The impact of testing errors on value of information: A quality-control example

In this article, we extend recent work on the inferential impact of errors in data to a decision-making setting. In the context of a simple quality-control example, we illustrate how errors can cause substantial reductions in the value of information from a sample and how uncertainty about error rates can lead to yet further reductions in EVSI. Moreover, we extend the notion of an equivalent error-free sample size (which indicates the reduction in effective sample size due to errors) from an inferential framework to a decision-making framework and find that as uncertainty about error-rate parameters increases, reductions in effective sample size are even greater for a decision maker than the inferential measures suggest. © 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Duke Scholars

Author Robert L. Winkler Fuqua School of Business