February 2007
Beginner to intermediate
464 pages
16h
English
The foundations of statistical decision theory were laid by Wald (1950) and Savage (1954). The theory was mainly concerned with problems within statistical inference, such as estimation and hypothesis testing, rather than with real-life decision problems. A standard formulation (Berger, 1985; Lehmann, 1986; French and Ríos Insua, 2000) is that θ denotes the unknown parameter (or "state of nature"). After observing a random vector X, which distribution is determined by θ, the decision-maker is to make a decision (take an action) denoted by d(X). Statistical decisions may be related to accepting or rejecting a hypothesis or to choosing a point estimate of θ. The consequences of different decisions are ...
Read now
Unlock full access