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Abstract
Although many statistical surveys and experimental studies have been and are being conducted
for many segments of the economy, including agriculture, standard errors are seldom
computed. Estimates of these errors are frequently needed to evaluate survey results and for
the planning of future studies. The computation of standard errors is frequently omitted
because of the time-consuming procedures required. The use of rank, or order, methods of
analysis has increased rapidly in the last few years. These methods provide the analyst with
a quick, effective, and inexpensive tool for making many statistical estimates. In this paper,
the use of order statistics to estimate standard deviations for certain agricultural series is
described and the results are compared with those obtained by the root mean square method.