Letters to the Editor

Quantitative graphics have been central to the development of science, and statistical graphics date from the earliest attempts to analyze data. Many familiar forms, including bivariate plots, statistical maps, bar charts, and coordinate paper, were used in the 18th century. Statistical graphics developed through attention to four problems: spatial organization (17th and 18th centuries), discrete comparison (18th and early 19th centuries), continuous distribution (19th century), and multivariate distribution and correlation (late 19th and early 20th centuries). Today, statistical graphics appear to be reemerging as an important analytic tool, with recent innovations exploiting computer graphics and related technologies.     

Virginia tech department of statistics: the frist fifty years

Deciding what to include in this paper has been very difficult since there is so much that one could discuss concerning the development of statistics at Virginia Tech. I would like to acknowledge the report written by Boyd Harshbarger in 1972 after stepping down as department head. The report is an unpublished monograph titled STATISTICS and PERSONAL REMINISCENCES, VPI & SU, 1927-72. I have borrowed considerably from this report for early facts and incidents related to the early years of the department. These early years give, I believe, a good picture of how the department developed.

Though the department is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, statistics activities at VIRGINIA TECH that are related to Boyd Harshbarger actually started much earlier. We will therefore begin our review of the history in 1935, fourteen years before the formal beginning of the department.

The presentation will be broken into three time periods consisting of the EARLY YEARS (1935- 1972), the MIDDLE YEARS (1973-1999), and the FUTURE ERA (1999-infinity).     

Sampling from compositional and directional distributions

This paper describes a method for sampling from a non-standard distribution which is important in both population genetics and directional statistics. Current approaches rely on complicated procedures which do not work well, if at all, in high dimensions and usual parameter set-ups. We use a Gibbs sampler which seems necessary in practical situations of high dimensions.     

A Note on Fisher Information and Imperfect Ranked-Set Sampling

We show by example that the Fisher information in an imperfect ranked-set sample may be higher than the Fisher information in a perfect ranked-set sample. This corrects certain misconceptions in the literature. The example also provides an additional counterexample to a common claim about the relationship between imperfect rankings and perfect rankings.     

小型经济单位从业人员调查抽样方法研究

不执行统计报表制度的小型经济单位的从业人员统计,应当用抽样调查方法进行。小型经济单位的各种统计调查项目,其中如生产统计调查项目、经营统计调查项目、劳动统计调查项目等等,应当合并在一起并分行业进行抽样调查。对小型工业单位进行从业人员调查的抽样技术,包括:样本轮换方针、在样本轮换条件下如何构造估计量、怎样对估计量的方差进行估计等。     

The Introduction of Matrix Algebra into Statistics

Primary credit for the introduction of matrix algebra into statistics is given to A. C. Aitken in the 1930s.     

The Many Facets of Statistics Education: 175 Years of Common Themes

The American Statistical Association's primary founder, Lemuel Shattuck, was driven by a passion for collecting and disseminating accurate information on vital statistics, public health, and other statistically related concerns. The 175th anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect on the education-related reasons ASA was founded and what it has done in education since its founding, especially in the past 25 years since the 150th anniversary. An examination of early and more recent issues of the ASA's journals reveals some common themes that have recurred over the past 175 years. We discuss what those themes are and what the ASA is doing to address them currently, and then conclude by discussing what ASA members can do to help.     

Phlegon's Stem-and-Leaf Display

The Greek writer Phlegon (80–140 AD) from Tralles in Asia Minor wrote a book entitled On Long-lived Persons that contains a long list of people over a hundred years old. He collected data from the Roman censuses. With respect to the history of statistics, Phlegon's book is the earliest surviving text to use the Stem-and-Leaf display of collected data.     

Sampling theory for species abundances in certain biological populations

The sampling theory of Fisher's logarithmic distribution, discussed in Wani (1978), is extended to the class of power-series distributions.     

Probabilities of Failure in Mixed Acceptance Sampling Schemes

Mixed acceptance sampling schemes are commonly used for consumer protection. In a typical application, a sample is taken from a product lot and tested to check that the average value of the sample is not less than the labelled net content, and that there is no 'unreasonable' deficiency in any individual item. Exact and approximate expressions are obtained for the probabilities of failure or success under such schemes and under a variety of conditions.     

The Hausdorff Space and Applied Statistics: A View from the U.S.S.R.

The article focuses on the debate in the pages of the Soviet statistical journal Vestnik Statistiki as to the existence and relevance of applied statistics as a separate scientific discipline. The contents of four letters to the editor and relevant editorial comments that appeared in this journal between October 1985 and July 1987 are analyzed.     

