ON NON-NEGATIVE UNBIASED ESTIMATION OF QUADRATIC FORMS IN FINITE POPULATION SAMPLING

The paper investigates non-negative quadratic unbiased (NnQU) estimators of positive semi-definite quadratic forms, for use during the survey sampling of finite population values. It examines several different NnQU estimators of the variance of estimators of population total, under various sampling designs. It identifies an optimal quadratic unbiased estimator of the variance of the Horvitz-Thompson estimator of population total.     

Two-Stage Cluster Sampling with Ranked Set Sampling in the Secondary Sampling Frame

Motivated by a real-life problem, we develop a Two-Stage Cluster Sampling with Ranked Set Sampling (TSCRSS) design in the second stage for which we derive an unbiased estimator of population mean and its variance. An unbiased estimator of the variance of mean estimator is also derived. It is proved that the TSCRSS is more efficient—in the sense of having smaller variance—than the conventional two-stage cluster simple random sampling in which the second-stage sampling is with replacement. Using a simulation study on a real-life population, we show that the TSCRSS is more efficient than the conventional two-stage cluster sampling when simple random sampling without replacement is used in both stages.     

Paired double-ranked set sampling

Abstract

In environmental monitoring and assessment, the main focus is to achieve observational economy and to collect data with unbiased, efficient and cost-effective sampling methods. Ranked set sampling (RSS) is one traditional method that is mostly used for accomplishing observational economy. In this article, we propose an unbiased sampling scheme, named paired double RSS (PDRSS) for estimating the population mean. We study the performance of the mean estimators under PDRSS based on perfect and imperfect rankings. It is shown that, for perfect ranking, the variance of the mean estimator under PDRSS is always less than the variance of mean estimator based on simple random sampling, paired RSS and RSS. The mean estimators under RSS, median RSS, PDRSS, and double RSS are also compared with the regression estimator of population mean based on SRS. The procedure is also illustrated with a case study using a real data set.     

Spatial estimation and rescaled spatial bootstrap approach for finite population

In this study, an attempt has been made to improve the sampling strategy incorporating spatial dependency at estimation stage considering usual aerial sampling scheme, such as simple random sampling, when the underlying population is finite and spatial in nature. Using the distances between spatial units, an improved method of estimation, viz. spatial estimation procedure, has been proposed for the estimation of finite population mean. Further, rescaled spatial bootstrap (RSB) methods have been proposed for approximately unbiased estimation of variance of the proposed spatial estimator (SE). The properties of the proposed SE and its corresponding RSB methods were studied empirically through simulation.     

Some unbiased estimators versus mean per unit and ratio estimators in finite population sample surveys

We present some unbiased estimators at the population mean in a finite population sample surveys with simple random sampling design where information on an auxiliary variance x positively correlated with the main variate y is available. Exact variance and unbiased estimate of the variance are computed for any sample size. These estimators are compared for their precision with the mean per unit and the ratio estimators. Modifications of the estimators are suggested to make them more precise than the mean per unit estimator or the ratio estimator regardless of the value of the population correlation coefficient between the variates x and y. Asymptotic distribution of our estimators and confidnece intervals for the population mean are also obtained.     

Estimation of population mean and variance in flock management: a ranked set sampling approach in a finite population setting

Ranked set sampling is a sampling technique that provides substantial cost efficiency in experiments where a quick, inexpensive ranking procedure is available to rank the units prior to formal, expensive and precise measurements. Although the theoretical properties and relative efficiencies of this approach with respect to simple random sampling have been extensively studied in the literature for the infinite population setting, the use of ranked set sampling methods has not yet been explored widely for finite populations. The purpose of this study is to use sheep population data from the Research Farm at Ataturk University, Erzurum, Turkey, to demonstrate the practical benefits of ranked set sampling procedures relative to the more commonly used simple random sampling estimation of the population mean and variance in a finite population. It is shown that the ranked set sample mean remains unbiased for the population mean as is the case for the infinite population, but the variance estimators are unbiased only with use of the finite population correction factor. Both mean and variance estimators provide substantial improvement over their simple random sample counterparts.     

Unbiased estimation of the parameter of a selected binomial population

The problem is to estimate the parameter of a selected binomial population. The selction rule is to choose the population with the greatest number of successes and, in the case of a tie, to follow one of two schemes: either choose the population with the smallest index or randomize among the tied populations. Since no unbiased estimator exists in the above case, we employ a second stage of sampling and take additional observations on the selected population. We find the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator (UMVUE) under the first tie break scheme and we prove that no UMVUE exists under the second. We find an unbiased estimator with desirable properties in the case where no UMVUE exists.     

Admissible unbiased estimation of finite population variance under a randomized response model

We consider the problem of estimation of a finite population variance related to a sensitive character under a randomized response model and prove (i) the admissibility of an estimator for a given sampling design in a class of quadratic unbiased estimators and (ii) the admissibility of a sampling strategy in a class of comparable quadratic unbiased strategies.     

