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142 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Mathematics · Negative / Null Result Report. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Commutation Error in Reduced Order Modeling of Fluid Flows

Birgul Koc, Muhammad Mohebujjaman, Changhong Mou et al. · 2018 · arXiv

For reduced order models (ROMs) of fluid flows, we investigate theoretically and computationally whether differentiation and ROM spatial filtering commute, i.e., whether the commutation error (CE) is nonzero. We study the CE for the Laplacian and two ROM filters: the ROM projection and the ROM differential filter. Furthermore, when the CE is nonzero, we investigate whether it has any significant effect on ROMs that are constructed by using spatial filtering. As numerical tests, we use the Burgers equation with viscosities $ν=10^{-1}$ and $ν=10^{-3}$ and a 2D flow past a circular cylinder at Re

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Research on spatial information transmission efficiency and capability of safe evacuation signs

Ruiwen Fan, Zhangyin Dai, Shixiang Tian et al. · 2022 · arXiv

As an indispensable spatial direction information indicator for emergency evacuation, the spatial relationship between safety evacuation signs and evacuees will affect the response time of evacuees and the evacuation efficiency. This paper takes 2 kinds of common safety evacuation signs, hangtag-type and embedded, as the research object and designs space direction information transmission efficiency and capability simulation experiment and fire drill, the efficiency and capability of spatial direction information transmission of safety evacuation signs are studied. The results show that the sp

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

ScoreStop: Gradient-based early stopping using functional score tests

Oliver J. Hines, Christian L. Hines · 2026 · arXiv

Gradient boosted decision trees require a stopping rule to avoid overfitting. The standard rule monitors a validation loss and stops if the loss fails to improve for a fixed patience period. However, the patience parameter has no interpretable scale and validation losses can be noisy or implicitly defined by a user-specified gradient. We propose ScoreStop, a gradient-based early-stopping rule that casts the stopping decision at each iteration as a test of the null hypothesis that the current predictor is the population risk minimizer. We use a functional score test, computed on validation data

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Inference in matrix-valued time series with common stochastic trends and multifactor error structure

Rong Chen, Simone Giannerini, Greta Goracci et al. · 2025 · arXiv

We develop an estimation methodology for a factor model for high-dimensional matrix-valued time series, where common stochastic trends and common stationary factors can be present. We study, in particular, the estimation of (row and column) loading spaces, of the common stochastic trends and of the common stationary factors, and the row and column ranks thereof. In a set of (negative) preliminary results, we show that a projection-based technique fails to improve the rates of convergence compared to a "flattened" estimation technique which does not take into account the matrix nature of the da

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Private Parking Space Sharing Intention in China: An Empirical Study Based on the MIMIC Model

Ange Wang, Hongzhi Guan, Yan Han et al. · 2021 · Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society

The shared parking scheme improves the utilization rate of existing parking resources and contributes to the sustainable development of cities, but many private parking spaces that are not included in the shared parking scheme have a low utilization rate in China. In order to better promote the shared parking scheme, it is necessary to study the intention of the owners of private parking spaces to share their parking spaces. Therefore, this paper used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Benefit-Risk Analysis Model (BRA) as the combined theoretical framework (C-UT

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Non-Isothermal Hydrodynamic Characteristics of a Nanofluid in a Fin-Attached Rotating Tube Bundle

Mashhour A. Alazwari, Mohammad Reza Safaei · 2021 · Mathematics

In the present study, a novel configuration of a rotating tube bundle was simulated under non-isothermal hydrodynamic conditions using a mixture model. Eight fins were considered in this study, which targeted the hydrodynamics of the system. An aqueous copper nanofluid was used as the heat transfer fluid. Various operating factors, such as rotation speed (up to 500 rad/s), Reynolds number (10–80), and concentration of the nanofluid (0.0–4.0%) were applied, and the performance of the microchannel heat exchanger was assessed. It was found that the heat transfer coefficient of the system could be

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Winter wheat yield and yield components as affected by soil tillage systems

I. Jug, D. Jug, M. Sabo et al. · 2011 · Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences

Eight different soil tillage systems (TS) for winter wheat after soybean crop production were compared at the chernozem soil type in Croatian Baranya region in a 4-year period (2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, 2004/2005). Tillage systems…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Phase limitations of multipliers at harmonics

