Sequential estimation of the size of a population

Abstract

When estimating the size of a finite population, it is possible to consider, as an alternative to the capture-recapture method, a sequential scheme. Suppose an urn contains an unknown number, N, balls, initially all white. A single ball is drawn at random and if it is white it is painted black and returned to the urn, while if it is black, indicating that it has already been sampled at least once before, it is returned unchanged. Thus initially nearly all drawings will be of white balls, but after a long time mostly black balls will appear. Somewhere in between we wish to stop sampling and produce an estimate of N. This scheme was first proposed by Goodman (1949, 1953). The most recent treatment of this problem is by Samuel (1968, 1969), who considered asymptotic distributions of sample sizes and maximum likelihood estimates for each of four stopping rules. The crucial question of the choice between these rules remained unanswered, however, since the balance between cost of sampling and risk due to inaccurate estimation was not considered. It is precisely this which is the aim of the present paper. A bibliography of previous, non-Bayesian, work is given by Samuel (1968). Since preparing the first draft of this paper, the author has seen an unpublished report by D. G. Hoel and W. E. Lever in which this problem is formulated in a Bayesian framework, and a small numerical solution given for a quadratic loss function, and with an upper limit on the value of N.