to analyze curvature and continuity behaviour of the shape. This paper deals with a new aspect of shape control: the stability of surfaces with respect to infnitesimal bendings. Each inEnitesimal bending of a surface determines a so called instability surface, which is used for the stability investigations. The kinematic meaning of this instability surface will be discussed and we present algorithms to calculate it.
On Abstract Shapes of RNA
(2008)
As any RNA sequence can be folded in many different ways, there are lots of different possible secondary structures for a given sequence. Most computational prediction methods based on free energy minimization compute a number of suboptimal foldings and we have to identify the native structures among all these possible secondary structures. For this reason, much effort has been made to develop approaches for identifying good predictions of RNA secondary structure. Using the abstract shapes approach as introduced by Giegerich et al., each class of similar secondary structures is represented by one shape and the native structures can be found among the top shape representatives. In this article, we derive some interesting results answering enumeration problems for abstract shapes and secondary structures of RNA. We start by computing symptotical representations for the number of shape representations of length n. Our main goal is to find out how much the search space can be reduced by using the concept of abstract shapes. To reach this goal, we analyze the number of secondary structures and shapes compatible with an RNA sequence of length n under the assumption that base pairing is allowed between arbitrary pairs of bases analytically and compare their exponential growths. Additionally, we analyze the number of secondary structures compatible with an RNA sequence of length n under the assumptions that base pairing is allowed only between certain pairs of bases and that the structures meet some appropriate conditions. The exponential growth factors of the resulting asymptotics are compared to the corresponding experimentally obtained value as given by Giegerich et al.
Guaranteeing correctness of compilation is a ma jor precondition for correct software. Code generation can be one of the most error-prone tasks in a compiler. One way to achieve trusted compilation is certifying compilation. A certifying compiler generates for each run a proof that it has performed the compilation run correctly. The proof is checked in a separate theorem prover. If the theorem prover is content with the proof, one can be sure that the compiler produced correct code. This paper presents a certifying code generation phase for a compiler translating an intermediate language into assembler code. The time spent for checking the proofs is the bottleneck of certifying compilation. We exhibit an improved framework for certifying compilation and considerable advances to overcome this bottleneck. We compare our implementation featuring the Coq theorem prover to an older implementation. Our current implementation is feasible for medium to large sized programs.
On the Complexity of the Uncapacitated Single Allocation p-Hub Median Problem with Equal Weights
(2007)
The Super-Peer Selection Problem is an optimization problem in network topology construction. It may be cast as a special case of a Hub Location Problem, more exactly an Uncapacitated Single Allocation p-Hub Median Problem with equal weights. We show that this problem is still NP-hard by reduction from Max Clique.
Approximating illumination by point light sources, as done in many professional applications, suffers from the problem of the weak singularity: Numerical exceptions caused by the division by the squared distance between the point light source and the point to be illuminated must be avoided. Multiple importance sampling overcomes these problems by combining multiple sampling techniques by weights. Such a set of weights is called a heuristic. So far the estimators resulting from a heuristic only have been analyzed for variance. Since the cost of sampling is not at all constant for different sampling techniques, it is possible to find more efficient heuristics, even though they may hove higher variance. Based on our new stratification heuristic, we present a robust and unbiased global illumination algorithm. By numerical examples, we show that it is more efficient than previous heuristics. The algorithm is as simple as a path tracer, but elegantly avoids the problem of the weak singularity.
This article focuses on the analytical analysis of the free energy in a realistic model for RNA secondary structures. In fact, the free energy in a stochastic model derived from a database of small and large subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU and LSU rRNA) data is studied. A common thermody-namic model for computing the free energy of a given RNA secondary structure, as well as stochastic context-free grammars and generating functions are used to derive the desired results. These results include asymptotics for the expected free energy and for the corresponding variance of a random RNA secondary structure. The quality of our model is judged by comparing the derived results to the used database of SSU and LSU rRNA data. At the end of this article, it is discussed how our results could be used to help on identifying good predictions of RNA secondary structure.
Abstraction is intensively used in the verification of large, complex or infinite-state systems. With abstractions getting more complex it is often difficult to see whether they are valid. However, for using abstraction in model checking it has to be ensured that properties are preserved. In this paper, we use a translation validation approach to verify property preservation of system abstractions. We formulate a correctness criterion based on simulation between concrete and abstract system for a property to be verified. For each distinct run of the abstraction procedure the correctness is verified in the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL. This technique is applied in the verification of embedded adaptive systems. This paper is an extended version a previously published work.
