Snedecor

Snedecor was a statistician that helped lay out the design of many experiments through his book on the subject. Many references to his 1902 book can be found in the stereological literature. His work saw a recent rejuvenation when one of his formulas was inappropriately used to compute the coefficient of error. Some of Snedecor's work was mentioned in a book by Scheaffer et al. This work is based on the notion that the samples are independent, which is clearly not the case.

One of the earliest formulas for the coefficient of error was the binomial distribution formula which was suggested for use in point counting. The geologists and later other scientists realized the inadequacy of the formula for their work. The same was true of the Snedecor formula. In both cases, the problem was linked to the lack of independence between samples. The solutions offered to counter this problem was to take samples far enough away to avoid problems. The same can be seen in Rosiwal's work where it is recommended that no two traversal lines cross the same crystal. One of the early studies that realized that the Snedecor formula was not appropriate studied sugar beets in agriculture.

The problem had been identified by hundreds of researchers across the globe. A solution to the problem was eventually worked out by reexamining the problem from the position of developing a method to calculate the coefficient of error when the samples were known to be related to each other. The pioneering work was done by Matheron. He started with the assumption that the samples were taken in a systematic manner and used this to determine a formula for the measure of dispersion.

For unknown reasons an old formula that was not applicable was resurrected. The lessons of hundreds of researchers from many different scientific fields from metallurgy, to geology, to biology was forgotten. Their incite into the cause of the problem and the success of Matheron to develop a formula which was applicable to systematic sampling was overlooked.

Fortunately, the resurrection of this old and inapplicable method appears to have been just a brief stumble in the advancement of stereological research.

The best means of estimating the coefficient of error today is the extension of the Matheron technique. This technique has been extended to point counting and to counting of objects. Important research continues to be done by Garcia-Finana, Cruz-Orive, Gundersen, and Baddeley.