Bibliography of Vital Statistics in Australia: a Third List

This list brings up to date the references in my "Bibliography of Vital Statistics in Australia and New Zealand" Austral. J. Statist. 6 (1964) 33–99 and the "Bibliography of Vital Statistics in Australia: a second list" ibid (1973) 1–26. The cover of the Journals remains the same as listed on page 33 of the original bibliography and continues up to the end of 1980 in most cases. As mentioned in the second list, there are few references to New Zealand sources because of the publication of the bibliography of Dr. J. W. Donovan. Some references are given to works devoted to the health of the aboriginal population but this field is more completely done by Moodie & Pedersen (1971).     

BETA系数对公司审计费用影响的实证研究

文章在综述影响审计定价的各种因素后,分析了BETA系数对公司审计费用的影响,并使用多元线性回归方程分析了BETA系数与审计费用的关系。依据2001~2004年中国上市公司数据,得到审计费用与BETA系数之间呈U型关系的结论:当BETA系数接近于1时,审计费用最低。同时还获得了第一大股东持股比例和董事会规模对审计费用的影响的经验证据。     

Union List Management: The Initial Project and Afterwards

Abstract

Two additional libraries have now joined the West Texas Union List. One is a city-supported; the other, state-supported. These two libraries have also joined the Texas Statewide Union List of Serials. Fees for the West Texas Union List are invoiced to each member directly. So far fees for the Texas Statewide Union List have been absorbed by grants awarded the Texas State Library. At this time, the statewide list will be funded with grants for two more years.

Member libraries update information in different workflows and on different schedules. Union list coordinators learn that members will update the information in their union lists; when, will vary from library to library and from list to list. Agents and coordinators must be aware of the attitude each member library has towards the list. If the list is available on OCLC, some members may only update holdings when they replace the individual institutional list used in their library. If the list is stored on computer tape, some members may have been interested in it only because it could assist them in future serial automation projects and may not have given much thought to the importance of the list as an ongoing venture.

There may be a problem if the library staff responsible for updating the list was never really involved in the decision to join a union list and is not committed to the list beyond the initial project phase. In some cases the members have every intention of keeping the information current but are not good managers or communicators. The agent should ask what is being done and advise members on getting started, and might even offer to visit the library to assist in setting up the proper workflow.

Working with libraries involved in union list activities is a challenge. As with all management tasks, communication is the key to success. When users or members discover a problem, the group must solve it quickly or the list will lose its credibility. Each list must face the possibility that members may not want to retain membership. Some members may not want the list to grow in size, while others do. Interpreting standards and choosing bibliographic and holdings formats are potentially controversial issues.

If the members agree that the list is needed and if the list is important to them from the beginning, then they will be more flexible and understanding of the problems in each library, and more likely to contribute to keeping the list current. As the members learn to work together, their union list product becomes a major goal or interest. The list becomes a product that represents the work and cooperation of the group as a whole.     

The most-cited statistical papers

We attempt to identify the 25 most-cited statistical papers, providing some brief commentary on each paper on our list. This list consists, to a great extent, of papers that are on non-parametric methods, have applications in the life sciences, or deal with the multiple comparisons problem. We also list the most-cited papers published in 1993 or later. In contrast to the overall most-cited papers, these are predominately papers on Bayesian methods and wavelets. We briefly discuss some of the issues involved in the use of citation counts.     

Address register research for the 1991 census of Canada

"The current Canadian census is based on the local enumerator who lists and visits each dwelling in his/her enumeration area to drop off the questionnaires just before census day. Other approaches to compiling an address list exist, however. This paper describes current research into the use of an address register for the next Canadian census, to take place in 1991. Possible applications of an address register are described, earlier research is summarized and potential sources for an address register in the Canadian context are mentioned. The paper concludes with a number of concerns which must be addressed in addition to the more technical issues."     