We survey old and new results about optimal algorithms for summation of finite sequences and for integration of functions from Hölder or Sobolev spaces. First we discuss optimal deterministic and randornized algorithms. Then we add a new aspect, which has not been covered before on conferences
about (quasi-) Monte Carlo methods: quantum computation. We give a short introduction into this setting and present recent results of the authors on optimal quantum algorithms for summation and integration. We discuss comparisons between the three settings. The most interesting case for Monte
Carlo and quantum integration is that of moderate smoothness \(k\) and large dimension \(d\) which, in fact, occurs in a number of important applied problems. In that case the deterministic exponent is negligible, so the \(n^{-1/2}\) Monte Carlo and the \(n^{-1}\) quantum speedup essentially constitute the entire convergence rate.
Optimization of Projection Methods for Solving ill-posed Problems. In this paper we propose a modification of the projection scheme for solving ill-posed problems. We show that this modification allows to obtain the best possible order of accuracy of Tikhonov Regularization using an amount of information which is far less than for the standard projection technique.
Partitioned chain grammars
(1979)
This paper introduces a new class of grammars, the partitioned chain grammars, for which efficient parsers can be automatically generated. Besides being efficiently parsable these grammars possess a number of other properties, which make them very attractive for the use in parser-generators. They for instance form a large grammarclass and describe all deterministic context-free languages. Main advantage of the partitioned chain grammars however is, that given a language it is usually easier to describe it by a partitioned chain grammar than to construct a grammar of some other type commonly used in parser-generators for it.
The use of non-volatile semiconductor memory within an extended storage hierarchy promises significant performance improvements for transaction processing. Although page-addressable semiconductor memories like extended memory, solid-state disks and disk caches are commercially available since several years, no detailed investigation of their use for transaction processing has been performed so far. We present a comprehensive simulation study that compares the performance of these storage types and of different usage forms. The following usage forms are considered: allocation of entire log and database files in non-volatile semiconductor memory, using a so-called write buffer to perform disk writes asynchronously, and caching of database pages at intermediate storage levels (in addition to main memory caching). Our simulations are conducted with both synthetically generated workloads and traces from real-life database applications. In particular, simulation results will be presented for the debit-credit workload frequently used in transaction processing benchmarks. As expected, the greatest performance improvements (but at the highest cost) can be achieved by storing log and database files completely in non-volatile semiconductor memory. For update-intensive
workloads, a limited amount of non-volatile memory used as a write buffer also proved to be very effective. To reduce the number of disk reads; caching of database pages in addition to main memory is best supported by an extended memory buffer. In this respect, disk caches are found to be less effective as they are designed for one-level caching. Different storage costs suggest that it may be cost-effective to use two or even three of the intermediate storage types together. The performance improvements obtainable by the use of non-volatile semiconductor memory is also found to reduce the need for sophisticated DBMS buffer management in order to achieve high transaction processing performance.
Web-based authentication is a popular mechanism implemented by Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) because it allows a simple registration and authentication of customers, while avoiding the high resource requirements of the new IEEE 802.11i security standard and the backward compatibility issues of legacy devices. In this work we demonstrate two different and novel attacks against web-based authentication. One attack exploits operational anomalies of low- and middle-priced devices in order to hijack wireless clients, while the other exploits an already known vulnerability within wired-networks, which in dynamic wireless environments turns out to be even harder to detect and protect against.
The problem of constructing a geometric model of an existing object from a set of boundary points arises in many areas of industry. In this paper we present a new solution to this problem which is an extension of Boissonnat's method [2]. Our approach uses the well known Delaunay triangulation of the data points as an intermediate step. Starting with this structure, we eliminate tetrahedra until we get an appropriate approximation of the desired shape. The method proposed in this paper is capable of reconstructing objects with arbitrary genus and can cope with different point densities in different regions of the object. The
problems which arise during the elimination process, i.e. which tetrahedra can be eliminated, which order has to be used to control the process and finally, how to stop the elimination procedure at the right time, are discussed in detail. Several examples are given to show the validity of the method.
