An inexpensive quick chromatographic method for determining the excretion rate (mg/24hr) of a certain steroid metabolite in urine has been developed. It is hoped that this method may in the future replace the long and costly, though accurate, bioassay technique currently used. The considerable past experience of such bioassays has shown that the excretion rates analysed are approximately normally distributed with mean 2 mg/24hr and standard deviation 0.5 mg/24hr. To explore the possibilities of the method, aliquots from a number of urine samples are available. The experimenter has made bioassay determinations on one aliquot from each urine sample and selected a subset which he felt gave adequate coverage of the range of excretion rates.

Three other aliquots from each urine sample of this subset were then assigned to the chromatographic method and the results are tabled below.