A Similarity Measure Based on Species Proportions

ABSTRACT

There are several indices for measuring the similarity of two populations, including the ratio of the number of shared species to the number of distinct species (Jaccard's index) and the conditional probability of observing a shared species (Smith et al., 1996 Smith , W. , Solow , A. R. , Preston , P. E. ( 1996 ). An estimator of species overlap using a modified beta-binomial model. Biometrics 52 : 1472 – 1477 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, these indices only take into account the number of species and species proportions of shared species. In this article, we propose a new similarity index which includes the species proportions of both the shared and non shared species in each population, and also propose a Nonparametric Maximum Likelihood Estimator (NPMLE) for this index. Bootstrap and delta methods are used to evaluate the standard errors of the NPMLE. Based on a loss function, we also compare a class of nonparametric estimators for the proposed index in various situations.     

Keeping scores

Consider a sports competition in which participants alternately perform a scored task (such as the distance a discus is thrown), and a list of the top m scores is updated throughout. We consider the average number and distribution of records among the top m throughout and at the end of the competition. We also answer questions concerning the number of times the list changes, when each change occurs, and the waiting times between changes. We touch on results concerning changes in l-records and the values within the list.     

A functional data-analytic approach to the classification of species according to their spatial dispersion. Application to a marine macrobenthic community from the Bay of Morlaix (Western English Channel)

We investigate with multivariate methods the behaviour of species collected in a sequence of ecological surveys. The behaviour of the sth species is first characterized by a classical dispersion index. Under the hypothesis (H) of spatial randomness, the probability distribution v _s of this index obeys a reference law μ. All the sampled species are then compared through a Principal Components Analysis whose metric structure depends on μ. More precisely, the distance between two species s and s′ is an approximation of the μ-centred chi-square distance (Benzécri 1976 Benzécri, J. P. 1976. L'Analyse des Données, tome 2: L'Analyse des Correspondances, Paris: Dunod.  [Google Scholar]) between v _s and v _s′. Thus, while Correspondence Analysis displays departures from independence or homogeneity, the proposed analysis displays departures of the species from (H). As an application, a macrobenthic data time series is analysed, and the obtained species typology is described and discussed. The method enabled us to separate rare species from random ones while rare species could easily be confused with random ones. All the aggregated species were common (or even dominant), and most random ones were moderately abundant. Finally, a group of 23 species showed a mixed random-aggregated behaviour. The repulsive (uniform) behaviour was extremely rare.     

Bias-variance trade-off for prequential model list selection

The prequential approach to statistics leads naturally to model list selection because the sequential reformulation of the problem is a guided search over model lists drawn from a model space. That is, continually updating the action space of a decision problem to achieve optimal prediction forces the collection of models under consideration to grow neither too fast nor too slow to avoid excess variance and excess bias, respectively. At the same time, the goal of good predictive performance forces the search over good predictors formed from a model list to close in on the data generator. Taken together, prequential model list re-selection favors model lists which provide an effective approximation to the data generator but do so by making the approximation match the unknown function on important regions as determined by empirical bias and variance.     

Identifying the Pareto and Yule distributions by properties of their reliability measures

This paper provides characterizations of a family of distributions in the context of reliability theory placing emphasis on a particular family member, the Yule distribution. In particular, it is shown that the distribution of a non-negative, integer-valued random variable X with E(X)<+∞ is uniquely identified to belong to the class of distributions consisting of the geometric, the Waring and the negative hypergeometric distributions if and only if anyone of the following conditions is satisfied:

• a.The mean residual life is a linear function of time.
• b.The vitality function is a linear function of time.
• c.The product of the hazard rate by the mean residual life is constant.

Characterizations of the Yule distribution based on reliability measures of its size-biased version are also provided. Continuous analogues of the results are considered. These include characterizations of the exponential and the beta of the first and second kind distributions.     

Statistical review by research ethics committees

This paper discusses some of the issues surrounding statistical review by research ethics committees (RECs). A survey of local RECs in 1997 revealed that only 27/184 (15%) included a statistician member at that time, although 70/175 (40%) recognized the need for such. The role of the statistician member is considered and the paper includes a summary of a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society to discuss statistical issues that frequently arise in the review of REC applications. A list of minimum qualifications which RECs should expect from anyone claiming to be a statistician would be useful, together with a list of statisticians who are well qualified and willing to serve on RECs, and a list of training courses for REC members covering the appropriate statistical issues.     