William Paul Heath, Joaquin Carrasco, Jingfan Zhang · 2021 · arXiv

We present a phase condition under which there is no suitable multiplier for a given continuous-time plant. The condition can be derived from either the duality approach or from the frequency interval approach. The condition has a simple graphical interpretation, can be tested in a numerically efficient manner and may be applied systematically. Numerical examples show significant improvement over existing results in the literature. The condition is used to demonstrate a third order system with delay that is a counterexample to the Kalman Conjecture.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Opening the Black Box: Towards inherently interpretable energy data imputation models using building physics insight

Antonio Liguori, Matias Quintana, Chun Fu et al. · 2023 · arXiv

Missing data are frequently observed by practitioners and researchers in the building energy modeling community. In this regard, advanced data-driven solutions, such as Deep Learning methods, are typically required to reflect the non-linear behavior of these anomalies. As an ongoing research question related to Deep Learning, a model's applicability to limited data settings can be explored by introducing prior knowledge in the network. This same strategy can also lead to more interpretable predictions, hence facilitating the field application of the approach. For that purpose, the aim of this

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

From energy bounds to dimensional estimates in a branched transport model for type-I superconductors

Guido De Philippis, Michael Goldman, Berardo Ruffini · 2023 · arXiv

We consider a branched transport type problem which describes the magnetic flux through type-I superconductors in a regime of very weak applied fields. At the boundary of the sample, deviation of the magnetization from being uniform is penalized through a negative Sobolev norm. It was conjectured by S. Conti, F. Otto and S. Serfaty that as a result, the trace of the magnetization on the boundary should be a measure of Hausdorff dimension $8/5$. We prove that this conjecture is equivalent to the proof of local energy bounds with an optimal exponent. We then obtain local bounds which are however

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Regularizing Recurrent Networks - On Injected Noise and Norm-based Methods

Saahil Ognawala, Justin Bayer · 2014 · arXiv

Advancements in parallel processing have lead to a surge in multilayer perceptrons' (MLP) applications and deep learning in the past decades. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) give additional representational power to feedforward MLPs by providing a way to treat sequential data. However, RNNs are hard to train using conventional error backpropagation methods because of the difficulty in relating inputs over many time-steps. Regularization approaches from MLP sphere, like dropout and noisy weight training, have been insufficiently applied and tested on simple RNNs. Moreover, solutions have been

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Hybrid Probabilistic-Snowball Sampling

Giulio Cantone, Venera Tomaselli · 2022 · arXiv

Snowball sampling is the common name for sampling designs on human populations where respondents are requested to share the questionnaire among their social ties. With some exceptions, estimates from snowball samplings are considered biased. However, the magnitude of the bias is influenced by a combination of elements of the sampling design and features of the target population. Hybrid Probabilistic-Snowball Sampling Designs (HPSSD) aims to reduce the main source of bias in the snowball sample through randomly oversampling the first stage 0 of the snowball. To check the behaviour of HPSSD for

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

A comparison of short-term probabilistic forecasts for the incidence of COVID-19 using mechanistic and statistical time series models

Nicolas Banholzer, Thomas Mellan, H Juliette T Unwin et al. · 2023 · arXiv

Short-term forecasts of infectious disease spread are a critical component in risk evaluation and public health decision making. While different models for short-term forecasting have been developed, open questions about their relative performance remain. Here, we compare short-term probabilistic forecasts of popular mechanistic models based on the renewal equation with forecasts of statistical time series models. Our empirical comparison is based on data of the daily incidence of COVID-19 across six large US states over the first pandemic year. We find that, on average, probabilistic forecast

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Towards Sharp Minimax Risk Bounds for Operator Learning

Ben Adcock, Gregor Maier, Rahul Parhi · 2025 · arXiv

We develop a minimax theory for operator learning, where the goal is to estimate an unknown operator between separable Hilbert spaces from finitely many noisy input-output samples. For uniformly bounded Lipschitz operators, we prove information-theoretic lower bounds together with matching or near-matching upper bounds, covering both fixed and random designs under Hilbert-valued Gaussian noise and Gaussian white noise errors. The rates are controlled by the spectrum of the covariance operator of the measure that defines the error metric. Our setup is very general and allows for measures with u

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Forecasting Multivariate Time Series under Predictive Heterogeneity: A Validation-Driven Clustering Framework