Selected Ranked Set Sampling

This paper proposes a sampling procedure called selected ranked set sampling (SRSS), in which only selected observations from a ranked set sample (RSS) are measured. This paper describes the optimal linear estimation of location and scale parameters based on SRSS, and for some distributions it presents the required tables for optimal selections. For these distributions, the optimal SRSS estimators are compared with the other popular simple random sample (SRS) and RSS estimators. In every situation the estimators based on SRSS are found advantageous at least in some respect, compared to those obtained from SRS or RSS. The SRSS method with errors in ranking is also described. The relative precision of the estimator of the population mean is investigated for different degrees of correlations between the actual and erroneous ranking. The paper reports the minimum value of the correlation coefficient between the actual and the erroneous ranking required for achieving better precision with respect to the usual SRS estimator and with respect to the RSS estimator.     

Statistical Analysis with Soft Computation for Fuzzy Answering in Sampling Survey

In this article, we will provide the definition of fuzzy mode, related characteristics, and proofs. By discussing these characteristics, data analysis, and explanation for this issue, we apply the soft computing techniques on human thought measurement and public's idea with a more appropriate way. In the conclusion, future experiments and further suggestions are presented.     

Markov Sampling

A discrete parameter stochastic process is observed at epochs of visits to a specified state in an independent two-state Markov chain. It is established that the family of finite dimensional distributions of the process derived in this way, referred to as Markov sampling, uniquely determines the stochastic structure of the original process. Using this identifiability, it is shown that if the derived process is Markov, then the original process is also Markov and if the derived process is strictly stationary then so is the original.     

Scalable Bayes under Informative Sampling

Bayesian hierarchical formulations are utilized by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) with respondent‐level data for missing item imputation because these formulations are readily parameterized to capture correlation structures. BLS collects survey data under informative sampling designs that assign probabilities of inclusion to be correlated with the response on which sampling‐weighted pseudo posterior distributions are estimated for asymptotically unbiased inference about population model parameters. Computation is expensive and does not support BLS production schedules. We propose a new method to scale the computation that divides the data into smaller subsets, estimates a sampling‐weighted pseudo posterior distribution, in parallel, for every subset and combines the pseudo posterior parameter samples from all the subsets through their mean in the Wasserstein space of order 2. We construct conditions on a class of sampling designs where posterior consistency of the proposed method is achieved. We demonstrate on both synthetic data and in application to the Current Employment Statistics survey that our method produces results of similar accuracy as the usual approach while offering substantially faster computation.     

Fisher's Hypergeometric Test for a Comparison in a Finite Population

Graphical methods have played a central role in the development of statistical theory and practice. This presentation briefly reviews some of the highlights in the historical development of statistical graphics and gives a simple taxonomy that can be used to characterize the current use of graphical methods. This taxonomy is used to describe the evolution of the use of graphics in some major statistical and related scientific journals.

Some recent advances in the use of graphical methods for statistical analysis are reviewed, and several graphical methods for the statistical presentation of data are illustrated, including the use of multicolor maps.     

推断统计学起源探析——谨以此文悼祭一代统计学宗师陈希孺院士逝世三周年

从逻辑和历史两个角度对推断统计学的起源进行了尝试性的探索,通过对推断统计学概念的辨析以及历史事实的追溯,指出推断统计学的历史起源于1750年代。     

中国“三农”抽样调查之抽样框问题研究

20世纪90年代后期,中国的＂三农＂问题逐步突显出来,涉及＂三农＂问题的抽样调查也越来越多。然而,抽取样本依据的抽样框大多是基于普查和行政记录资料编制的单纯名录抽样框。单纯名录抽样框的使用存在很多弊端。拟从抽样框的建立与更新维护两个阶段进行分析,提出解决现有问题的具体思路。在抽样框的建立阶段,建立名录抽样框和区域抽样框相结合的双重简单抽样框,并在此简单抽样框的基础上添加特征群,构建适合不同调查类别的复杂抽样框;在抽样框的更新维护阶段,通过合理地制度安排,以普查数据为基础,以建设抽样框数据库为契机开展抽样框的更新维护工作,使建成的抽样框得到及时有效地更新维护。     

对当前几个统计理论问题的新思考

近年来,社会经济统计学与数理统计学地位之争愈演愈烈,“大统计学论”和“数理统计学唯一论”是这场争论中有代表性的学术观点,但是笔者在对两门统计学系统分析之后认为：大统计思路不能从根本上解决学科性质问题,数理统计也不能作为统计学的唯一取向。由于研究对象的复杂性与综合广延性决定了核算统计理论大有学问,并指出“传统与现代”两分观是统计理论研究中极端化趋向的根源。     

A conversation with Elja Arjas (Helsinki,November 2021 and March 2022)

Statistics as an independent scientific discipline is relatively young in Finland. Its active history stretches back roughly a century, with the past 50 years signifying a period of growth. Few other academics such as Elja Arjas, now professor emeritus at University of Helsinki, have played a prominent role in establishing statistics in Finland. This conversation tries to illuminate how this came to happen and what was needed to push statistics as a discipline to a firmer ground. We do not have a looking glass at our disposal but will nevertheless also try make some predictions about the future.