A Bayesian Model for Estimation of Population Proportions
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2011
Authors
Okafor, R.O
Mbata, U.A
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In recent times and even up to now, traffic congestion and parking difficulties,
especially during morning and evening rush hours, have become a major concern to
members of the University of Lagos (UNILAG) community and visitors alike.
UNILAG has witnessed unprecedented growth in student's enrolment, in the last
ten years or so culminating in the current total enrolment of more than thirty-five
thousand students, of which about twenty-five thousand are undergraduates. In
order to study the worrisome traffic situation at UNILAG in the wake of these large
numbers, independent, though similar, sample surveys of undergraduate students of
the eight faculties on the main campus of UNILAG were conducted in 2007. The
purpose of the surveys was to collect data on undergraduate students who owned or
used motor vehicles on campus. Furthermore, to investigate possible temporal
trends, .the' surveys were repeated in 2009. The types of data obtained from the
surveys provided veritable impetus for the application of Empirical Bayes (EB)
analysis to estimate the proportions of students of individual faculties who used
motor vehicles on campus roads during the periods under reference. The EB
technique, being a Bayesian method, combines prior information and sample
information in a manner that "shrinks" an EB estimator towards the sample
estimator if a vague prior (proper prior with a large variance) is used. The main
result from this research is that in 2007 about one in four students used motor
vehicles, and this result held almost across the eight faculties. Although results of
the 2009 surveys were generally similar there were faculties that recorded some
reduction in the estimated proportions of students who used motor vehicles.
Description
Keywords
Estimation , Empirical Bayes , Faculties at Main Campus , Proportions using Vehicles , Sample Surveys , Traffic Congestion , Undergraduates , UNILAG , Use of Motor Vehicles
Citation
Being a paper presented at JSM 2011 held at the Convention Centre, Miami Beach, Florida, USA