Let's Say You Are Excavating a Site

question 6

Multiple Choice

Let's say you are excavating a site. You are being pretty careful, and are using 1/4" mesh screens to sieve the dirt after it is removed by a trowel and dustpan from the site. You find a few very small but well-preserved fish bones. The next day:

• A) you decide to stop using trowels and start using dental tools for the excavation; you are probably not recovering many fish bones because they are being inadvertently destroyed by troweling.
• B) you conclude that people in the past were not using minnows and you cease excavation.
• C) you fear that the 1/4" mesh of the screen may allow most of the very small fish bones to pass through; you decide to switch to 1/8" mesh, and maybe even screen a sample of dirt through 1/16" mesh to see if you are finding few bones because they are not present, or because the screening method is systematically losing them.
• D) you realize that fish were not being used prehistorically and decide that a single backhoe trench through the site will probably give you a sufficient amount of remains of other animals to permit you to test your hypothesis.

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Definitions:

Payoff Table

A tabular representation of the possible outcomes or payoffs in a decision-making problem, against various decisions under different states of nature.

State of Nature

In decision making and statistics, the actual but unknown condition affecting outcomes or probabilities.

Monetary Values

The value of an object, service, or resource expressed in terms of money or currency.

Opportunity Loss Table

A table used in decision analysis that quantifies the difference between the payoff from the best action and all other actions for each state of nature.