An improved estimation in stratified random sampling

ABSTRACT

The article suggests a class of estimators of population mean in stratified random sampling using auxiliary information with its properties. In addition, various known estimators/classes of estimators are identified as members of the suggested class. It has been shown that the suggested class of estimators under optimum condition performs better than the usual unbiased, usual combined ratio, usual combined regression, Kadilar and Cingi (2005 Kadilar, C., Cingi, H. (2005). A new ratio estimator in stratified sampling. Commun. Stat. Theory Methods 34:597–602.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Singh and Vishwakarma (2006 Singh, H.P., Vishwakarma, G.K. (2006). Combined ratio-product estimator of finite population mean in stratified sampling. Metodologia de Encuestas Monografico: Incidencias en el trabjo de Campo 7(1):32–40. [Google Scholar]) estimators and the members belonging to the classes of estimators envisaged by Kadilar and Cingi (2003 Kadilar, C., Cingi, H. (2003). Ratio estimator in stratified sampling. Biomet. J. 45:218–225.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Singh, Tailor et al. (2008 Singh, H.P., Agnihotri, N. (2008). A general procedure of estimating population mean using auxiliary information in sample surveys. Stat. Trans. 9(1):71–87. [Google Scholar]), Singh et al. (2009 Singh, R., Kumar, M., Chaudhary, M.K., Kadilar, C. (2009). Improved exponential estimator in stratified random sampling. Pak. J. Stat. Oper. Res. 5(2):67–82.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Singh and Vishwakarma (2010 Singh, H.P., Vishwakarma, G.K. (2010). A general procedure for estimating the population mean in stratified sampling using auxiliary information. METRON 67(1):47–65.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and Koyuncu and Kadilar (2010) Koyuncu, N., Kadilar, C. (2010). On improvement in estimating population mean in stratified random sampling. J. Appl. Stat. 37(6):999–1013.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar].     

Quantile-based Chernoff distance for truncated random variables

Several probability distributions such as power-Pareto distribution (see Gilchrist 2000 Gilchrist, W. 2000. Statistical modelling with quantile functions. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman and Hall/CRC.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Hankin and Lee 2006 Hankin, R. K. S., and A. Lee. 2006. A new family of non-negative distributions. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics 48:67–78.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), various forms of lambda distributions (see Ramberg and Schmeiser 1974 Ramberg, J. S., and B. W. Schmeiser. 1974. An appropriate method for generating asymmetric random variables. Communications of the ACM 17:78–82.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and Freimer et al. 1988 Freimer, M., S. Mudholkar, G. Kollia, and C. T. Lin. 1988. A study of the generalized lambda family. Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods 17:3547–67.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), Govindarajulu distribution (see Nair, Sankaran, and Vineshkumar 2012 Nair, U. N., P. G. Sankaran, and B. Vineshkumar. 2012. The Govindarajulu distribution: some properties and applications. Communications in Statistics—Theory and Methods 41:4391–406.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), etc., do not have manageable distribution functions, though they have tractable quantile functions. Hence, analytical study of the properties of Chernoff distance of two random variables associated with these distributions via traditional distribution function-based tool becomes difficult. To make this simple, in this paper, we introduce quantile-based Chernoff distance for (left or right) truncated random variables and study its various properties. Some useful bounds as well as characterization results are obtained.     

On Fitting Transformation Model to Survey Data

In this article, we consider fitting a semiparametric linear model to survey data with censored observations. The specific goal of the paper is to extend the methods of Cheng et al. (1995 Cheng, S.C., Wei, L.J., Ying, Z. (1995). Analysis of transformation models with censored data. Biometrika 82(4):835–845.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Chen et al. (2002 Chen, K., Jin, Z. Ying, Z. (2002). Semiparametric analysis of transformation models with censored data. Biometrika 89:659–668.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to the case when the sample has been drawn from a population using a complex sampling design. Similar to the approach of Lin (2000 Lin, D.Y. (2000). On fitting Cox’s proportional hazards models to survey data. Biometrika 87:37–47.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we regard the survey population as a random sample from an infinite universe and accounts for this randomness in the statistical inference. A simulation study is conducted to investigate the performance of the proposed estimators.     

