Confidence Intervals for Gini's Diversity Measure and Shannon's Entropy Using Adjusted Proportions

Abstract

Asymptotic confidence intervals are given for two functions of multinomial outcome probabilities: Gini's diversity measure and Shannon's entropy. “Adjusted” proportions are used in all asymptotic mean and variance formulas, along with a possible logarithmic transformation. Exact confidence coefficients are computed in some cases. Monte Carlo simulation is used in other cases to compare actual coverages to nominal ones. Some recommendations are made.     

Bayesian credibility limits for small finite population proportions:stratified and cluster sampling

Bayes credibility limits for small proportions from stratified and fixed size cluster samples are discussed. Ericson’s (JRSS B (1969)) Beta Binomial and Dirichlet-Multinomial priors are used. Approximate limits that are appropriate for large samples and small proportions are derived in both cases. These allow asymptotic comparisons of the efficacy of stratified and cluster sampling relative to simple random sampling for estimating small proportions. Procedures for the selection of hyper parameters are also presented.     

Slack-variable models versus Scheffé's mixture models

Slack-variable models are compared against Scheffé's polynomial model for mixture experiments. The notion of model equivalence and the use of various diagnostic measures provide effective tools in making such comparisons, particularly when the experimental region is highly constrained. It is demonstrated that the choice of the best fitting model, through variable selection, depends on which mixture component is selected as a slack variable, and on the size of the fitted model. In addition, the equivalence of two well-known representations of a complete mixture model is shown to be valid. Two numerical examples are presented.     

Revisiting retesting in the estimation of proportions by group testing

In the estimation of a proportion p by group testing (pooled testing), retesting of units within positive groups has received little attention due to the minimal gain in precision compared to testing additional units. If acquisition of additional units is impractical or too expensive, and testing is not destructive, we show that retesting can be a useful option. We propose the retesting of a random grouping of units from positive groups, and compare it with nested halving procedures suggested by others. We develop an estimator of p for our proposed method, and examine its variance properties. Using simulation we compare retesting methods across a range of group testing situations, and show that for most realistic scenarios, our method is more efficient.     

A note on new confidence intervals for the difference between two proportions based on an Edgeworth expansion

Zhou and Qin [2004. New intervals for the difference between two independent binomial proportions. J. Statist. Plann. Inference 123, 97–115; 2005. A new confidence interval for the difference between two binomial proportions of paired data. J. Statist. Plann. Inference 128, 527–542] “new confidence intervals” for the difference between two treatment proportions exhibit a severe lack of invariance property that is a compelling reason not to use them.     

Nonparametric estimation of a change in defect intensity

Summary.  In an important class of problems involving mixture distributions, interest focuses on the mixture proportions, considering other possible parameters as nuisance parameters. We formulate a new variation on such problems that arose in a study on the link between the number of cells in a charge-coupled detector image sensor that turned defective because of cosmic radiation and the storage conditions of such sensors. In this variation, the component densities are bivariate, there are two classes and only a subset of the mixture proportions is of relevance. We propose a nonparametric method to estimate the relevant subset of the proportions and apply our method to the data in our study.     

有限总体修正系数的进一步证明

抽样技术正成为我国社会经济统计调查和分析的重要手段。实际中的抽样大多是对有限总体的不重置抽样。指出了以往关于有限总体修正系数证明的局限性，给出了有限总体不重置抽样成数和均值标准差公式的一般性证明，该证明更直接体现了抽样的随机特征。     

Modified maximum likelihood estimator for the mixing distribution in a finite mixture

Using the likelihood equations, a method based on the generalized inverse of matrices is proposed to derive closed-form estimates for the mixing proportions in a finite mixture, when the component distributions are known.     

Approximate confidence intervals for a linear combination of binomial proportions: A new variant

We propose a new adjustment for constructing an improved version of the Wald interval for linear combinations of binomial proportions, which addresses the presence of extremal samples. A comparative simulation study was carried out to investigate the performance of this new variant with respect to the exact coverage probability, expected interval length, and mesial and distal noncoverage probabilities. Additionally, we discuss the application of a criterion for interpreting interval location in the case of small samples and/or in situations in which extremal observations exist. The confidence intervals obtained from the new variant performed better for some evaluation measures.