An Elimination Type Two-Stage Selection Procedure for Gamma Populations

The problem of selecting the gamma population with the largest mean out of k gamma populations, each of which has the same shape parameter is considered. An elimination type two-stage procedure is proposed which guarantees the same probability requirement using the indifference-zone approach as does the single-stage procedure of Gibbons, Olkin and Sobel (1977). The two-stage procedure has the highly desirable property that the expected total number of observations required by the procedure is always less than that of the corresponding single-stage procedure regardless of the configuration of the population parameters.