CONDITIONS OF MONOTONE APPROXIMATION OF RAMSEY CURVES AND THEIR MODIFICATIONS

Abstract

The algorithm for approximating the experimental data of the Ramsey curve and its modifications has been developed, which provides a monotonic increase of the approximating function in the interval [0;\infty) and an existence of a given number of inflection points. The Ramsey curve belongs to the family of logistic curves that are widely used in modeling of limited increasing processes in various subject fields. The classical Ramsey curve has two parameters and has a left constant asymmetry. It is also known that its three-parameter modification provides the possibility of displacement along the axes of ordinate. The extensive practical use of the Ramsey curve with both two and more parameters for approximating experimental dependences is restrained by the frequent loss by this curve of the logistic shape when approximating without additional restrictions on the relationships between its parameters. The article discusses modifications of the Ramsey curve with three and five parameters. The first and second derivatives of the studied modifications of the Ramsey function have a special structure. They are products of polynomial and exponential functions. This allows using Sturm's theorem on the number of polynomial roots in a given interval to control the shape of the approximating curve. It has been shown that with an increase in the number of parameters for the modified curve, the number of possible combinations of restrictions on the values of the parameters ensuring the preservation of its like shape increases significantly. The solution to the approximation problem in this case consists of solving a sequence of conditional global optimization problems with different constraints and choosing a solution that provides the smallest approximation error. Also, the studies of the accuracy of estimating the parameters of the Ramsey curve in accordance with the accuracy of the experimental data have been carried out. In order to simulate the presence of measurement errors, the values of a normally distributed random variable with a mathematical expectation equal to zero and different values of the standard deviation for different series of computational experiments were added to the values of the deterministic sequence. Computational experiments have shown a significant sensitivity of the values of the Ramsey function parameters to the measurement accuracy of experimental data.