ISBN: 978-981-08-8407-9
Authors: M.G.M. Khan, Dinesh Rao, A.H. Ansari and M. J. Ahsan
Abstract:
The method of choosing the best boundaries that make strata internally homogeneous as far as possible is known as optimum stratification. To achieve this, the strata should be constructed in such a way that
the strata variances for the characteristic under study be as small as possible. If the frequency distribution of the study variable is known, the Optimum Strata Boundaries (OSB) could be obtained by cutting the range of the distribution at suitable points. In this paper the problem of finding the OSB for a skewed population with standard Log-normal distribution is studied. The problem is then redefined as the problem of determining Optimum Strata Widths (OSW) and is formulated as a Mathematical Programming Problem (MPP) that seeks minimization of the variance of the estimated population parameter under Neyman allocation subject to the constraint that sum of the widths of all the strata is equal to the total range of the distribution. The formulated MPP turns out to be a multistage decision problem that can be approached by dynamic programming technique. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the application and computational details of the proposed method. The results are compared with the Dalenius and Hodge's cum f method, which reveals that the proposed technique is more efficient and also useful for a skewed population when the other methods may fail to obtain OSB.
LinkOut: The University of the South Pacific
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