Many applications dealing with geometry acquisition and processing produce polygonal meshes that carry artifacts like discretization noise. While there are many approaches to remove the artifacts by smoothing or filtering the mesh, they are not tailored to any specific application subject to·certain restrictive objectives. We show how to incorporate smoothing schemes based on the general Laplacian approximation to satsify all those objectives at
the same time for the results of flow simulation in the application field of car manufacturing. In the presented application setting the major restrictions come from the bounding volume of the flow simulation, the so-called installation space. In particular, clean mesh regions (without noise) should not be smoothed while at the same time the installation space must not be violated by the smoothing of the noisy mesh regions. Additionally, aliasing effects at the boundary between clean and noisy mesh regions must be prevented. To address the fact that the meshes come from flow simulation, the presented method is versatile enough to preserve their exact volume and to apply anisotropic filters using the flow information.
Although the paper focuses on the results of a specific application, most of its findings can be transferred to different settings as well.
The provision of quality-of-service (QoS) on the network layer is a major challenge in communication networks. This applies particularly to mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) in the area of Ambient Intelligence (AmI), especially with the increasing use of delay and bandwidth sensitive applications. The focus of this survey lies on the classification and analysis of selected QoS routing protocols in the domain of mobile ad-hoc networks. Each protocol is briefly described and assessed, and the results are summarized in multiple tables.
We study high dimensional integration in the quantum model of computation. We develop quantum algorithms for integration of functions from Sobolev classes \(W^r_p [0,1]^d\) and analyze their convergence rates. We also prove lower bounds which show that the proposed algorithms are, in many cases, optimal within the setting of quantum computing. This extends recent results of Novak on integration of functions from Hölder classes.
We study summation of sequences and integration in the quantum model of computation. We develop quantum algorithms for computing the mean of sequences which satisfy a \(p\)-summability condition and for integration of functions from Lebesgue spaces \(L_p([0,1]^d)\) and analyze their convergence rates. We also prove lower bounds which show that the proposed algorithms are, in many cases, optimal within the setting of quantum computing. This extends recent results of Brassard, Høyer, Mosca, and Tapp (2000) on computing the mean for bounded sequences and complements results of Novak (2001) on integration of functions from Hölder classes.
Monte Carlo integration is often used for antialiasing in rendering processes.
Due to low sampling rates only expected error estimates can be stated, and the variance can be high. In this article quasi-Monte Carlo methods are presented, achieving a guaranteed upper error bound and a convergence rate essentially as fast as usual Monte Carlo.
The radiance equation, which describes the global illumination problem in computer graphics, is a high dimensional integral equation. Estimates of the solution are usually computed on the basis of Monte Carlo methods. In this paper we propose and investigate quasi-Monte Carlo methods, which means that we replace (pseudo-) random samples by low discrepancy sequences, yielding deterministic algorithms. We carry out a comparative numerical study between Monte Carlo and quasi-Monte Carlo methods. Our results show that quasi-Monte Carlo converges considerably faster.
Quasi-Monte Carlo Radiosity
(1996)
The problem of global illumination in computer graphics is described by a second kind Fredholm integral equation. Due to the complexity of this equation, Monte Carlo methods provide an interesting tool for approximating
solutions to this transport equation. For the case of the radiosity equation, we present the deterministic method of quasi-rondom walks. This method very efficiently uses low discrepancy sequences for integrating the Neumann series and consistently outperforms stochastic techniques. The method of quasi-random walks also is applicable to transport problems in settings other
than computer graphics.
The simulation of random fields has many applications in computer graphics such as e.g. ocean wave or turbulent wind field modeling. We present a new and strikingly simple synthesis algorithm for random fields on rank-1 lattices that requires only one Fourier transform independent of the dimension of the support of the random field. The underlying mathematical principle of discrete Fourier transforms on rank-1 lattices breaks the curse of dimension of the standard tensor product Fourier transform, i.e. the number of function values does not exponentially depend on the dimension, but can be chosen linearly.
Katja is a tool generating order-sorted recursive data types as well as position types for Java, from specifications using an enhanced ML like notation. Katja’s main features are its conciseness of specifications, the rich interface provided by the generated code and the Java atypical immutability of types. After several stages of extending and maintaining the Katja project, it became apparent many changes had to be done. The original design of Katja wasn’t prepared for the introduction of several backends, the introduction of position sorts and constant feature enhancements and bug fixes. By supplying this report Katja reaches release status for the first time.
