Title: Estimating the rate of defects under imperfect sampling inspection - a new approach,
Abstract: We consider the problem of estimating the the rate of defects (mean number of
defects per item), given counts of defects detected by two independent
imperfect inspectors on a sample of items. In contrast with the well-known
method of Capture-Recapture, here we {\it{do not}} have information regarding
the number of defects jointly detected by {\it{both}} inspectors. We solve this
problem by constructing two types of estimators - a simple moment-type
estimator, and a more complicated maximum-likelihood estimator. The performance
of these estimators is studied analytically and by means of simulations. It is
shown that the maximum-likelihood estimator is superior to the moment-type
estimator. A systematic comparison with the Capture-Recapture method is also
made.