Improvement by Planned Multistage Selection
本文概述了多阶段选择问题及过去40年的应用实例，讨论了作物品种、动物育种、化合物筛选和人类群体中的最优选择策略，并聚焦于统计公式与分析在应用中的关系。
Abstract An outline of the problem of multistage selection is given, followed by examples of applications during the past 40 years. Optimal policies for successive selections among strains of crop plants are discussed. Animal breeding has analogous problems. The screening of chemical compounds for therapeutic uses has different features, notably in the formulation of a cost structure. The problems of selection from human populations are mentioned—those not selected now cannot be discarded. In this article I concentrate on the relation of the statistical formulation and analysis to the applications. Much has been done, and much remains to be done, in mathematical theory and computation.