Note on posterior inference for the Bingham distribution

The properties of high-dimensional Bingham distributions have been studied by Kume and Walker (2014 Kume, A., and S. G. Walker. 2014. On the Bingham distribution with large dimension. Journal of Multivariate Analysis 124:345–52.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Fallaize and Kypraios (2016 Fallaize, C. J., and T. Kypraios. 2016. Exact Bayesian inference for the Bingham distribution. Statistics and Computing 26:349–60.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) propose the Bayesian inference for the Bingham distribution and they use developments in Bayesian computation for distributions with doubly intractable normalizing constants (Møller et al. 2006 Møller, J., A. N. Pettitt, R. Reeves, and K. K. Berthelsen. 2006. An efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo method for distributions with intractable normalising constants. Biometrika 93 (2):451–458.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Murray, Ghahramani, and MacKay 2006 Murray, I., Z. Ghahramani, and D. J. C. MacKay. 2006. MCMC for doubly intractable distributions. In Proceedings of the 22nd annual conference on uncertainty in artificial intelligence (UAI-06), 359–66. AUAI Press. [Google Scholar]). However, they rely heavily on two Metropolis updates that they need to tune. In this article, we propose instead a model selection with the marginal likelihood.     

On Augmented Franses Tests for Seasonal Unit Roots

This article extends the results reported in del Barrio Castro, Osborn and Taylor (2012 del Barrio Castro, T., Osborn, D.R., Taylor, A. M.R. (2012). On augmented HEGY tests for seasonal unit roots. Econometric Theor. 18:1121–1143.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to the approach followed by Franses (1991a Franses, P. H. (1991a). Model selection and seasonality in time series. Tibergen Institute Series, 18. [Google Scholar],b Franses, P.H. (1991b). Seasonality, non-stationarity and the forecasting of monthly time series. Int. J. Forecast. 7:199–208.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to test for seasonal unit roots, providing the asymptotic representation to the seasonal unit roots tests proposed by Franses for a general number of seasons S.     

MULTI-LEVEL FACTORIAL DESIGNS WITH MINIMUM NUMBERS OF LEVEL CHANGES

The order of experimental runs in a fractional factorial experiment is essential when the cost of level changes in factors is considered. The generalized foldover scheme given by [1] Coster, D. C. and Cheng, C. S. 1988. Minimum cost trend free run orders of fractional factorial designs. The Annals of Statistics, 16: 1188–1205. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]gives an optimal order to experimental runs in an experiment with specified defining contrasts. An experiment can be specified by a design requirement such as resolution or estimation of some interactions. To meet such a requirement, we can find several sets of defining contrasts. Applying the generalized foldover scheme to these sets of defining contrasts, we obtain designs with different numbers of level changes and then the design with minimum number of level changes. The difficulty is to find all the sets of defining contrasts. An alternative approach is investigated by [2] Cheng, C. S., Martin, R. J. and Tang, B. 1998. Two-level factorial designs with extreme numbers of level changes. The Annals of Statistics, 26: 1522–1539. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]for two-level fractional factorial experiments. In this paper, we investigate experiments with all factors in slevels.     

ESTIMATION OF PARAMETERS IN ARFIMA PROCESSES: A SIMULATION STUDY

It is known that, in the presence of short memory components, the estimation of the fractional parameter d in an Autoregressive Fractionally Integrated Moving Average, ARFIMA(p, d, q), process has some difficulties (see [1] Smith, J., Taylor, N. and Yadav, S. 1997. Comparing the bias and misspecification in ARFIMA models. Journal of Time Series Analysis, 18(5): 507–527. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In this paper, we continue the efforts made by Smith et al. [1] Smith, J., Taylor, N. and Yadav, S. 1997. Comparing the bias and misspecification in ARFIMA models. Journal of Time Series Analysis, 18(5): 507–527. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] and Beveridge and Oickle [2] Beveridge, S. and Oickle, C. 1993. Estimating fractionally integrated time series models. Economics Letters, 43: 137–142.  [Google Scholar] by conducting a simulation study to evaluate the convergence properties of the iterative estimation procedure suggested by Hosking [3] Hosking, J. 1981. Fractional differencing. Biometrika, 68(1): 165–176. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. In this context we consider some semiparametric approaches and a parametric method proposed by Fox-Taqqu[4] Fox, R. and Taqqu, M. S. 1986. Large-sample properties of parameter estimates for strongly dependent stationary gaussian time series. The Annals of Statistics, 14(2): 517–532. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. We also investigate the method proposed by Robinson [5] Robinson, P. M. 1995a. Log-periodogram regression of time series with long range dependence. The Annals of Statistics, 23(3): 1048–1072. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and a modification using the smoothed periodogram function.     

