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Assuming that the monthly chance of conceiving, fecundability, is constant for any one woman during the period of observation, but varies from one woman to another in an unspecified way, this paper investigates the expected incidence of first conceptions and the distribution of conception delays. The expected monthly incidence of first conceptions is a decreasing function of time. The mean, variance and higher moments of the distribution of fecundability (p) may be estimated from incomplete data referring to only the first few months of exposure. The distribution of conception delays is distinguished from the distribution of the number of trials needed for conception, and the moments of each are derived. When appropriate data are available to calculate the moments of the conception delay or the number of trials, the squared and cubed deviations of i/p about the harmonic mean fecundability can be estimated. These statistics may be useful descriptions of the discrepancy between an observed distribution and theoretical values expected in a homogeneous population. The correlation between two successive conception delays is also discussed in the article.

A growing interest has been witnessed in recent, years in multivariate discrete probability models. The multivariate logarithmic series distribution (LSD) is a multivariate analogue of the univariate LSD. This paper investigates the marginal and the conditional distributions of the multivariate LSD. It. records its moment properties and also provides some regression and correlation analysis. An interesting modal property of the distribution is discovered. The paper also discusses the estimation of the parameters by the methods of maximum likelihood and unbiased minimum variance. At the end is discussed in detail an application of the multivariate LSD to the field of population and community ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exact small sample behavior in two-way contingency tables is investigated for Pearson's chi-square statistic (X²), Light and Margolin's C statistic and its related R² measure of association, Kuliback's minimum discrimination information statistic (2&lcirc;), and Goodman and Kruskal's Lambda. R² is shown to be identical to Goodman and Kruskal's tb, leading to a test for independence based on 4. In small samples from a product of multinomials model, the null distribution of C is better approximated by a x² distribution than is the null distribution of X²; both are considerably better approximated by a x² distribution than is the null distribution of 2&lcirc;. It is proved for tables with two columns and any number of rows that if the column totals are equal, then X² ≤ 2&lcirc;; thus, X² is more conservative than 2&lcirc;. Hence, use of 2&lcirc; should be avoided in testing independence in tables with small samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a nomogram for the "Student"-fisher t test. A nomogram is given for estimating the probability (P) for a given value of the "Student"-Fisher t test. W.S. Gosset, an employee of the Guiness brewing company in Dublin, published papers in 1908 in which he correctly solved three problems: the probable error of a mean, the distribution of the mean divided by its estimated standard deviation and the distribution of the estimated correlation coefficient between independent variates. Later "Student" and economist R.A. Fisher calculated tables of the relevant t distribution and Fisher gives a table of t and probabilities, corresponding to various degrees of freedom. Fisher and F. Yates, scholar provide in addition a column for P. It seemed that presentation of the P, degrees of freedom, t relationship in the form of a nomogram would be advantageous. It makes possible a fairly exact estimate of probabilities less than 0.0001 and makes it possible to get an estimate of P for any value of t from 1 to 65, instead merely of selected values.

This paper deals with certain aspects of variance component estimation for the unbalanced one-way random classification where the number (N[sub I]) of observations in the ith class is treated as a random variable not necessarily independent of the class effect (A[sub iota]). It is assumed that in general P(N[sub I] = 0) > 0. The conditional expectations (given the number of observations in each class) of all estimators of the between variance component (sigma[sup 2, sub alpha]) belonging to a certain class of estimators are derived. A general expression is found for the expected value of that estimator of sigma[sup 2, sub alpha] yielded by analysis of variance of class means. The limit of this expression (as the number of classes arrow right Infinity) is given; and it is shown that, if the bivariate distribution function of A[sub I], N[sub I] belongs to a certain class of distribution functions, then this limit is less than sigma[sup 2, sub a]. Numerical approximations to the expected values of two estimators of sigma[sup 2, sub a] are presented for one subclass of such distribution functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiments to be discussed in this article was designed to investigate empirically the distribution of the sample version of the measure of association (G), &b.gamma;. Professors, William H. Kruskal and Leo A. Goodman have published an article giving interpretive motivation for the coefficient, and have developed the large sample theory for G. In the present research, sampling experiments were performed to test the adequacy of the large sample theory for 5X5 population cross classifications and samples of size ten, twenty-five and fifty. The numerical experiment described in this paper was based on a number of 25 cells multinomial populations, each considered as represented by the probabilities in a 5X5 population cross classification. Gamma is defined by Goodman and Kruskal in terms of probabilities. The 100 population cross classifications were chosen to be representative of practical situations in psychology. The method use to obtain them was to begin with 5X5 cross classification having complete association along the main diagonal and with a variety of marginal distributions.