Introduction

Abstract

Cost-effective sampling methods are of major concern in statistics, especially when the measurement of the characteristic of interest is costly and/or time-consuming. In the early 1950’s, in seeking to effectively estimate the yield of pasture in Australia, McIntyre [96] proposed a sampling method which later became known as ranked set sampling (RSS). The notion of RSS provides an effective way to achieve observational economy under certain particular conditions. Although the method remained dormant for a long time, its value was rediscovered in the last 20 years or so because of its cost-effective nature. There is a surge of research interest of statisticians on RSS in recent years. There have been many new developments from the original idea of McIntyre, which made the method applicable in a much wider range of fields than originally intended. The theoretical foundation of RSS has been laid. Many variations and ramifications of the original idea have been proposed and studied. More and more applications of RSS have been cited in the literature. It is the purpose of this monograph to give a systematic account of the theory and application of RSS. In this introduction, we give a brief discussion on the notion of RSS and its applicability, a historical note on the development of RSS since it was proposed by McIntyre and, finally, an outline of the contents of the monograph.