Kinds of Bootstraps and Kinds of Jackknives, Discussed in Terms of a Year of Weather-Related Data.

Resampling methods - - are in the process of becoming popular ways of assessing the standard error appropriate to some number chosen to distill, perhaps in a rather complex way, from data. An ever-present danger is that resampling will come to be thought of as a cure-all. The most that can reasonably be hoped for is that questions that do not arise in connection with the simplest distillates - - arithmetic means of samples - - need not be considered in connection with resampling applied to the results of more complicated calculations. This means that, in particular, a needs for the use of robustresistant techniques in the distillation process, and b needs to consider the question of the proper error term are in no way automatically addressed by the use of jackknife or bootstrap. Robustresistant techniques, if required, must be built into calculation of the final distillate from the observations, before that distillate is jackknifed or bootstrapped. A year of weather-related data offers a good platform for careful discussion.