A Note on an Indirect Method for Estimating the Number of Small Particles in a Blood Sample
Ch. E. Minder · Biometrics · 1980
Consider the following method for counting small particles in blood samples. A small volume of blood is processed in a counter so as to estimate the number vw of white blood cells per mm3; an estimate nw, which is usually quite precise (coefficient of variation about 2%), is obtained. In order to find an estimator ns of the number of small particles per mm3 of blood, a thin smear is examined under a microscope: in a set of subdivisions of a grid, the number w of white blood cells and the number s of small particles are counted. The ratio r= s/w of the two counts is then used to estimate the number vs of small particles per mm3 by employing the formula