Sequential Estimation in Bernoulli Trials
Cabilio, Paul
Ann. Statist., Tome 5 (1977) no. 1, p. 342-356 / Harvested from Project Euclid
The sequential estimation of $p$, the probability of success in a sequence of Bernoulli trials, is considered for the case where loss is taken to be symmetrized relative squared error of estimation, plus a fixed cost $c$ per observation. Using $s_n/n$ as a terminal estimator of $p$, where $s_n$ is the number of successes in $n$ trials, a heuristic rule is derived and shown to perform well for any fixed $0 < p < 1$ as $c \rightarrow 0$. However for any fixed $c > 0$, this rule performs badly for $p$ close to 0 or 1. To overcome this difficulty a uniform prior on $p$ is introduced, and the optimal Bayes procedure is shown to exist and to have bounded sample size. The optimal Bayes risk is shown to be $\sim 2\pi c^{\frac{1}{2}}$ as $c \rightarrow 0$, and is computed for various values of $c$, along with the expected loss for various values of $p$.
Publié le : 1977-03-14
Classification:  Sequential estimation,  Bernoulli trials,  relative squared error loss,  stopping rules,  asymptotic risk,  Bayes rules,  optimal stopping,  monotone case,  62L12,  62L15
@article{1176343799,
     author = {Cabilio, Paul},
     title = {Sequential Estimation in Bernoulli Trials},
     journal = {Ann. Statist.},
     volume = {5},
     number = {1},
     year = {1977},
     pages = { 342-356},
     language = {en},
     url = {http://dml.mathdoc.fr/item/1176343799}
}
Cabilio, Paul. Sequential Estimation in Bernoulli Trials. Ann. Statist., Tome 5 (1977) no. 1, pp.  342-356. http://gdmltest.u-ga.fr/item/1176343799/