What does "Account for Missing Section-Add Probe for Missing Section" do?

The add probe for missing section option is a way of telling the software what to do when a section is missing. The information from a particular section is identified as missing. It is just as possible that the work has not been done. The software is unable to differentiate between a partially completed sterological study and missing data without formally stating that a section is missing.

The unbiased method of handling the situation is to apply the fractionator principle. This is valid as long as the missing section is a random event.

One alternative to the fractionator principle is to model. A model might assume that the value at the missing section is the mean of the values of the two neighboring sections. Modeling is biased. This means that the mean of the results is no longer guaranteed to be the correct answer.

Modeling is often justified by stating it is more representative of the data. That’s nice to say, but is it true? Modeling is rarely tested.

A good example of getting into trouble is to model the area of a missing section in a Cavalieri estimator by taking the mean of areas of the neighboring sections. Sounds simple and sounds good. In fact, this overestimates the area in all cases except when the object has the same cross section everywhere. That’s right. Unless the object is trivial, the answer is guaranteed to be wrong.

I don’t want to take the time to demonstrate it here. I suggest that some simple experimentation is tried to see that this is true.

The point is that simple glowing claims such as, “is a better representation,” must be proven mathematically. The math demonstrates that the fractionator principle is the proper method to use.

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