3k views

### Population Variance vs Sample Variance [duplicate]

I'm particularly interested why N appears in the denominator for the formula of population variance, but (n-1) appears in the denominator for the sample variance, where N is the total number of ...
328 views

### The derivation of standard deviation [duplicate]

So, if there are $N$ data points in my sample space of any randomly distributed variable $X$. The standard deviation, $\sigma$, (from my understanding) is the root mean squared of the error (from the ...
126 views

### Intuition behind Besel's correction for an unbiased estimate of the variance [duplicate]

We have two estimators for samples dispersion: $\frac{1}{n}\sum_1^n (X_i - \overline{X_n})^2$ and $\frac{1}{n - 1}\sum_1^n (X_i - \overline{X_n})^2$. The second estimator unbiased - it has ...
122k views

### Intuitive explanation for dividing by $n-1$ when calculating standard deviation?

I was asked today in class why you divide the sum of square error by $n-1$ instead of with $n$, when calculating the standard deviation. I said I am not going to answer it in class (since I didn't ...
53k views

### Why is sample standard deviation a biased estimator of $\sigma$?

According to the Wikipedia article on unbiased estimation of standard deviation the sample SD $$s = \sqrt{\frac{1}{n-1} \sum_{i=1}^n (x_i - \overline{x})^2}$$ is a biased estimator of the SD of the ...
10k views

### Why is binomial variance calculated as $p(1-p) / (n -1)$?

I had to translate several given statistics equations into code, and I came across this formula: Variance of a simple random sample $= \frac{p(1-p)}{n-1}$ The sample in question are test letters ...
7k views

### What is the difference between Mean Squared Deviation and Variance?

I am doing some tutoring for an AS-Level maths student and unfortunately for me they are doing statistics. This is not my strong point, mainly from the point of view of remembering all of the ...
7k views

### why sample variance has has n-1 in the denominator? [duplicate]

Sample variance is calculated according to: $s^2=\frac{\sum{(x-\bar{x})^2}}{n-1}$ Population variance is calculated according to: $\sigma^2=\frac{\sum{(x-\mu)^2}}{n}$ Why denominator for sample ...
855 views

### Cramer-Rao Lower Bound

Let $X_1,..,X_n$ be an iid sample of $N(0,\sigma^2)$. Find an unbiased estimator of $\sigma^2$ and its lower bound. I found that $$\hat{\sigma}^2 = \sum_{i=1}^{n} X_i^2$$ is an unbiased estimator ...
558 views

### wrong variance shown in R

when i am trying to find a variance of a sample (10,20,30) in R with below command var(c(10,20,30)) it's showing 100. I believe it should be 66.66667
I found this equation here to calculate a covariance matrix of any number of variables using matrix algebra. $$\frac1{N} (X - 1\bar{x})^T(X - 1\bar{x}^T)$$ For a given matrix $X$ with $N$ samples. ...
The r.v. $X$ represents the time taken by a computer in company $1$ in order to perform a certain job, and $Y$ represents the same thing but for company $2$. A sample of $n_X = 12$ computers are taken ...