Applied Mathematics Commons^™

Estimation Of Growth Curves By Least Square Splines, Dorothy Rybaczyk Pathak

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

The primary object of this dissertation is to present some con­tributions to the theory of estimation of growth curves by least square splines in the presence of unknown unequal variances. The theoretical developments rest heavily on the standard least square theory and the theory of polynomial spline functions. A modifica­tion of the Aitken procedure of weighted least squares is used to estimate regression parameters. It is shown that this modification of the Aitken procedure does not unduly influence the nice least square properties of estimators so obtained; the estimators re­ main unbiased, consistent and asymptotically efficient.

The techniques developed in …