Moors, J.J.A. Smeets, R. Boekema, F.W.M. (Tilburg University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration)
Abstract
To estimate the mean sojourn time, a sample of Tilburg fair visitors was asked for the duration of their stay on the fair grounds. The longer a visitor's sojourn, the larger his/her probability of being interviewed will be; therefore, longer sojourn times will be overrepresented in the sample. As a consequence, the arithmetic sample mean is not a suitable estimator. The paper places this problem against a theoretical background. As a better estimator the harmonic mean of the observed sojourn times is presented. In addition, a variance estimator is given. The properties of these estimators are difficult to derive analytically. Instead, their behaviour is studied in a number of examples.
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Tilburg University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration in its series Research Memorandum with number
717.