A Monte Carlo Study of Robust Estimators of Location,

Abstract

Andrews et al (1972) carried out an extensive Monte Carlo study of robust estimators of location. Their conclusions were that the hampel and the skipped estimates, as classes, seemed to be preferable to some of the other currently fashionable estimators. The present study extends this work to include estimators not previously examined. The estimators are compared over short-tailed as well as long-tailed alternatives and also over some dependent data generated by first-order autoregressive schemes. The conclusions of the present study are threefold. First, from our limited study, none of the so-called robust estimators are very robust over short-tailed situations. More work seems to be necessary in this situation. Second, none of the estimators perform very well in dependent data situations, particularly when the correlation is large and positive. This seems to be a rather pressing problem. Finally, for long-tailed alternatives, the hampel estimators and Hogg-type adaptive versions of the hampels are the strongest classes.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 01, 1975
Accession Number
ADA019539

Entities

People

  • Edward Wegman
  • Raymond J. Carroll

Organizations

  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Estimators

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics

Readers

  • Statistical inference.