The ISSN as Identifier and as Linking Mechanism: An Interview with Fran§oise Pell©

Abstract

In this installment of Serial conversations, MIT cataloger Benjamin Abrahamse talks with Fran§oise Pell©, head of the International ISSN Centre, about the role played by International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN) in facilitating the identification and collocation of serial publications in a networked environment.     

Quantile plots for mean effects in the presence of variance effects for 2k-p designs

In robust parameter design, variance effects and mean effects in a factorial experiment are modelled simultaneously. If variance effects are present in a model, correlations are induced among the naive estimators of the mean effects. A simple normal quantile plot of the mean effects may be misleading because the mean effects are no longer iid under the null hypothesis that they are zero. Adjusted quantiles are computed for the case when one variance effect is significant and examples of 8-run and 16-run fractional factorial designs are examined in detail. We find that the usual normal quantiles are similar to adjusted quantiles for all but the largest and smallest ordered effects for which they are conservative. Graphically, the qualitative difference between the two sets of quantiles is negligible (even in the presence of large variance effects) and we conclude that normal probability plots are robust in the presence of variance effects.     

New Goodness-of-Fit Tests Based on Sample Quantiles

In this article power divergences statistics based on sample quantiles are transformed in order to introduce new goodness-of-fit tests. Quantiles of the distribution of proposed statistics are calculated under uniformity, normality, and exponentiality. Several power comparisons are performed to show that the new tests are generally more powerful than the original ones.     

Accuracy Analysis of the Percentile Method for Estimating Non Normal Manufacturing Quality

We consider asymmetric kernel estimates based on grouped data. We propose an iterated scheme for constructing such an estimator and apply an iterated smoothed bootstrap approach for bandwidth selection. We compare our approach with competing methods in estimating actuarial loss models using both simulations and data studies. The simulation results show that with this new method, the estimated density from grouped data matches the true density more closely than with competing approaches.     

News

U. S. National Income Series Revised—Congress Votes No on Censuses of Business and Manufactures—Britain Revises Living Cost Index-U. S. and U. K. Surveys Uncover Lacks in Statistical Training-Forthcoming Statistical Conferences     

An Interesting Property of the Sample Mean under a First-Order Autoregressive Model

The unweighted sample mean is examined as an estimator of the population mean in a first-order autoregressive model. It is demonstrated that the precision of this estimator deteriorates as the number of equally spaced observations taken within a fixed time interval increases.     

Fishery and Forestry Management

There are a large number of different definitions used for sample quantiles in statistical computer packages. Often within the same package one definition will be used to compute a quantile explicitly, while other definitions may be used when producing a boxplot, a probability plot, or a QQ plot. We compare the most commonly implemented sample quantile definitions by writing them in a common notation and investigating their motivation and some of their properties. We argue that there is a need to adopt a standard definition for sample quantiles so that the same answers are produced by different packages and within each package. We conclude by recommending that the median-unbiased estimator be used because it has most of the desirable properties of a quantile estimator and can be defined independently of the underlying distribution.     

Racing to a Bright Future

Abstract

Serials Review visits the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Library in Cooperstown, NY, which opened in 1939 with two shelves of donated books. The museum is now home to the largest collection of baseball information in the world.     

Serials Clutter in Online Catalogs

Abstract

Finding and deciphering serials records in online catalogs is a challenge to many library users. To understand and analyze these challenges, the author conducted searches for scientific journal titles in the online catalogs of Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) libraries. The first part of the study measures the difficulty of retrieving serial records from online catalogs comparing one-word versus multiple-word titles. The second part analyzes displays for complexity by measuring the length of the complete record and the length of the holdings statements. These data show the complexity of displays and indicate the potential confusion that these displays may induce in library users.     

Strong Gaussian Approximations of Product-Limit and Quantile Processes for Strong Mixing and Censored Data

In this article, we consider the product-limit quantile estimator of an unknown quantile function under a censored dependent model. This is a parallel problem to the estimation of the unknown distribution function by the product-limit estimator under the same model. Simultaneous strong Gaussian approximations of the product-limit process and product-limit quantile process are constructed with rate O[(log n)^?λ] for some λ > 0. The strong Gaussian approximation of the product-limit process is then applied to derive the laws of the iterated logarithm for product-limit process.