There is a well known relationship between alternating automata on finite words and symbolically represented nondeterministic automata on finite words. This relationship is of practical relevance because it allows to combine the advantages of alternating and symbolically represented nondeterministic automata on finite words. However, for infinite words the situation is unclear. Therefore, this work investigates the relationship between alternating omega-automata and symbolically represented nondeterministic omega-automata. Thereby, we identify classes of alternating omega-automata that are as expressive as safety, liveness and deterministic prefix automata, respectively. Moreover, some very simple symbolic nondeterminisation procedures are developed for the classes corresponding to safety and liveness properties.
We present a methodology to augment system safety step-by-step and illustrate the approach by the definition of reusable solutions for the detection of fail-silent nodes - a watchdog and a heartbeat. These solutions can be added to real-time system designs, to protect against certain types of system failures. We use SDL as a system design language for the development of distributed systems, including real-time systems.
Over a period of 30 years, ITU-T’s Specification and Description Language (SDL) has matured to a sophisticated formal modelling language for distributed systems and communication protocols. The language definition of SDL-2000, the latest version of SDL, is complex and difficult to maintain. Full tool support for SDL is costly to implement. Therefore, only subsets of SDL are currently supported by tools. These SDL subsets - called SDL profiles - already cover a wide range of systems, and are often suffcient in practice. In this report, we present our approach for extracting the formal semantics for SDL profiles from the complete SDL semantics. We then formalise the approach, present our SDL-profile tool, and report on our experiences.
This report gives an overview of the separate translation of synchronous imperative programs to synchronous guarded actions. In particular, we consider problems to be solved for separate compilation that stem from preemption statements and local variable declarations. We explain how we solved these problems and sketch our solutions implemented in the our Averest framework to implement a compiler that allows a separate compilation of imperative synchronous programs with local variables and unrestricted preemption statements. The focus of the report is the big picture of our entire design flow.
Shadow-Mapping
(1993)
Most radiosity techniques store radiosities in certain sample points, typically the vertices of polyhedral scenes. As diffuse radiosities are view independent they can be used for an interactive 'walk-through'. This paper presents an algorithm for storing radiosities independent of the representation of the object. A distributed rendering system, which uses this shadow-mapping technique is described. The basic thermophysical definitions, needed to derive a sum formula for a form factor calculation of polygons, are explained.
Ownership Domains generalize ownership types. They support programming patterns like iterators that are not possible with ordinary ownership types. However, they are still too restrictive for cases in which an object X wants to access the public domains of an arbitrary number of other objects, which often happens in observer scenarios. To overcome this restriction, we developed so-called loose domains which abstract over several precise domains. That is, similar to the relation between supertypes and subtypes we have a relation between loose and precise domains. In addition, we simplified ownership domains by reducing the number of domains per object to two and hard-wiring the access permissions between domains. We formalized the resulting type system for an OO core language and proved type soundness and a fundamental accessibility property.
One of the fundamental problems in computational structural biology is the prediction of RNA secondary structures from a single sequence. To solve this problem, mainly two different approaches have been used over the past decades: the free energy minimization (MFE) approach which is still considered the most popular and successful method and the competing stochastic context-free grammar (SCFG) approach. While the accuracy of the MFE based algorithms is limited by the quality of underlying thermodynamic models, the SCFG method abstracts from free energies and instead tries to learn about the structural behavior of the molecules by training the grammars on known real RNA structures, making it highly dependent on the availability of a rich high quality training set. However, due to the respective problems associated with both methods, new statistics based approaches towards RNA structure prediction have become increasingly appreciated. For instance, over the last years, several statistical sampling methods and clustering techniques have been invented that are based on the computation of partition functions (PFs) and base pair probabilities according to thermodynamic models. A corresponding SCFG based statistical sampling algorithm for RNA secondary structures has been studied just recently. Notably, this probabilistic method is capable of producing accurate (prediction) results, where its worst-case time and space requirements are equal to those of common RNA folding algorithms for single sequences.
The aim of this work is to present a comprehensive study on how enriching the underlying SCFG by additional information on the lengths of generated substructures (i.e. by incorporating length-dependencies into the SCFG based sampling algorithm, which is actually possible without significant losses in performance) affects the reliability of the induced RNA model and the accuracy of sampled secondary structures. As we will see, significant differences with respect to the overall quality of generated sample sets and the resulting predictive accuracy are typically implied. In principle, when considering the more specialized length-dependent SCFG model as basis for statistical sampling, a higher accuracy of predicted foldings can be reached at the price of a lower diversity of generated candidate structures (compared to the more general traditional SCFG variant or sampling based on PFs that rely on free energies).
