A MOMENT PROBLEM FOR ORDER STATISTICS,

Abstract

Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for a triangular array of numbers to be expectations of order statistics of some non-negative random variable. Using well-know recurrence relations, the expections of all order statistics of the largest sample size, n, in the triangular array, or the expectations of the smallest of every sample size up to and including n are sufficient to determine the whole array. The former are reduced to a Stieltjes moment problem, the latter to a Hausdorff moment problem. These results are applied to show that for every smaple size, there is a positive random variable with geometrically increasing expectations of order statistics with arbitrary ratio and expectation of smallest order statistic. However, only the degenerate distributions have geometrically increasing expectations of order statistics for more than one sample size, even when the ratio and mean of the smallest order statistic can depend on the sample size. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 13, 1970
Accession Number
AD0699514

Entities

People

  • Joseph B. Kadane

Organizations

  • Center for Naval Analyses

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Data Science
  • Information Science
  • Mathematics
  • Order Statistics
  • Random Variables
  • Statistics

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics

Readers

  • Linear Algebra
  • Statistical inference.