2 = (b - a)2 / 6
Modern Wild Faunal Resource System Management
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One example of a decision to be made affecting costs, labor, expectations of clients, etc. is that of how long will a project take? With a giant data base, you can get an average, etc. but wildlife projects are unique and the costs of such data bases are high and the use rate low. Beta estimates may be helpful.
The first nuclear submarine was built in less time than expected due to improved decisions about time of delivery of and subproject completions. Others in many field have found the technique useful.
Experts (at least the most knowledgeable people available) answer:
The Beta estimate is a modal value and is
Z = (A + 4B + C ) / 6
For example, where A is 60 days, C is 120 days, and B is 80 days, then
Z = (60 + 4(80) + 120) / 6 = 83
A rational manager will use 83 for budgeting, scheduling, and other estimates.
The "weighting value" of 4 has not been studied for wild animal or ecological systems but more use of the procedure may stimulate such study and improvements in the technique. (Engineers have developed estimates of the variance in work with beta.)
The variance of the estimate is
2 = (b - a)2 / 6
and answers are given as 10 plus or minus 2 where 2 may be the square root of 2
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Last revision September 7, 2002.