TEST, vol.14, no.1, pp.129-150, 2005 (SCI-Expanded)
Estimation and hypothesis testing based on normal samples censored in the middle are developed and shown to be remarkably efficient and robust to symmetric short-tailed distributions and to inliers in a sample. This negates the perception that sample mean and variance are the best robust estimators in such situations (Tiku, 1980; Dunnett, 1982).