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In statistics, sampling bias is a bias in which a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population have a lower or higher sampling probability than others. It results in a biased sample [1] of a population (or non-human factors) in which all individuals, or instances, were not equally likely to have been selected. [2]
which is an unbiased estimator of the variance of the mean in terms of the observed sample variance and known quantities. If the autocorrelations are identically zero, this expression reduces to the well-known result for the variance of the mean for independent data. The effect of the expectation operator in these expressions is that the ...
The sample mean, on the other hand, is an unbiased [5] estimator of the population mean μ. [3] Note that the usual definition of sample variance is = = (¯), and this is an unbiased estimator of the population variance.
Selection bias involves individuals being more likely to be selected for study than others, biasing the sample. This can also be termed selection effect, sampling bias and Berksonian bias. [3] Spectrum bias arises from evaluating diagnostic tests on biased patient samples, leading to an overestimate of the sensitivity and specificity of the ...
The resulting estimator is unbiased and is called the (corrected) sample variance or unbiased sample variance. If the mean is determined in some other way than from the same samples used to estimate the variance, then this bias does not arise, and the variance can safely be estimated as that of the samples about the (independently known) mean.
The sample mean ¯ (the arithmetic mean of a sample of values drawn from the population) makes a good estimator of the population mean, as its expected value is equal to the population mean (that is, it is an unbiased estimator). The sample mean is a random variable, not a constant, since its calculated value will randomly differ depending on ...
When only a sample of data from a population is available, the term standard deviation of the sample or sample standard deviation can refer to either the above-mentioned quantity as applied to those data, or to a modified quantity that is an unbiased estimate of the population standard deviation (the standard deviation of the entire population).
A probability sample is a sample in which every unit in the population has a chance (greater than zero) of being selected in the sample, and this probability can be accurately determined. The combination of these traits makes it possible to produce unbiased estimates of population totals, by weighting sampled units according to their ...