SEQUENTIAL PROCEDURES in PROBIT ANALYSIS by TADEPALLI
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SEQUENTIAL PROCEDURES IN PROBIT ANALYSIS by TADEPALLI VENKATA NARAYANA Special report to THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE under Contract AF 18(600)-83 monitored by the Office of Scientific Research. Institute of Statistics Mimeograph Series No.82 October, 1953 SEQUENTIAL PROCEDURES IN PROBIT ANALYSIS by TADEPALLI VENKATA NARAYANA A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of North Carolina in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Statistics Chapel Hill 1953 Approved by: Adviser ii ACK NOW LED GEM ENT I wish to express my deep gratitude to Professor N. L. Johnson for suggesting the problem and constantly guiding me throughout the preparation of this dissertation. I wish also to thank the Institute of Statistics and the U. S. Air Force for financial assistance which made this study possible. T. V. Narayana iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii INTRODUCTION iv Chapter I. STATm1~NT OF PROBLEM 1 II. APPLICATION OF THE MOOD AND DIXON HETHOD TO RANKITS 14 III. THE ALTERNATIVE METHODS AND THE MOOD AND DDCON METHOD IN THE CASE OF SMALL SAMPLES 23 IV. THE ASYMPTOTIC PROPERTIES OF THE DIFFERENT SEnUENTIAL PROCEDURES 48 v. ESTIMATION OF THE ED,O IN SAMPLES OF MODERATE SIZES 79 APPENDIX 97 BIBLIOGRAPHY 107 INTRODUCTION The standard technique of Probit Analysis enables us to es timate the "median effective dose" (ED50) in a biological assay. When a simple normalizing transformation for the doses is avail able, the normalizing measure of "dosage" has a normally distribu ted tolerance. The problem of estimating the mean and standard deviation of this distribution is solved by the probit transforma tion of the experimental results. Often in practice, it is possible to apply the "doses" at certain discrete points only, rather than on a continuous scale. When we have no a priori information of the position of the ED50, a wide range of "levels" should be used in order to be sure to bracket the ED50 point. The~problem now arises how to allocate our test €ubjects at th~se various levels to estimate the ED50 with accuracy. For quantal responses, Mood and Dixon discuss a sequential method, known as the "up and down" method, which automatically restricts testing to the dosage levels near the mean. The tech nique, suggested by them, is as follows: At any stage of the experiment we move to the next higher or the next lower level of dosage according as the preVious result was a "failure" or a "success", the first test being done at the level we believe is closest to the mean. The dosage levels chosen for the tests form in effect a Markov chain, the result of the (n - l)~ observation v th alone influencing where the n. is made. Chapter I is devoted to the statement of the problem and a resume of Mood and Dixon's results. A stochastic approximation process of Robbins and Monro is briefly considered with reference to our problem. We consider in Chapter II the application of the Mood and Dixon method to rankits, where tolerance is supposed to be rectangularly distributed rather than normally. In Chapter III we introduce and study two alternative tech- niques of procedure, which atm -- similar to that of Mood and Dixon -- at concentrating testing near the mean. The first of these, called the "l-rule", takes into account at the nth observation all the previous observations on the level on which we made the nth trial. The total number of successes and failures on this level is used, together with the result of the nth observation in order to decide where the next trial is made. The other technique discussed here, the "3-rule", is similar to the "l-rule", but takes into account the results of all previous observations on any particular level, as well as of the observations on the two neigh- bouring levels, namely, the ones Just above and below it, in order to come to a decision where the next trial is made. The performances of the Mood and Dixon method, l-rule and 3- rule, are compared in small samples. The probability of taking the nth trial at a certain level can, in fact, be directly cal- culated when n is small for all the three above methods. vi Theoretically this is possible for any finite sample size, however large; but practically it is extremely laborious if n > 10. The asymptotic properties of the Mood and Dixon method and the 1- and 3-rules are investigated in Chapter IV. The actual asymptotic probability distribution, i.e., the exact stationary distribution for the Mood and Dixon method exists and has been ob tained for the following cases (1) Rankit Analysis (Chapter II) (2) A truncated normal population. For a comparison of the effi ciency of estimation by the various methods, only the asymptotic "proportions" of observations which fallon the various levels are relevant. These proportions are obtained exactly for the I-rule and a method for getting the lower bound for the efficiency of estimation by the 3-rule in certain cases is indicated. Methods of analyzing data obtained by the 1- and 3-rules in samples of moderate sizes are considered in Chapter V. Experimen tal work on samples of sizes 20 and 50 enables us to make a com parison between the various methods. A short summary of the re sults is given in this chapter. CHAPTER I. STATElI1ENT OF PROBLEM. The problem with which we are concerned is with reference to the estimation of the dose corresponding to the ED50 from a series of tests for quantaI responses. Essentially, we are dealing with the case when observations are taken on individuals rather than on groups of individuals. The question of how to allocate the avail able supply of test subjects to different doses in order to maxi mize the precision of the estimate has been discussed at consider able length in the literature. A technique has recently been pro posed by Mood and Dixon ~8_7 which can be used in certain situations as an alternative to the probit technique developed by Bliss and Fisher. This technique, known as the "up and down" method, was developed for explosive sensitivity experiments in the Explosive Research Laboratory at Bruceton, Pennsylvania. We study this technique in more detail and introduce and study two new techniques which might be applied in similar situations. In analyzing quantal responses we are often dealing with a continuous variable which cannot be measured in practice. As an example, to test the sensitivity of explosives to shock, it is found convenient to drop a weight on specimens of the same explo sive mixture from various heights. Depending on the particular specimen chosen and the height from which a constant weight is dropped, some of the specimens will detonate and some will not. 2 We assume that with every specimen of the explosive is associated a "critical height" and that the specimen will or will not detonate according as the weight is dropped on it from a greater or lesser height. We can, before an experiment, choose from previous infor mation, certain "levels" or heights from which we assume the weight to be dropped and we usually fix these levels throughout the experiment. We can now select some one or other of these levels and determine whether the critical height for a given speci men 1s less than or greater than the selected height. As is well-known, in true sensitivity experiments it is at most possible to make one observation on a given specimen. Once a weight has been dropped on a specimen, and no detonation occurs, this specimen cannot again be used, since it is materially altered. The explosive 1s packed. Even in other fields of research the same situation arises. In testing an insecticide and obtaining "all or none" data, a bona fide result cannot be obtained from a second test on the same insect in case it had survived the first test. The insect might have built up a resistance to the insecti cide or, on the other hand, it may have been weakened. MOOD AND DIXON'S METHOD We shall for illustrative purposes continue the example of explosives and indicate Mood and Dixon's method of analyzing the data. The sequential procedure used by Mood and Dixon is 3 as follows: After test heights or levels, which are usually uni formly spaced, have been chosen (a priori knowledge helps us fix these levels), a certain level is selected at random and the first specimen is tested at this level -- say, dropping a weight on a specimen of explosive mixture from a certain height. The second specimen is tested at the next higher or next lower level accord ing as the first specimen did not or did detonate. In general, a certain specimen is tested at the next higher or next lower level according as the previous one did not or did detonate. We record the sequence of detonations and non-detonations as below, x denoting a detonation and 0 a non-detonation. Typical se~uence of detonations (XIS) and non-detonations (O's) artificially obtained by using random sampling numbers. x x x x 0 x x 0 0 x x x o x x o 0 0 x x 0 o x 0 o 0 o We observe that the level at which we test a particular specimen depends only on the result of the specimen just prior to it and this, as will be d~scussed later, is an example of a simple Markov chain.