In some sampling situations, the survey can result in an estimate of zero when it is known that the parameter being estimated is close to, but not equal to, zero. Examples include searching for rare animals or plants where the species is known to exist but all sample units failed to detect any activity. One way to deal with this is to ignore these zero estimates. Here we propose an estimator for sampling where we know the parameter of interest is not zero. Our proposed non-zero estimator will improve estimation and it can be more efficient than conventional estimators.

中文翻译：

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具有许多零值的有限总体估计的替代方法

在某些采样情况下，当已知被估计的参数接近但不等于零时，调查可以得出零的估计。例如，搜索已知存在该物种但所有样本单位均未检测到任何活性的稀有动物或植物。解决此问题的一种方法是忽略这些零估计。在这里，我们提出了一个采样估计器，其中我们知道感兴趣的参数不为零。我们提出的非零估算器将改进估算，并且比常规估算器更有效。