Het oordeel van een bedrijfsleider over de toepassing van de statistiek in het bedrijf

A manager's view on the application of statistics in the concern.
To be able to judge of the correct dosing of statistical methods in his concern a manager should discriminate between incidental research and systemetical application of statistics. A sound job limitation and good information are indispensable to the success of a statistical check system.
The cost of the introduction of statistical check methods into a concern with a variated manufacturing programme in the field of electrical engineering (350 people) was estimated to be Djls 18,000 in one year. In the next year more than this amount will be earned back through the savings and the improvements obtained.     

Het voorspellen van levertijden uit gegevens over de voort-gang van een project

Estimation of dates of delivery by extrapolation of progress-data for a project.
The problem can be put in mathematical form with the aid of some assumptions with regard to the occurrence of interruptions.
The progress of the project is supposed to be interrupted by time-intervals during which progress is fully stopped. These intervals start at irregularly distributed moments and have a variable size. The points on the time axis corresponding with the moments of stagnation will show a constant average density, if a constant average production capacity or development capacity is available. This means that the results are valid only if no alterations are made which influence the general progress of the project involved.
The application of probability theory to problems connected with promises of delivery may, in general, look unacceptable.
Many projects, however, have an experimental character and unforeseen technical and organisational troubles are unavoidable.
In such cases the theory makes it possible to obtain a maximum amount of information contained in the progress-data and may help management to make the best decisions.     

Aantekeningen bij de herziening van de methodiek der prijsindexcijfers van het levensonderhoud

Momentarily (fall 196o) the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics is revising its price indexnumbers of family living. Some features of this revision are summarized below.
The old series is based on an expenditure pattern of 1951, whereas the new series will be calculated according to an expenditure pattern of 1959/'60. The latter data will be derived from a budget survey held among 250 households of manual and clerical workers consisting of 4 persons and grossing between four and eight thousand guilders a year (para. 6). The period covered was April 1959 till April i960.
The author indicates the way in which the varieties of the budget items to be covered by the monthly price surveys are chosen (para. 7). He discusses the principles and results of determining the number of price quotations (para. 8).
The choice of the municipalities in which price data will be collected is explained. An outline is given of the organisation of the new surveys apparatus (para. 14).     

Het quotiënt van Von Neumann bij regressie-analyse

Some remarks are made concerning the application of the VON NEUMANN ratio in testing the residuals of a regression against serial correlation.
Special attention is paid to the fact that in general the VON NEUMANN ratio increases when first differences of the original variables are used.     

Receptuur: Het quotiënt van Von Neumann

The Von Neumann Ratio
The independence of successive variables can be tested by means of the Von Neumann Ratio. The expectation of this statistic equals 2. Its distribution can be approximated by a normal distribution for n > 20.     

Het object van het opinie-onderzoek

In research of public opinion the selection of the subjects is of the greatest importance, which makes it necessary to raise as much as possible the level of this research-work, not in the least by restraint.     

De invloed van de keuze der gewichten op de hoogte van een gewogen indexcijfer

The influence of the choice of the weights on the value of an indexnumber.
Price and quantity indexnumbers are weighted averages of groups of price and quantity ratios and they are convenient instruments to indicate the general tendency of such groups, especially if the number of basic ratios is considerable. The frequent use of indexnumbers is due to the fact that they can often be applied to problems for which, strictly speaking, an indexnumber had to be used derived from the same group of ratios but based on a different set of weights.
Two typical examples of such problems are given.
The use of a set of weights differing from the appropriate one is only justified, however, when the indexnumber is rather insensitive to changes in the set of weights. A simple formula is derived showing that the relative change of an index-number due to a change in the set of weights is equal to the product of the (weighted) coefficient of variation of the basic ratios, the (weighted) standard deviation of the relative changes of the weights and the (weighted) coefficient of correlation of the ratios and of the relative changes. The system of weights used in the calculation of these three factors is the same and is equal to the set of true weights belonging to the problem under consideration.
The practical use of the formula is demonstrated at the problem of index-numbers of costs frequently encountered in the practice of cost accounting.     

De theoretische zijde van de methode der kleinste kwadraten

The theoretical aspect of least squares.
This article contains a slightly modified presentation of the Markoff theory of least squares as developed along different lines by Aitken and by David and Neyman. The modifications aim at a more complete treatment and a geometrical illustration of the connection between best linear estimates and generalized least squares. The unbiasedness of ordinary least squares estimates in the case of heteroscedastic and correlated errors is stressed and the loss of efficiency is shown to be generally small. Topics like orthogonalization, partial correlation and what is called "over-correlation" are treated in passing.
Matrices are constantly used, being the adequate tools in this matter. In the appendix a special relevant matrix theorem is derived, viz. a generalization of the well known Cauchy inequality.     