Many rendering problems can only be solved using Monte Carlo integration. The noise and variance inherent with the statistical method efficiently can be reduced by stratification. So far only uncorrelated stratification methods were used that in addition depend on the dimension of the integration domain. Based on rank-1-lattices we present a new stratification technique that removes this dependency on dimension, is much more efficient by correlation, is trivial to implement, and robust to use. The superiority of the new scheme is demonstrated for standard rendering algorithms.
We introduce the concept of streamballs for fluid flow visualization. Streamballs are based upon implicit surface generation techniques adopted from the well-known metaballs. Their property to split or merge automatically in areas of significant divergence or convergence makes them an ideal tool for the visualization of arbitrary complex flow fields. Using convolution surfaces generated by continuous skeletons for streamball construction offers the possibility to visualize even tensor fields.
This paper describes some new algorithms for the accurate calculation of surface properties. In the first part an arithmetic on Bézier surfaces is introduced. Formulas are given, which determine the Bézier points and weights of the resulting surface from the points and weights of the operand surfaces. An application of the arithmetic operations to the surface interrogation methods are described in the second part. It turns out, that the quality analysis can be reduced to a few numerical stable operations. Finally the advantages and disadvantages of this method are discussed.
The quality of freeform surfaces is one of the major topics of CAD/CAM. Aesthetic and technical demands require the construction of high quality surfaces with strong shape conditions. Quality diminishing properties like dents or flat points have to be eliminated while approximation conditions must hold at the same time. Our approach combines quality and approximation criteria to a nonlinear multicriteria optimization problem and achieves an automatic approximation and fitting process.
This document offers a concise introduction to the Goal Question Metric Paradigm (GQM Paradigm), and surveys research on applying and extending the GQM Paradigm. We describe the GQM Paradigm in terms of its basic principles, techniques for structuring GQM-related documents, and methods for performing tasks of planning and implementing a measurement program based on GQM. We also survey prototype software tools that support applying the GQM Paradigm in various ways. An annotated bibliography lists sources that document experience gained while using the GQM Paradigm and offer in-depth information about the GQM Paradigm.
The Analytic Blossom
(2001)
Blossoming is a powerful tool for studying and computing with Bézier and B-spline curves and surfaces - that is, for the investigation and analysis of polynomials and piecewise polynomials in geometric modeling. In this paper, we define a notion of the blossom for Poisson curves. Poisson curves are to analytic functions what Bézier curves are to polynomials - a representation adapted to geometric design. As in the polynomial setting, the blossom provides a simple, powerful, elegant and computationally meaningful way to analyze Poisson curves. Here, we
define the analytic blossom and interpret all the known algorithms for Poisson curves - subdivision, trimming, evaluation of the function and its derivatives, and conversion between the Taylor and the Poisson basis - in terms of this analytic blossom.
The calculation of form factors is an important problem in computing the global illumination in the radiosity setting. Closed form solutions often are only available for objects without obstruction and are very hard to calculate. Using Monte Carlo integration and ray tracing provides a fast and elegant tool for the estimation of the form factors. In this paper we show, that using deterministic low discrepancy sample points is superior to random sampling, resulting in an acceleration of more than half an order of magnitude.
Virtual Reality (VR) is to be seen as the superset of simulation and animation. Visualization is done by rendering. The fundamental model of VR accounts for all phenomenons to be modelled with help of a computer. Examples range from simple dragging actions with a mouse device to the complex simulation of physically based animation.
Optimal degree reductions, i.e. best approximations of \(n\)-th degree Bezier curves
by Bezier curves of degree \(n\) - 1, with respect to different norms are studied. It
is shown that for any \(L_p\)-norm the euclidean degree reduction where the norm is applied to the euclidean distance function of two curves is identical to componentwise degree reduction. The Bezier points of the degree reductions are found to lie on parallel lines through the Bezier points of any Taylor expansion of degree \(n\) - 1 of the original curve. This geometric situation is shown to hold also in the case of constrained degree reduction. The Bezier points of the degree reduction are explicitly given in the unconstrained case for \(p\) = 1 and \(p\) = 2 and in the constrained case for \(p\) = 2.
Approximation properties of the underlying estimator are used to improve the efficiency of the method of dependent tests. A multilevel approximation procedure is developed such that in each level the number of samples is balanced with the level-dependent variance, resulting in a considerable reduction of the overall computational cost. The new technique is applied to the Monte Carlo estimation of integrals depending on a parameter.