Taylor Series Methods

Abstract

In sample surveys of both simple and complex designs, it is often desirable or necessary to employ estimators that are nonlinear in the observations. Ratios, differences of ratios, correlation coefficients, regression coefficients, and poststratified means are common examples of such estimators. Exact expressions for the sampling variances of nonlinear estimators are not usually available and, moreover, neither are simple, unbiased estimators of the variance.