Estimation of the distribution function under hybrid ranked set sampling

Recently, a hybrid ranked set sampling (HRSS) scheme has been proposed in the literature. The HRSS scheme encompasses several existing ranked set sampling (RSS) schemes, and it is a cost-effective alternative to the classical RSS and double RSS schemes. In this paper, we propose an improved estimator for estimating the cumulative distribution function (CDF) using HRSS. It is shown, both theoretically and numerically, that the CDF estimator under HRSS scheme is unbiased and its variance is always less than the variance of the CDF estimator with simple random sampling (SRS). An unbiased estimator of the variance of CDF estimator using HRSS is also derived. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we also study the performances of the proposed and existing CDF estimators under both perfect and imperfect rankings. It turns out that the proposed CDF estimator is by far a superior alternative to the existing CDF estimators with SRS, RSS and L-RSS schemes. For a practical application, a real data set is considered on the bilirubin level of babies in neonatal intensive care.     

Mixed ranked set sampling design

The main focus of agricultural, ecological and environmental studies is to develop well designed, cost-effective and efficient sampling designs. Ranked set sampling (RSS) is one method that leads to accomplish such objectives by incorporating expert knowledge to its advantage. In this paper, we propose an efficient sampling scheme, named mixed RSS (MxRSS), for estimation of the population mean and median. The MxRSS scheme is a suitable mixture of both simple random sampling (SRS) and RSS schemes. The MxRSS scheme provides an unbiased estimator of the population mean, and its variance is always less than the variance of sample mean based on SRS. For both symmetric and asymmetric populations, the mean and median estimators based on SRS, partial RSS (PRSS) and MxRSS schemes are compared. It turns out that the mean and median estimates under MxRSS scheme are more precise than those based on SRS scheme. Moreover, when estimating the mean of symmetric and some asymmetric populations, the mean estimates under MxRSS scheme are found to be more efficient than the mean estimates with PRSS scheme. An application to real data is also provided to illustrate the implementation of the proposed sampling scheme.     

The uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator of odds ratio in case–control studies under inverse sampling

The stated goal of this paper is to propose the uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator of odds ratio in case–control studies under inverse sampling design. The problem of estimating odds ratio plays a central role in case–control studies. However, the traditional sampling schemes appear inadequate when the expected frequencies of not exposed cases and exposed controls can be very low. In such a case, it is convenient to use the inverse sampling design, which requires that random drawings shall be continued until a given number of relevant events has emerged. In this paper we prove that a uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimator of odds ratio does not exist under usual binomial sampling, while the standard odds ratio estimator is uniformly minimum variance unbiased under inverse sampling. In addition, we compare these two sampling schemes by means of large-sample theory and small-sample simulation.     

Rao and Wu's re-scaling bootstrap modified to achieve extended coverages

Horvitz and Thompson's (HT) [1952. A generalization of sampling without replacement from a finite universe. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 47, 663–685] well-known unbiased estimator for a finite population total admits an unbiased estimator for its variance as given by [Yates and Grundy, 1953. Selection without replacement from within strata with probability proportional to size. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B 15, 253–261], provided the parent sampling design involves a constant number of distinct units in every sample to be chosen. If the design, in addition, ensures uniform non-negativity of this variance estimator, Rao and Wu [1988. Resampling inference with complex survey data. J. Amer. Statist. Assoc. 83, 231–241] have given their re-scaling bootstrap technique to construct confidence interval and to estimate mean square error for non-linear functions of finite population totals of several real variables. Horvitz and Thompson's estimators (HTE) are used to estimate the finite population totals. Since they need to equate the bootstrap variance of the bootstrap estimator to the Yates and Grundy's estimator (YGE) for the variance of the HTE in case of a single variable, i.e., in the linear case the YG variance estimator is required to be positive for the sample usually drawn.     

Unbiased and almost unbiased ratio estimators of the population mean in ranked set sampling

In this paper we study the problem of reducing the bias of the ratio estimator of the population mean in a ranked set sampling (RSS) design. We first propose a jackknifed RSS-ratio estimator and then introduce a class of almost unbiased RSS-ratio estimators of the population mean. We also present an unbiased RSS-ratio estimator of the mean using the idea of Hartley and Ross (Nature 174:270?C271, 1954) which performs better than its counterpart with simple random sample data. We show that under certain conditions the proposed unbiased and almost unbiased RSS-ratio estimators perform better than the commonly used (biased) RSS-ratio estimator in estimating the population mean in terms of the mean square error. The theoretical results are augmented by a simulation study using a wheat yield data set from the Iranian Ministry of Agriculture to demonstrate the practical benefits of our proposed ratio-type estimators relative to the RSS-ratio estimator in reducing the bias in estimating the average wheat production.     