An adaptive multivariate CUSUM control chart for signaling a range of location shifts

ABSTRACT

In this work, we proposed an adaptive multivariate cumulative sum (CUSUM) statistical process control chart for signaling a range of location shifts. This method was based on the multivariate CUSUM control chart proposed by Pignatiello and Runger (1990 Pignatiello, J.J., Runger, G.C. (1990). Comparisons of multivariate CUSUM charts. J. Qual. Technol. 22(3):173–186.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), but we adopted the adaptive approach similar to that discussed by Dai et al. (2011 Dai, Y., Luo, Y., Li, Z., Wang, Z. (2011). A new adaptive CUSUM control chart for detecting the multivariate process mean. Qual. Reliab. Eng. Int. 27(7):877–884.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which was based on a different CUSUM method introduced by Crosier (1988 Crosier, R.B. (1988). Multivariate generalizations of cumulative sum quality-control schemes. Technometrics 30(3):291–303.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The reference value in this proposed procedure was changed adaptively in each run, with the current mean shift estimated by exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) statistic. By specifying the minimal magnitude of the mean shift, our proposed control chart achieved a good overall performance for detecting a range of shifts rather than a single value. We compared our adaptive multivariate CUSUM method with that of Dai et al. (2001 Dai, Y., Luo, Y., Li, Z., Wang, Z. (2011). A new adaptive CUSUM control chart for detecting the multivariate process mean. Qual. Reliab. Eng. Int. 27(7):877–884.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and the non adaptive versions of these two methods, by evaluating both the steady state and zero state average run length (ARL) values. The detection efficiency of our method showed improvements over the comparative methods when the location shift is unknown but falls within an expected range.     

Group Variable Selection with Oracle Property by Weight-Fused Adaptive Elastic Net Model for Strongly Correlated Data

This paper is the generalization of weight-fused elastic net (Fu and Xu, 2012 Fu, G., Xu, Q. (2012). Grouping variable selection by weight fused elastic net for multi-collinear data. Communications in Statistics-Simulation and Computation 41(2):205–221.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), which performs group variable selection by combining weight-fused LASSO(wfLasso) and elastic net (Zou and Hastie, 2005 Zou, H., Hastie, T. (2005). Regularization and variable selection via the elastic net. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology) 67(2):301–320.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) penalties. In this study, the elastic net penalty is replaced by adaptive elastic net penalty (AdaEnet) (Zou and Zhang, 2009 Zou, H., Zhang, H. (2009). On the adaptive elastic-net with a diverging number of parameters. Annals of Statistics 37(4):1733–1751.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and a new group variable selection algorithm with oracle property (Fan and Li, 2001 Fan, J., Li, R. (2001). Variable selection via nonconcave penalized likelihood and its oracle properties. Journal of the American Statistical Association 96(456):1348–1360.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Zou, 2006 Zou, H. (2006). The adaptive lasso and its oracle properties. Journal of the American Statistical Association 101(476):1418–1429.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is obtained.     

A new lifetime model with different types of failure rate

A new class of lifetime distributions, which can exhibit with upside-down bathtub-shaped, bathtub-shaped, decreasing, and increasing failure rates, is introduced. The new distribution is constructed by compounding generalized Weibull and logarithmic distributions, leading to improvement on the lifetime distribution considered in Dimitrakopoulou et al. (2007 Dimitrakopoulou, T., K. Adamidis, and S. Loukas. 2007. A lifetime distribution with an upside-down bathtub-shaped hazard function. IEEE Transactions on Reliability 56:308–11.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) by having no restriction on the shape parameter and extending the result studied by Tahmasbi and Rezaei (2008 Tahmasbi, R., and S. Rezaei. 2008. A two-parameter lifetime distribution with decreasing failure rate. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 52:3889–901.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in the general form. The proposed model includes the exponential–logarithmic and Weibull–logarithmic distributions as special cases. Various statistical properties of the proposed class are discussed. Furthermore, estimation via the maximum likelihood method and the Fisher information matrix are discussed. Applications to real data demonstrate that the new class of distributions is more flexible than other recently proposed classes.     

A quantile-based study on ageing intensity function

Jiang, Ji, and Xiao (2003 Jiang, R., P. Ji, and X. Xiao. 2003. Aging property of unimodal failure rate models. Reliability Engineering and System Safety 79(1):113–6.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has introduced a quantitative measure known as the ageing intensity function for evaluating the ageing properties of a component/system. In recent years, there has been a great interest on the study of quantile function, an equivalent alternative to the distribution function approach. Unlike the distribution function approach, the quantile method possess some unique properties (see Gilchrist 2000 Gilchrist, W. 2000. Statistical modelling with quantile functions. Boca Raton, Florida: Chapman and Hall/CRC.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Nair, Sankaran, and Balakrishnan 2013 Nair N. U., P. G. Sankaran, N. Balakrishnan. 2013. Quantile-based reliability concepts. In: Quantile-Based Reliability Analysis. Statistics for Industry and Technology. New York, NY: Birkhäuser.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Motivated with this, in the present paper we introduce a quantile-based ageing intensity function and study its various ageing properties. We also study some stochastic comparison of random variables based on the proposed measure.     

