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3. Type of average to be used.
4. Choice of Index:
5. Selection of base period.
6. Selection of commodities.
7. Selection of source of data.
8. Collection of data.
NOTATIONS USED FOR INDEX NUMBERS
Since index numbers are computed for prices, quantities, and values, these are denoted by the
lower case letters:
p,q and v represent respectively the price,the quantity,and the value of an
individual commodity
Subscripts 0, 1, 2,… i, ... are attached to these lower case letters to distinguish price, quantity,
or value in any one period from those in the other. Thus,
P
0=denotes the price of a commodity in the base period,
P
1=denotes the price a commodity in period 1,or the current period,and
P
i=denotes the price a commodity in the i
th
period,where i=1,2,3,……..
Similar meanings are assigned to q0, q1, ... qi, ... and v0, v1, … vi, …
Capital letters P, Q and V are used to represent the price, quantity, and value index numbers,
respectively. Subscripts attached to P, Q, and V indicates the years compared. Thus,
P
01=means the price index for period 1 relative to period 0,
P
02=means the price index for period 2 relative to period 0,
P
12=means the price index for period 2 relative to period 1,and so on
Similar meanings are assigned to quantity Q and value V indices. It may be noted that all
indices are expressed in percent with 100 as the index for the base period, the period with
which comparison is to be made.
SIMPLE INDEX NUMBERS
A simple price index number is based on the price or quantity of a single commodity. To
construct a simple index, we first have to decide on the base period and then find ratio of the