An improved cluster two-stage randomized response model

In this paper, Abdelfatah and Mazloum's (2015) two-stage randomized response model is extended to unequal probability sampling and stratified unequal probability sampling, both with and without replacement. The extended models result in more efficient estimators than Lee et al.'s (2014) estimators of the proportion of the population having a sensitive attribute.     

Asymptotic properties of a generalized regression-type predictor of a finite population variance in probability sampling

A system of predictors for estimating a finite population variance is defined and shown to be asymptotically design-unbiased (ADU) and asymptotically design-consistent (ADC) under probability sampling. An asymptotic mean squared error (MSE) of a generalized regression-type predictor, generated from the system, is obtained. The suggested predictor attains the minimum expected variance of any design-unbiased estimator when the superpopulation model is correct. The generalized regression-type predictor and the predictor suggested by Mukhopadhyay (1990) are compared.     

Partitioning with Respect to a Control: Unequal Sample Sizes Case

This article describes a method for partitioning with respect to a control for the situation in which the treatment sample sizes are unequal and also for the situation where the treatment sample sizes are equal except for a few missing values. Calculation of the critical values required for finding confidence limits is discussed and tables are presented for the “almost equal” sample size case. An application of this method to length of stay data for congestive heart failure patients is also provided.     

试析我国票据对价制度

我国《票据法》首次将英美法特有的“对价”概念引入基本法，是立法技术上的一大进步，但在对价制度的构成、法律后果等方面尚待进一步明确和完善。我国票据法的对价制度应侧重于客观相对应这一要件，认可为客观对价应当完善对价法律后果的相关规定，明确给付不相当对价者不得享有优于其前手的票据权利。     

Smoothed Histograms for Frequency Data on Irregular Intervals

Frequency tables are often constructed on intervals of irregular width. When plotted as bar charts, the underlying true density information may be quite distorted. The majority of introductory statistics texts recommend tabulating data into intervals of equal width, but seldom caution the consequences of failing to do so. An occasional introductory text correctly emphasizes that area rather than frequency should be plotted. Nevertheless, the correctly scaled density figure is often visually less informative than one might expect, with wide bins at constant height. In many cases, the right most bin interval has no well-defined end point, making its depiction some what arbitrary. In this note, we introduce a regular histogram approximation that matches the frequencies and also minimizes a roughness criterion for visual and exploratory appeal. The resulting estimate can reveal the density structure much more clearly. We also formulate an alternative criterion that explicitly takes account of the uncertainty in the bin frequencies.     

从“时势造”到“造时势”:印度英语探究

作为英语在亚洲最主要的变体之一,印度英语长期以来不被中国人关注甚至被误解。从印度英语的历史成因和发展趋势出发,剖析英语在南亚的本土化特点,以期能从"世界英语"的视角对印度英语作一些恰如其分的评判,也可以探究印度英语的成功经验对中国英语教育的启示。     

A Nonparametric Test for Interval-Censored Failure Time Data with Unequal Censoring

This article considers nonparametric comparison of survival functions, one of the most commonly required task in survival studies. For this, several test procedures have been proposed for interval-censored failure time data in which distributions of censoring intervals are identical among different treatment groups. Sometimes the distributions may depend on treatments and thus not be the same. A class of test statistics is proposed for situations where the distributions may be different for subjects in different treatment groups. The asymptotic normality of the test statistics is established and the test procedure is evaluated by simulations, which suggest that it works well for practical situations. An illustrative example is provided.     

Modified Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney Test and Power Against Strong Null

The Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney (WMW) test is a popular rank-based two-sample testing procedure for the strong null hypothesis that the two samples come from the same distribution. A modified WMW test, the Fligner–Policello (FP) test, has been proposed for comparing the medians of two populations. A fact that may be under-appreciated among some practitioners is that the FP test can also be used to test the strong null like the WMW. In this article, we compare the power of the WMW and FP tests for testing the strong null. Our results show that neither test is uniformly better than the other and that there can be substantial differences in power between the two choices. We propose a new, modified WMW test that combines the WMW and FP tests. Monte Carlo studies show that the combined test has good power compared to either the WMW and FP test. We provide a fast implementation of the proposed test in an open-source software. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

从一份问卷调查看“China English”的现状及其将来

英语作为世界语言已变得越来越重要，对于它的研究也已成为语言学领域的一个重要课题。随着中国入世和北京申奥成功，中国人学英语已呈现出前所未有的势头，对于中国英语(China English)这一也许是将来英语中的最大变体的研究也已引起国内外语界的关注。本文就World Englishes和China English相关方面对1261名在校大学生进行了问卷调查。结果显示绝大部分学生对这两个概念知之甚少，这对中国的英语教学，尤其是中国入世后的英语教学有启示意义让学生广泛接触世界英语；研究中国英语，让中国英语逐步规范并走入课堂。     

A NONPARAMETRIC TEST OF SYMMETRY VERSUS ASYMMETRY FOR RANKED-SET SAMPLES

This paper introduces a nonparametric test of symmetry for ranked-set samples to test the asymmetry of the underlying distribution. The test statistic is constructed from the Cramér-von Mises distance function which measures the distance between two probability models. The null distribution of the test statistic is established by constructing symmetric bootstrap samples from a given ranked-set sample. It is shown that the type I error probabilities are stable across all practical symmetric distributions and the test has high power for asymmetric distributions.