Talk:Truncated distribution

Merge proposal[edit]

Merging the two pages sounds good. Not sure how to accomplish it. The explanations in Truncation are clearer than mine in Truncated distribution.

MGriebe (talk) 18:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think keeping separate makes sense, as "truncated sample" has more to say (or should have) than just things about distributional aspects. Melcombe (talk) 16:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Truncation originates in an article by R. A. Fisher as a problem pertaining to observed distributions: Fisher, R. A. 1931. « The truncated normal distribution ». British Association for the Advancement of Science, Math. Tables, I : XXXIII-XXXIV. Censoring appears for the first time in an article by A. Hald which refers to the article by Fisher : Hald, A. 1949. « Maximum likelihood estimation of the parameters of a normal distribution which is truncated at a known point ». Skandinavisk Aktuarietidskrift 32 : 119-132. Hald introduces what would be known later as censoring, but only uses the word "censored". The earliest discussion I know of where truncation and censoring are used with reference to samples rather than to observed distributions are articles in Kendall's dictionary. I guess one way to deal with the issue would be to write somewhere just that (truncation and censoring were introduced in articles dealing with the relation between theoretical and observed distributions) and then go on adding that, in mathematical statistics, observed distributions are samples of values drawn from the (infinite) theoretical distribution of a variable whereas in survey statitics and for economists, other social scientists and maybe engineers as well, the word "sample" refers to a set of real statistical units (e.g. people, bulbs, etc.) drawn from a real (finite) population of statistical units. Strictly speaking, a "truncated sample" or a "censored sample" make sense only with the meaning mathematical statistics give to the word "sample". Maybe such a disambiguation could help merging the two pages and make the link with whatever is available on censoring.BenoitLaplante (talk) 03:15, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But truncated distribution sits along with other "distribution" articles which mostly all have a similar structure. Notionally, truncation (statistics) needs to be much wider than this, including for example, the effects on regression and on multivariate situations ... and it should probably contain some advice to watch out for inadvertant truncation. Melcombe (talk) 17:44, 30 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge template removed as no agreement/action since 2008 date of template. Melcombe (talk) 15:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support?[edit]

Is the support compact? The body of the text says the support is (a, b] but the info box on the right indicates the support is [a, b]. Which is it? If it is the latter, it might be helpful to explicitly use the term "compact support" somewhere in the body. I was interested in truncated distributions but didn't know what they were called, and I had a difficult time searching for them as I frequently used the search text "compact support"... Mickeyg13 (talk) 15:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Random truncation[edit]

It would be nice with some references to where this exact setup of random truncation occurs and is analyzed further.