"Extreme-Value" Methods Simplified

New methods have been devised for fitting skewed statistical distributions that conform to a double exponential model. Such distributions characterize a large class of phenomena of interest to agricultural economists. Distributions of data involving rainfall, temperature, crop yields, crop-hail losses, and others follow this pattern,. The new technique, under the name of the theory of extreme values, makes use of graphics and is much less complex and time-consuming than older methods. But most of the available literature is highly mathematical and not easily understood. This paper presents a nonmathematical explanation for the working agricultural economist.