Ziling Ma, Ángel López Oriona, Hernando Ombao et al. · 2026 · arXiv

We study adaptive pooling under predictive heterogeneity in high-dimensional multivariate time series forecasting, where global models improve statistical efficiency but may fail to capture heterogeneous predictive structure, while naive specialization can induce negative transfer. We formulate adaptive pooling as a statistical decision problem and propose a validation-driven framework that determines when and how specialization should be applied. Rather than grouping series based on representation similarity, we define partitions through out-of-sample predictive performance, thereby aligning

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Time to adjust: Improving replicability in experimental psychology by adjustment for evident selective inference

Yoav Zeevi, Sofi Astashenko, Liad Mudrik et al. · 2020 · arXiv

The field of psychological sciences has been grappling with the replicability crisis. Various issues have been identified as potential sources of this problem. We bring to light a potential source that has largely been overlooked and demonstrate its significant contribution to the problem: the practice of multiple comparisons. We analyzed 88 papers from the Reproducibility Project in Psychology and found that multiple results are commonly reported in a single paper, ranging from 4 to 730 (M=77.7), without multiple comparison adjustments. We retroactively applied such an adjustment using a hier

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Bias and response heterogeneity in an air quality data set

S. Stanley Young, Robert L. Obenchain, Christophe Lambert · 2015 · arXiv

It is well-known that claims coming from observational studies often fail to replicate when rigorously re-tested. The technical problems include multiple testing, multiple modeling and bias. Any or all of these problems can give rise to claims that will fail to replicate. There is a need for statistical methods that are easily applied, are easy to understand, and are likely to give reliable results. In particular, simple ways for reducing the influence of bias are essential. In this paper, the Local Control method developed by Robert Obenchain is explicated using a small air quality/longevity

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Causal Stability Selection

Falco J. Bargagli-Stoffi, Omar Melikechi · 2026 · arXiv

Identifying covariates that modify treatment effects is a central problem in causal inference. Yet existing data-adaptive procedures do not provide finite-sample control over the expected number of false discoveries, risking spurious findings that fail to replicate. We introduce causal stability selection, an algorithm that combines cross-fitted estimation of conditional average treatment effects with integrated path stability selection. The method accommodates arbitrary treatment effect estimators and arbitrary base selectors, and produces a selection set with an explicit, non-asymptotic boun

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

How to Tell When a Result Will Replicate: Significance and Replication in Distributional Null Hypothesis Tests

Fintan Costello, Paul Watts · 2022 · arXiv

There is a well-known problem in Null Hypothesis Significance Testing: many statistically significant results fail to replicate in subsequent experiments. We show that this problem arises because standard `point-form null' significance tests consider only within-experiment but ignore between-experiment variation, and so systematically underestimate the degree of random variation in results. We give an extension to standard significance testing that addresses this problem by analysing both within- and between-experiment variation. This `distributional null' approach does not underestimate exper

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Operational Dosage: Implications of Capacity Constraints for the Design and Interpretation of Experiments

Justin Boutilier, Jonas Oddur Jonasson, Hannah Li et al. · 2024 · arXiv

We study RCTs that evaluate the impact of service interventions, for example, teachers or advisors conducting proactive outreach to at-risk students, medical providers giving medication adherence support by calling or texting, or social workers that conduct home visits. A defining feature of service interventions is that they are delivered by a capacity-constrained resource -- teachers, healthcare providers, or social workers -- whose limited availability creates causal inference complications. Because participants share a finite service capacity, adding more participants can reduce the timeli

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Combinatorics of skew lines in $\mathbb P^3$ with an application to algebraic geometry

Luca Chiantini, Łucja Farnik, Giuseppe Favacchio et al. · 2023 · arXiv

This article introduces a previously unrecognized combinatorial structure underlying configurations of skew lines in $\mathbb{P}^3$, and reveals its deep and surprising connection to the algebro-geometric concept of geproci sets. Given any field $\mathbb{K}$ and a finite set $\mathcal L$ of 3 or more skew lines in $\mathbb{P}^3_\mathbb{K}$, we associate to it a group $G_{\mathcal L}$ and a groupoid $C_{\mathcal L}$ whose action on the union $\cup_{L\in\mathcal L}L$ provides orbits which have a rich combinatorial structure. We characterize when $G_{\mathcal L}$ is abelian and give partial resul

