Sampling consists of selection, acquisition, and quantification of a
part of the population. While selection and acquisition apply to
physical sampling units of the population, quantification pertains only
to the variable of interest, which is a particular characteristic of the
sampling units. A sampling procedure is expected to provide a sample
that is representative with respect to some specified criteria.
Composite sampling, under idealized conditions, incurs no loss of
information for estimating the population means. But an important
limitation to the method has been the loss of information on individual
sample values, such as, the extremely large value. In many of the
situations where individual sample values are of interest or concern,
composite sampling methods can be suitably modified to retrieve the
information on individual sample values that may be lost due to
compositing. This book presents statistical solutions to issues that
arise in the context of applications of composite sampling.