Tim,

Well stated again....but here is the rest of the story from my little part of the world.  Again I use my scale to validate the relative differences between the many replications that are obviously very important to have a confidence level that is usable for selecting hybrids within their line up.  If I see those same differences on my farm with my calibrated semi scale then I have more confidence to use the "companies" data for relative hybrid yield advantage selection, within their product line, that I do not have in my field.  That would go for any hybrid company by the way.

I have a good friend that is a Pioneer dealer and I can tell you if he starts telling me that Pioneer is using yield monitors to have more replications instead of weigh wagons then that will shake my confidence in their replicated yield comparisons and probably render them useless for me.  Hopefully that has not happened yet?  Perhaps a statistician can chime in here but we have to make a distinction between Geo-Spatial statistics and regular statistics but that gets heady real quick and I am no statistician let alone a Geo-Spatial statistician.  All I can do is work with my commen sense experience and if academic work, be it Geo-Spatial or not, jibes with that then it needs to be seriously looked at and most likely implemented on the farm.

Have you ever compared Gross1 against Gross2 and Tare1 against Tare2?  Gross1 minus Tare2 = what?  And Gross2 minus Tare1 = what?  NOW a true Net1 and a true Net2 will be very close and we use that all the time when buying and selling product to check out the vendor but you can not mix the gross and tares and expect good results.  WHY?  Too many variables.  That is what happens when you use yield monitors for hybrid selection UNLESS they are post calibrated against actual weights.

By the way did this table info come from marketing or research?  The two camps might use it differently?

Getting back to your posted table the 200 location line does show that a 12 bushel delta has a higher percentage of confidence than a 3 bushel delta SO....relatively speaking 12 bushel is more toward the "blatant" side of the scale than 3 bushel is so for now I will have to stick with my "blatant" comments.  Everyone has to decide where their spot is on the "deminishing returns" continuum and all I can do in my next 15 to 20 years of harvest replications is reduce as many variables as possible.  My experience with yield data and scale data skews my views and that may not work for a lot of people but it seems to work for me.

So again Tim those are my experiences and examples that you asked me to state, but they may not have enough replications to stand everywhere but I do not farm everywhere either.

Thanks for your time sir.

Arnie