Binomial N Estimation. A Bayes Empirical Bayes Approach.

Abstract : A Bayes empirical Bayes approach to the problem of estimating N in the binomial distribution is presented. This provides a simple and flexible way of specifying prior information, and also allows a convenient representation of vague prior knowledge. In addition. it yields a solution to the interval estimation problem. The Bayes estimator corresponding to the relative squared error loss function and a vague prior distribution is shown to be stable, and to compare favorably with the estimators introduced by Olkin et al. (1981) and Carroll and Lombard (1985).