Can it be considered as a variant of urn sampling?
say, instead of
colored balls, we'd look at balls of various sizes.
Physically identical -> analogy: random sampling
Vary in chemical composition -> analog: variation in size
-> the sizes of the balls have some distribution
sampling estimate the distribution -> check if match
or not the expected (what she has in hand).
Or consider gene sequence identification type of
problem?
Vincent
Alan McLean wrote:
>
> 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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