Asymptotic normality of the local linear estimation of the conditional density for functional time-series data

This article focuses on the conditional density of a scalar response variable given a random variable taking values in a semimetric space. The local linear estimators of the conditional density and its derivative are considered. It is assumed that the observations form a stationary α-mixing sequence. Under some regularity conditions, the joint asymptotic normality of the estimators of the conditional density and its derivative is established. The result confirms the prospect in Rachdi et al. (2014 Rachdi, M., A. Laksaci, J. Demongeot, A. Abdali, and F. Madani. 2014. Theoretical and practical aspects of the quadratic error in the local linear estimation of the conditional density for functional data. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis 73 :53–68.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and can be applied in time-series analysis to make predictions and build confidence intervals. The finite-sample behavior of the estimator is investigated by simulations as well.     

Combined estimating function for random coefficient models with correlated errors

ABSTRACT

Estimating functionshave been shown to be convenient to study inference for non linear time series models. Recently, Thavaneswaran et al. (2012 Thavaneswaran, A., Liang, Y., Frank, J. (2012). Inference for random coefficient volatility models. Stat. Probab. Lett. 82(12):2086–2090.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) used combined estimating functions to study inference for random coefficient autoregressive (RCA) models with generalized autoregressive heteroscedasticity errors. While most RCA modeling assumes that the random term and the error are independent, Chandra and Taniguchi (2001 Chandra, S.A., Taniguchi, M. (2001). Estimating functions for nonlinear time series models. Ann. Inst. Stat. Math 53(1):125–141.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) studied inference for RCA models with correlated errors using linear estimating functions. In this paper, we derive the quadratic estimating functions for the joint estimation of the conditional mean, variance, and correlation parameters of the RCA models with correlated errors.     

Inferences on partial linear models with right censored data by empirical likelihood

ABSTRACT

This article considers inference for partial linear models with right censored data. We use empirical likelihood based on the Buckley and James (1979 Buckley, J., James, I. (1979). Linear regression with censored data. Biometrika 66:429–436.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) estimating equation to derive the confidence region for the regression parameter. We introduce an adjusted empirical likelihood ratio statistic for the parameter of interest and show that its limiting distribution is standard chi-square. A simulation is carried out to compare our method with the synthetic data approach in Wang and Li (2002 Wang, Q.-H., Li, G. (2002). Empirical Likelihood Semiparametric Regression Analysis under Random Censorship. J. Multivariate Anal. 83:469–486.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

Convergence of weighted sums for sequences of pairwise NQD random variables

ABSTRACT

The authors discuss the convergence for weighted sums of pairwise negatively quadrant dependent (NQD) random variables and obtain some new results which extend and improve the result of Bai and Cheng (2000) Bai, Z.D., Cheng, P.E. (2000). Marcinkiewicz strong laws for linear statistics. Stat. Probab. Lett. 46:105–112.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. In addition, we relax some restrictions of the conditions in their result. Some new methods are used in this article which differ from that of Bai and Cheng (2000) Bai, Z.D., Cheng, P.E. (2000). Marcinkiewicz strong laws for linear statistics. Stat. Probab. Lett. 46:105–112.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar].     

A two-stage design for multivariate estimation of proportions

ABSTRACT

In this article, the problem of estimation of the several proportions of two inter-dependent sensitive characteristics prevailing in a given population is considered. A new two-stage randomized response model has been proposed by extending Lee et al.’s (2013 Lee, C., Sedory, S., Singh, S (2013). Estimation at least seven measures of qualitative variables from a single sample using randomized response technique. Stat. Probab. Lett. 83(1):399–409.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) model. The expressions for biases, variances, and mean square errors of different estimators have been provided. The relative efficiency comparisons of the proposed estimators has been made, numerically by considering the different practicable choices of the design parameters. It was observed that the proposed extended version performs efficiently than simple and crossed models of Lee et al. (2013 Lee, C., Sedory, S., Singh, S (2013). Estimation at least seven measures of qualitative variables from a single sample using randomized response technique. Stat. Probab. Lett. 83(1):399–409.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

Generalized ratio-cum-product type exponential estimator in stratified random sampling

