Operational measures of central tendency

The shifting operator provides new formulas for estimating the center of data obtained by repeated attempts to measure a response. The data are sorted by magnitude and the estimates are based on polynomial- and exponential-type formulas. The estimators are easy to apply. On known examples they can be more accurate than the mean and the median. They permit differentiation of the center point estimate with respect to any datum. A test is described for assigning the parameters S, T, and W in operational, polynomial equations for the nine-point cube.