Principles of Optimal Sequential Planning

摘要

A concept of sequential planning is presented as extension and generalization of "pure" sequential procedures. According to it, observations are collected in groups of variable sizes. The article discusses optimality of sequential plans in terms of a suitable risk function that balances an observation cost and a group cost. It is shown that only non-randomized sequential plans based on a sufficient statistic need to be considered in order to achieve optimality. Performance of several classes of plans is evaluated.