A Study of Alternative Quantile Estimation Methods in Newsboy-Type Problems

Abstract

The newsboy problem solutions under the conditions of risk and of uncertainty about demand are well known. The former is the case where the distribution of demand is known or estimated, and the latter is the case where it is not known but the range of demand is given. Minimizing the expected cost under risk and the minimax approach under uncertainty are well-known methods to solve the problem. The situation is considered where demand frequency data is acquired, one observation per decision period. For the expected value solution, this study presents five candidate estimators based on the order statistics and evaluates them by comparing costs with those achieved using the minimax rule under uncertainty. This is done by simulation; the results also provide information about the switching period from the minimax rule to the proposed quantile estimators.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1980
Accession Number
ADA084472

Entities

People

  • Yong-u Sok

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Algorithms
  • Data Science
  • Distribution Functions
  • Estimators
  • Information Science
  • Normal Distribution
  • Observation
  • Operations Research
  • Order Statistics
  • Probability
  • Random Variables
  • Schools
  • Simulations
  • Statistical Algorithms
  • Statistics
  • Switching

Readers

  • Adaptive Control and Estimation with Uncertainty in Dynamic Systems.
  • Aerospace logistics and air mobility.
  • Statistical inference.