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Estimation (or estimating) is the process of finding an estimate or approximation, which is a value that is usable for some purpose even if input data may be incomplete, uncertain, or unstable. The value is nonetheless usable because it is derived from the best information available. [ 1 ]
In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule (the estimator), the quantity of interest (the estimand) and its result (the estimate) are distinguished. [1] For example, the sample mean is a commonly used estimator of the population mean. There are point and interval ...
Sample sizes may be evaluated by the quality of the resulting estimates, as follows. It is usually determined on the basis of the cost, time or convenience of data collection and the need for sufficient statistical power. For example, if a proportion is being estimated, one may wish to have the 95% confidence interval be
In statistics, the method of estimating equations is a way of specifying how the parameters of a statistical model should be estimated.This can be thought of as a generalisation of many classical methods—the method of moments, least squares, and maximum likelihood—as well as some recent methods like M-estimators.
This property is often exploited in a wide variety of applications, including general problems of statistical estimation and machine learning, to estimate (probabilistic) quantities of interest via Monte Carlo methods, since most quantities of interest can be written in terms of expectation, e.g. = [], where is the indicator function of ...
The theory of median-unbiased estimators was revived by George W. Brown in 1947: [8]. An estimate of a one-dimensional parameter θ will be said to be median-unbiased, if, for fixed θ, the median of the distribution of the estimate is at the value θ; i.e., the estimate underestimates just as often as it overestimates.
An example is Enrico Fermi's estimate of the strength of the atomic bomb that detonated at the Trinity test, based on the distance traveled by pieces of paper he dropped from his hand during the blast. Fermi's estimate of 10 kilotons of TNT was well within an order of magnitude of the now-accepted value of 21 kilotons. [1] [2] [3]
Point estimation can be contrasted with interval estimation: such interval estimates are typically either confidence intervals, in the case of frequentist inference, or credible intervals, in the case of Bayesian inference. More generally, a point estimator can be contrasted with a set estimator. Examples are given by confidence sets or ...