Advances in Distribution Theory, Order Statistics, and Inference

Abstract

The term Order Statistics was introduced only in 1942, by Wilks. However,the subject is much older, astronomers having long been interestedin estimates of location beyond the sample mean. By early in thenineteenth century measures considered included the median, symmetricallytrimmed means, the midrange, and related functions of order statistics.In 1818, Laplace obtained (essentially) the distribution of the rth-orderstatistic in random samples and also derived a condition on the parentdensity under which the median is asymptotically more efficient thanthe mean. Other topics considered are of more recent origin: extreme-valuetheory and the estimation of location and scale parameters by orderstatistics.