Hi to all.
A friend of mine has a problem. The following is my understanding of the
problem.
She has a box of, say, 50 physically identical (to the eye, anyway)
objects, but they vary in chemical composition - there may be half a
dozen or so different compositions in the box. She has another of these
objects, physically similar to those in the box. She needs to test the
objects in the box to determine if the single object came from, or could
have come from, this box. If one of the box objects matches the single
object in chemical composition (presumably this match is within some
level of precision) then she will be able to say that the object
(probably) came from the box (or could have come from the box). If none
of the box objects matches the single object, then the latter could not
have come from the box.
She has been asked to give a statistical formula to identify the sample
size she will need to take to answer the question.
The problem is not very clear - I think the people asking for the
formula are not statisticians, but managers who think that anything that
can possibly be quantified should be quantified. But maybe someone cna
come up with a suggestin I can pass on.
All the best,
Alan
--
Alan McLean ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics
Monash University, Caulfield Campus, Melbourne
Tel: +61 03 9903 2102 Fax: +61 03 9903 2007
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