Het verdelen van steekproeven over subpopulaties bij accountantscontroles

Summary  "Stratificationprocedures for a typical auditing problem".
During the past ten years, much experience was gained in The Netherlands in using random sampling methods for typical auditing problems. Especially, a method suggested by VAN. HEERDEN [2] turned out to be very fruitful. In this method a register of entries is considered to be a population of T guilders, if all entries total up to T guilders. The sample size n ₀ is determined in such a way that the probability β not to find any mistake in the sample, if a fraction p ₀ or more of T is incorrect, is smaller than a preassigned value β₀. So n ₀ should satisfy (l- p )ⁿ⁰≤β₀ for p ≥ p ₀. A complication arises if it is not possible to postpone sampling until the whole population T is available. One then wants to take samples from a population which is growing up to T . Suppose one is going to take samples n _i from e.g. r subpopulations

Using the minimax procedure, it is shown, that in this case one should choose the sizes n _i equal to ( T _i/ T ) n ₀. The minimax-value of the probability not to find any incorrect guilder in the r samples, taken together is equal to β₀.     

Het verdelen van steekproeven over subpopulaties bij accountantscontroles

Summary “Stratificationprocedures for a typical auditing problem”. During the past ten years, much experience was gained in The Netherlands in using random sampling methods for typical auditing problems. Especially, a method suggested by VAN. HEERDEN [2] turned out to be very fruitful. In this method a register of entries is considered to be a population of T guilders, if all entries total up to T guilders. The sample size n₀ is determined in such a way that the probability β not to find any mistake in the sample, if a fraction p₀ or more of T is incorrect, is smaller than a preassigned value β₀. So n₀ should satisfy (l-p)ⁿ⁰≤β₀ for p≥p₀. A complication arises if it is not possible to postpone sampling until the whole population T is available. One then wants to take samples from a population which is growing up to T. Suppose one is going to take samples n_i from e.g. r subpopulations Using the minimax procedure, it is shown, that in this case one should choose the sizes n_i equal to (T_i/T)n₀. The minimax-value of the probability not to find any incorrect guilder in the r samples, taken together is equal to β₀.     

Het opinieonderzoek en de verkiezingen

The comment on the public opinion poll concerning the results of the election 1946 is discussed. It is shown that the mean error, being dependent on the number of parties, cannot be used to express numerically the goodness of the forecast.     

Het matchen in de psychologie

Matching in Psychology
In experimental psychology the matching method seems to be one of the most promising methods. This paper deals with the matching of a series of t elements against a series of t other elements. The stated null hypothesis is: for a fixed order of one of the series each permutation of the second series has the same probability.
As a test criterion in the case of one matching is defined: the number r of matches, e.g. the number of "right pairs"; for n matchings: .
As the distribution of for t=3 cannot be found in literature, a table of is given for n=I(I)30: see table I. The way of calculating and verifying is discussed.
For the problem of t=3 and n 31 the degree of approximation by the normal distribution and by the Pearson's Type III distributions is examined. With the application of a correction for continuity the former gives for n=30 a reasonable approximation, the latter a very good approximation: see table 2.     

Het vergelijken van twee verschillende schatters voor een percentiel P van een normale verdeling

A comparison is made between two different methods to estimate the probability that a normally distributed observation is less than a certain value. One method is based on the binomial distribution, the other one on HALD'S maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters of a censored normal distribution. For large sample sizes a graph of the relative efficiency of these two estimates is constructed. A sampling experiment was performed in order to investigate for one particular situation the possible bias of HALD'S maximum likelihood estimate, which is only asymptotically unbiassed.     

Het begrip Universum in de Statistica

Summary  (The meaning of population in statistics).
The general opinion, that a population consists of a number of objects of observation is shown to be incorrect.
It is pointed out that a series of similar individual discriminations of observation has to be called a population.     

Een steekproef ter vaststelling van de verdeling van de hoenderstapel

A sample estimate of the poultry distribution
In 1954 a sample survey was carried out of the returns of the agricultural census, May 1954, in order to establish the distribution of the number of holdings and the number of poultry, by size-group of arable land and by size-group of number of poultry. A simple 10 per cent, sample was planned and the expected variances of the numbers of poultry in each size-group were estimated beforehand. The method of estimation is indicated in this paper. This resulted in comparatively high relative errors in the size-groups above 500 hens and also in the size-groups of arable land. Therefore holdings with 500 hens and over were enumerated completely. Some tests were performed with the sample results and finally the efficiency of the stratification is discussed.     

De bewerking van de resultaten van veldproeven door herleiding van de opbrengstcijfers in beide richtingen van het proefveld

Summary  (The treatment of the results of field experiments by reducing the yields in two directions)
Ir J. J. Dijkveld Stol has shown that good results have been obtained by reducing the yields of field experiments both in columns and in rows.
The mathematical foundation of this method is discussed in the preceding article and it is shown, that the method gives good results if the same supposition may be made as necessary for the application of the methods of Fisher, Knut Vik and the method of the differences.
The variance of Dijkveld Stol's method is identical with Fisher's error variance.     

Practische [berekening van de standaardafwijking van de constante term bij regressie-analyse

The formula arrived at in a previous article [1] is adapted to the usual computation schemes of regression analysis.