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In statistics and in particular statistical theory, unbiased estimation of a standard deviation is the calculation from a statistical sample of an estimated value of the standard deviation (a measure of statistical dispersion) of a population of values, in such a way that the expected value of the calculation equals the true value.
An estimator or decision rule with zero bias is called unbiased. In statistics, "bias" is an objective property of an estimator. Bias is a distinct concept from consistency: consistent estimators converge in probability to the true value of the parameter, but may be biased or unbiased (see bias versus consistency for more).
This correction is so common that the term "sample variance" and "sample standard deviation" are frequently used to mean the corrected estimators (unbiased sample variation, less biased sample standard deviation), using n − 1. However caution is needed: some calculators and software packages may provide for both or only the more unusual ...
where N is the population size, n is the sample size, m x is the mean of the x variate and s x 2 and s y 2 are the sample variances of the x and y variates respectively. These versions differ only in the factor in the denominator (N - 1). For a large N the difference is negligible. If x and y are unitless counts with Poisson distribution a ...
Two or more statistical models may be compared using their MSEs—as a measure of how well they explain a given set of observations: An unbiased estimator (estimated from a statistical model) with the smallest variance among all unbiased estimators is the best unbiased estimator or MVUE (Minimum-Variance Unbiased Estimator).
Given an r-sample statistic, one can create an n-sample statistic by something similar to bootstrapping (taking the average of the statistic over all subsamples of size r). This procedure is known to have certain good properties and the result is a U-statistic. The sample mean and sample variance are of this form, for r = 1 and r = 2.
For example, from the same random sample we have E(x̄) = μ (mean) and E(s 2) = σ 2 (variance), then x̄ and s 2 would be unbiased estimators for μ and σ 2. The difference E[T ] − θ is called the bias of T ; if this difference is nonzero, then T is called biased.
Statistical bias, in the mathematical field of statistics, is a systematic tendency in which the methods used to gather data and generate statistics present an inaccurate, skewed or biased depiction of reality. Statistical bias exists in numerous stages of the data collection and analysis process, including: the source of the data, the methods ...