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Obstructions for automorphic quasiregular maps and Lattès-type uniformly quasiregular maps

Ilmari Kangasniemi · 2019 · arXiv

Suppose that $M$ is a closed, connected, and oriented Riemannian $n$-manifold, $f \colon \mathbb{R}^n \to M$ is a quasiregular map automorphic under a discrete group $Γ$ of Euclidean isometries, and $f$ has finite multiplicity in a fundamental cell of $Γ$. We show that if $Γ$ has a sufficiently large translation subgroup $Γ_T$, then $\dim Γ\in \{0, n-1, n\}$. If $f$ is strongly automorphic and induces a non-injective Lattès-type uniformly quasiregular map, then the same holds without the assumption on the size of $Γ_T$. Moreover, an even stronger restriction holds in the Lattès case if $M$ is

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Parallelizing Explicit and Implicit Extrapolation Methods for Ordinary Differential Equations

Utkarsh, Chris Elrod, Yingbo Ma et al. · 2022 · arXiv

Numerically solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs) is a naturally serial process and as a result the vast majority of ODE solver software are serial. In this manuscript we developed a set of parallelized ODE solvers using extrapolation methods which exploit "parallelism within the method" so that arbitrary user ODEs can be parallelized. We describe the specific choices made in the implementation of the explicit and implicit extrapolation methods which allow for generating low overhead static schedules to then exploit with optimized multi-threaded implementations. We demonstrate that wh

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Characters of p'-degree and Thompson's character degree theorem

Nguyen Ngoc Hung · 2015 · arXiv

A classical theorem of John Thompson on character degrees asserts that if the degree of every ordinary irreducible character of a finite group $G$ is 1 or divisible by a prime $p$, then $G$ has a normal $p$-complement. We obtain a significant improvement of this result by considering the average of $p'$-degrees of irreducible characters. We also consider fields of character values and prove several improvements of earlier related results.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Cowen's class and Thomson's class

Kunyu Guo, Hansong Huang · 2013 · arXiv

In studying commutants of analytic Toeplitz operators, Thomson proved a remarkable theorem which states that under a mild condition, the commutant of an analytic Toeplitz operator is equal to that of Toeplitz operator defined by a finite Blaschke product. Cowen gave an significant improvement of Thosom's result. In this paper, we will present examples in Cowen's class which does not lie in Thomson's class.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Preregistration does not improve the transparent evaluation of severity in Popper's philosophy of science or when deviations are allowed

Mark Rubin · 2024 · arXiv

One justification for preregistering research hypotheses, methods, and analyses is that it improves the transparent evaluation of the severity of hypothesis tests. In this article, I consider two cases in which preregistration does not improve this evaluation. First, I argue that, although preregistration may facilitate the transparent evaluation of severity in Mayo's error statistical philosophy of science, it does not facilitate this evaluation in Popper's theory-centric approach. To illustrate, I show that associated concerns about Type I error rate inflation are only relevant in the error

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

The Poincaré Inequality does not improve with blow-up

Andrea Schioppa · 2015 · arXiv

For each $β>1$ we construct a family $F_β$ of metric measure spaces which is closed under the operation of taking weak-tangents (i.e.~blow-ups), and such that each element of $F_β$ admits a $(1,P)$-Poincaré inequality if and only if $P>β$.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Does preregistration improve the credibility of research findings?

Mark Rubin · 2020 · arXiv

Preregistration entails researchers registering their planned research hypotheses, methods, and analyses in a time-stamped document before they undertake their data collection and analyses. This document is then made available with the published research report to allow readers to identify discrepancies between what the researchers originally planned to do and what they actually ended up doing. This historical transparency is supposed to facilitate judgments about the credibility of the research findings. The present article provides a critical review of 17 of the reasons behind this argument.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Does enforcing fairness mitigate biases caused by subpopulation shift?

Subha Maity, Debarghya Mukherjee, Mikhail Yurochkin et al. · 2020 · arXiv

Many instances of algorithmic bias are caused by subpopulation shifts. For example, ML models often perform worse on demographic groups that are underrepresented in the training data. In this paper, we study whether enforcing algorithmic fairness during training improves the performance of the trained model in the \emph{target domain}. On one hand, we conceive scenarios in which enforcing fairness does not improve performance in the target domain. In fact, it may even harm performance. On the other hand, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which enforcing algorithmic fairness l

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