The concept of ranked set sampling was first introduced by McIntyre (1952) as a process of improving the precision of the sample mean as an estimator of the population mean. This is applicable whenever ranking of a set of sampling units can be done easily by a judgement method see, Chen et al. (2004). Ranking by judgement method is not recommendable if the judgement method is not mathematically...

The practice of handmade silk weaving has disappeared from much of the world, but continues to be practiced by thousands of people in Northeastern Thailand. However, as the Thai economy becomes increasingly embedded into global flows and networks of commodities, capital and culture, there are worries that silk weaving as a practice will either cease to be reproduced or will have to radically ch...