THE HORVITZ-THOMPSON THEOREM AS A UNIFYING PERSPECTIVE FOR PROBABILITY-SAMPLING - WITH EXAMPLES FROM NATURAL-RESOURCE SAMPLING

Courses in sampling often lack a coherent structure because many relat ed sampling designs, estimators, variances, and variance estimators ar e presented as separate cases. The Horvitz-Thompson theorem offers a n eeded integrating perspective for teaching the methods and fundamental concepts of probability sampling. Development of basic concepts in sa mpling via this approach provides the student with tools to solve more complicated problems, and helps to avoid some common stumbling blocks of beginning students, Examples from natural resource sampling are pr ovided to illustrate applications and insight gained from this approac h.