A Class of Normalized Random Measures with an Exact Predictive Sampling Scheme

Abstract. In this article, we define and investigate a novel class of non‐parametric prior distributions, termed the class . Such class of priors is dense with respect to the homogeneous normalized random measures with independent increments and it is characterized by a richer predictive structure than those arising from other widely used priors. Our interest in the class is mainly motivated by Bayesian non‐parametric analysis of some species sampling problems concerning the evaluation of the species relative abundances in a population. We study both the probability distribution of the number of species present in a sample and the probability of discovering a new species conditionally on an observed sample. Finally, by using the coupling from the past method, we provide an exact sampling scheme for the system of predictive distributions characterizing the class .     

Small,balanced, efficient and near rotatable central composite designs

Standard central composite designs for fitting second-order models usually have a large number of design points, especially when the number of factors under consideration is large. In this paper we propose small, balanced and near rotatable central composite designs reducing the design's size and maintaining the ability to estimate all the model parameters. We list the best designs we identified to accommodate 4?k?9$4?k?9$ experimental factors. A detailed comparison between our findings and already known second-order designs has also been made.     

Qualitative robustness in abstract inference

Hampel's concept of qualitative robustness (or stability) is applied to estimates of ‘generalized parameters’ (that is, estimates which take values in an abstract metric space). After a general introduction, the interest is focussed on three particular topics:

• 1.(a) Multivariate density estimates: We prove the incompatibility between robustness and consistency. As a consequence, a result of instability for kernel estimates is shown. A robust version of these estimates is also obtained.
• 2.(b) Estimation of the mean function of stochastic process with continuous trajectories on [0, 1]: The ‘sampling mean’ is proved to be unstable (thus, the situation is analogous to that of the parametric case). A general method for constructing robust estimates is given.
• 3.(c) Bayesian inference: The posterior distribution is considered as a generalized estimate taking values in the metric space of probability measures. We apply Hampel's definition to this estimate and we show its instability under two specific Bayesian models.

A discussion of the results is included in the last section.     

AN application of a crossing probability bound to population biology

This paper addresses the problem of detecting natural boundaries in a geographical region containing a large number of animal species, A statistical test of a "no boundary" hypothesis based on Sokal's matching coefficient is derived using a level crossing probability bound for discrete Gaussian random fields after establishing the legitimacy of the Gaussian assumption by a central limit theorem.     

THE EFFECT OF SAMPLE STRUCTURE ON ANALYTICAL SURVEYS1,2

The core of this paper is a dialogue between "Harry", an experienced survey statistician and "Fred", a young mathematical statistician. They have contrasting approaches to the problem of estimating a regression relationship from a stratified sample, but after one or two red herrings are dragged out, both realize that the situation is not as simple as they had supposed. The role played by the probabilities of selection is a central issue. Estimation sampling for means, totals, and ratios is also considered, and seen to be a special case of the general analytical sampling synthesis they had already agreed upon.     

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DESIGNS FOR EXPERIMENTS1 IN THREE DIMENSIONS

A list is given of combinatorial and statistical publications on (a) designs for comparative experiments in three space dimensions, and (b) other related designs.     

Beall’s List and Cabell’s Blacklist: A Comparison of Two Lists of Predatory OA Journals

Abstract

This study uses systematic random sampling to compare the content of “Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers” and “Cabell’s Blacklist” of journals. The Beall’s List data was generated from its new site that maintains a new list besides the original list. It found that 28.5% Beall’s List sample publishers are out of business, some Cabell’s Blacklist journals have become ceased. The main takeaway is that among the Beall’s List sample publishers with a working website for journal publishing, only 31.8% can be found on Cabell’s Blacklist.     

How to ask sensitive multiple-choice questions

Motivated by recent failures of polling to estimate populist party support, we propose and analyze two methods for asking sensitive multiple-choice questions where the respondent retains some privacy and therefore might answer more truthfully. The first method consists of asking for the true choice along with a choice picked at random. The other method presents a list of choices and asks whether the preferred one is on the list or not. Different respondents are shown different lists. The methods are easy to explain, which makes it likely that the respondent understands how her privacy is protected and may thus entice her to participate in the survey and answer truthfully. The methods are also easy to implement and scale up.