Performance of Interval Estimators for the Inverse Hypergeometric Distribution

The inverse hypergeometric distribution is of interest in applications of inverse sampling without replacement from a finite population where a binary observation is made on each sampling unit. Thus, sampling is performed by randomly choosing units sequentially one at a time until a specified number of one of the two types is selected for the sample. Assuming the total number of units in the population is known but the number of each type is not, we consider the problem of estimating this parameter. We use the Delta method to develop approximations for the variance of three parameter estimators. We then propose three large sample confidence intervals for the parameter. Based on these results, we selected a sampling of parameter values for the inverse hypergeometric distribution to empirically investigate performance of these estimators. We evaluate their performance in terms of expected probability of parameter coverage and confidence interval length calculated as means of possible outcomes weighted by the appropriate outcome probabilities for each parameter value considered. The unbiased estimator of the parameter is the preferred estimator relative to the maximum likelihood estimator and an estimator based on a negative binomial approximation, as evidenced by empirical estimates of closeness to the true parameter value. Confidence intervals based on the unbiased estimator tend to be shorter than the two competitors because of its relatively small variance but at a slight cost in terms of coverage probability.     

Finite-population variance estimation under systematic sampling schemes with multiple random starts

Motivated by Sampath [Finite population variance estimation under LSS with multiple random starts, Commun. Statist. – Theory Methods 38 (2009), pp. 3596–3607], in this paper unbiased estimators for population variance have been developed under linear systematic sampling, balanced systematic sampling and modified systematic sampling with multiple random starts. Expressions for variances of the estimators are also developed. Detailed numerical comparative studies have been carried out to study the performances of the estimators under various systematic sampling schemes with multiple random starts and some interesting conclusions have been drawn out of the study.     

Robust extreme ranked set sampling

In this paper, a robust extreme ranked set sampling (RERSS) procedure for estimating the population mean is introduced. It is shown that the proposed method gives an unbiased estimator with smaller variance, provided the underlying distribution is symmetric. However, for asymmetric distributions a weighted mean is given, where the optimal weights are computed by using Shannon's entropy. The performance of the population mean estimator is discussed along with its properties. Monte Carlo simulations are used to demonstrate the performance of the RERSS estimator relative to the simple random sample (SRS), ranked set sampling (RSS) and extreme ranked set sampling (ERSS) estimators. The results indicate that the proposed estimator is more efficient than the estimators based on the traditional sampling methods.     

Unbiased estimators of finite population variance using auxiliary information in sample surveys

We present some unbiased estimators of the population variance in a finite population sample survey using the knowledge of population variance of an auxiliary character.Exact variance expressions for the proposed estimators are obtained and compared with usual unbiased estimator and the ratio estimator envisaged by Isaki (1983). Generalization of the proposed estimator is also suggested.     

Unbiased Estimation of P(X > Y) for Exponential Populations Using Order Statistics with Application in Ranked Set Sampling

This paper addresses the problem of unbiased estimation of P[X > Y] = θ for two independent exponentially distributed random variables X and Y. We present (unique) unbiased estimator of θ based on a single pair of order statistics obtained from two independent random samples from the two populations. We also indicate how this estimator can be utilized to obtain unbiased estimators of θ when only a few selected order statistics are available from the two random samples as well as when the samples are selected by an alternative procedure known as ranked set sampling. It is proved that for ranked set samples of size two, the proposed estimator is uniformly better than the conventional non-parametric unbiased estimator and further, a modified ranked set sampling procedure provides an unbiased estimator even better than the proposed estimator.     

New generalized regression estimator in the presence of non response under unequal probability sampling

In this paper, we propose a new generalized regression estimator for the problem of estimating the population total using unequal probability sampling without replacement. A modified automated linearization approach is applied in order to transform the proposed estimator to estimate variance of population total. The variance and estimated value of the variance of the proposed estimator is investigated under a reverse framework assuming that the sampling fraction is negligible and there are equal response probabilities for all units. We prove that the proposed estimator is an asymptotically unbiased estimator and that it does not require a known or estimated response probability to function.     

Unbiased Estimation of the Distribution Function of an Exponential Population Using Order Statistics with Application in Ranked Set Sampling

In this paper we consider the problem of unbiased estimation of the distribution function of an exponential population using order statistics based on a random sample. We present a (unique) unbiased estimator based on a single, say ith, order statistic and study some properties of the estimator for i = 2. We also indicate how this estimator can be utilized to obtain unbiased estimators when a few selected order statistics are available as well as when the sample is selected following an alternative sampling procedure known as ranked set sampling. It is further proved that for a ranked set sample of size two, the proposed estimator is uniformly better than the conventional nonparametric unbiased estimator, further, for a general sample size, a modified ranked set sampling procedure provides an unbiased estimator uniformly better than the conventional nonparametric unbiased estimator based on the usual ranked set sampling procedure.