Questions & Answeres: Reflections on Forecasting |
| |
| Authors: | Ernest Rubin |
| |
| Institution: | U. S. Department of Commerce and American University , Washington , D. C. , USA |
| |
| Abstract: | Dedicated to the late Professor J. B. S. Haldane who brought to my attention the following very significant story from the ancient Indian epic Mahabharat (Nala—Damayanti Akhyabar]n): The king lost his way in a jungle and was required to spend the night in a tree. The next day he told some fellow traveller that the total number of leaves on the tree were “so many”. On being challenged as to whether he counted all the leaves he replied; “No, but I counted leaves on a few branches of the tree and I know the science of die throwing”. (I can vouch for accurateness of the reproduction only in the essential respects.) |
| |
| Keywords: | Observational studies Bias reduction Propensity scores Mahalanobis metric matching Nearest available matching |
|
|
