Estimating Historical Heights
作者:
KennethW. Wachter,
James Trussell,
期刊:
Journal of the American Statistical Association
(Taylor Available online 1982)
卷期:
Volume 77,
issue 378
页码: 279-293
ISSN:0162-1459
年代: 1982
DOI:10.1080/01621459.1982.10477796
出版商: Taylor & Francis Group
关键词: Height;Estimation;Bootstrap;Truncation;Quantiles;Maximum likelihood
数据来源: Taylor
摘要:
Historical samples of military, naval, and merchant marine heights suffer from undercounts of short people, undercounts highly irregular compared to the truncated distributions for which standard methods are available. Our knowledge is too imprecise for parametric models of the undercount process but it suffices for intuitive description of the deviations from normality with which estimators should cope. Two new estimators are developed. The first adapts maximum likelihood for truncated normals to height histograms with gradual lower-tail shortfall. The second exploits bends in quantile-quantile plots. Standard error estimates based on Efron's bootstrap appear reliable. The estimators show average heights from British Royal Marine samples much shorter than their American opponents in the Revolutionary War and reveal a statistically significant increase by the 1820's in the British heights.
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