ABSTRACT

In this article, we propose a generalized ratio-cum-product type exponential estimator for estimating population mean in stratified random sampling. Asymptotic expression of the bias and mean squared error of the proposed estimator are obtained. Asymptotic optimum estimator in the proposed estimator has been obtained with its mean squared error formula. Conditions under which the proposed estimator is more efficient than usual unbiased estimator, combined ratio and product type estimators, Singh et al. (2008 Singh, R., Kumar, M., Singh, R.D., Chaudhary, M.K. (2008). Exponential ratio type estimators in stratified random sampling. Presented in International Symposium on Optimisation and Statistics (I.S.O.S) at A.M.U., Dec. 2008, 29–31, Aligarh, India. [Google Scholar]) estimators and Tailor and Chouhan (2014 Tailor, R., Chouhan, S. (2014). Ratio-cum-product type exponential estimator of finite population mean in stratified random sampling. Commun. Statist. Theor. Meth. 43:343–354.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) estimator are obtained. An empirical study has also been carried out.     

Equivalent Conditions of Complete Moment Convergence of Weighted Sums for ϕ-Mixing Sequence of Random Variables

In this article, the complete moment convergence of weighted sums for ?-mixing sequence of random variables is investigated. By applying moment inequality and truncation methods, the equivalent conditions of complete moment convergence of weighted sums for ?-mixing sequence of random variables are established. These results promote and improve the corresponding results obtained by Li et al. (1995 Li, D.L., Rao, M.B., Jiang, T.F., Wang, X.C. (1995). Complete convergence and almost sure convergence of weighted sums of random variables. J. Theoret. Probab. 8:49–76.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Gut (1993 Gut, A. (1993). Complete convergence and Cesàro summation for i.i.d. random variables. Probab. Theory Related Fields 97:169–178.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) from i.i.d. to ?-mixing setting. Moreover, we obtain the complete moment convergence of moving average processes based on ?-mixing random variables, which extends the result of Kim et al. (2008 Kim, T.S., Ko, M.H. (2008). Complete moment convergence of moving average processes under dependence assumptions. Statist. Probab. Lett. 78:839–846.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in the sense that it does not require a specific mixing rate.     

Bayes minimax ridge regression estimators

The problem of estimating of the vector β of the linear regression model y = Aβ + ? with ? ～ N_p(0, σ²I_p) under quadratic loss function is considered when common variance σ² is unknown. We first find a class of minimax estimators for this problem which extends a class given by Maruyama and Strawderman (2005 Maruyama, Y., and W. E. Strawderman. 2005. A new class of generalized Bayes minimax ridge regression estimators. Annals of Statistics 33:1753–70.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and using these estimators, we obtain a large class of (proper and generalized) Bayes minimax estimators and show that the result of Maruyama and Strawderman (2005 Maruyama, Y., and W. E. Strawderman. 2005. A new class of generalized Bayes minimax ridge regression estimators. Annals of Statistics 33:1753–70.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) is a special case of our result. We also show that under certain conditions, these generalized Bayes minimax estimators have greater numerical stability (i.e., smaller condition number) than the least-squares estimator.     

Heavy traffic analysis of roving server networks

This article studies the heavy-traffic (HT) behavior of queueing networks with a single roving server. External customers arrive at the queues according to independent renewal processes and after completing service, a customer either leaves the system or is routed to another queue. This type of customer routing in queueing networks arises very naturally in many application areas (in production systems, computer- and communication networks, maintenance, etc.). In these networks, the single most important characteristic of the system performance is oftentimes the path time, i.e., the total time spent in the system by an arbitrary customer traversing a specific path. The current article presents the first HT asymptotic for the path-time distribution in queueing networks with a roving server under general renewal arrivals. In particular, we provide a strong conjecture for the system’s behavior under HT extending the conjecture of Coffman et al.^{[8 Coffman, Jr, E. G.; Puhalskii, A. A.; Reiman, M. I,. Polling systems with zero switchover times: A heavy-traffic averaging principle. Ann. App. Prob. 1995, 5(3), 681–719.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar],9 Coffman, Jr., E. G.; Puhalskii, A. A.; Reiman, M. I,. Polling systems in heavy-traffic: A Bessel process limit. Math. Oper. Res. 1998, 23, 257–304.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]]} to the roving server setting of the current article. By combining this result with novel light-traffic asymptotics, we derive an approximation of the mean path time for arbitrary values of the load and renewal arrivals. This approximation is not only highly accurate for a wide range of parameter settings, but is also exact in various limiting cases.