2024 Volume 55 Issue 4 Pages 252-262
Taking into account the calculation procedures provided by Japan Environment Agency Notification No.63 of 1995, this study focuses on multiple odor index calculation procedures to elucidate the characteristics of the distribution properties of the odor index obtained according to these calculation procedures. Specifically, we present the distribution of an odor index obtained without considering the distribution of odor thresholds among people or accidental correct answers, along with the distribution of an odor index obtained by considering these factors using a probabilistic approach. Our findings reveal that the odor index calculated using individual thresholds, whether as trimmed mean or median, is more likely to be closer to the value obtained from the average olfactory sensitivity of panels, resulting in a unimodal distribution centered around this value. This probability decreases as the value diverges from this average. In contrast, the calculation procedure based on average correctness rates demonstrates a tendency for the probabilities of the odor index to be more widely dispersed than those procedures using trimmed mean or median.
