Comparison of Circular Error Probable Estimators for Small Samples

摘要

Several previous studies investigated the performance of competing circular errorprobable (CEP) estimators for small samples. This estimation is important in ICBM analysis because, due to expense, there are a limited number of ICBM test launches. In the most recent previous study (1993), Tongue considered five CEP estimators in a simulation test, attempting to determine the behavior of these estimators for populations of various bias, ellipticity, correlation, and sample size. In this paper, we build on Tongue's findings in three ways: (1) The number of estimators compared is expanded to eight. (2) Different factors and factor levels are used. (3) In addition to analyzing simulated samples based on the population parameters used to create them, we sort the entire set of samples generated into subsets (sample analysis sets) based strictly on their sample statistics. Analysis conducted on these sample analysis sets models the real life situation of estimating CEP, given a small sample from an unknown population, using only sample statistics.