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For example, the family of normal distributions has two parameters, the mean and the variance: if those are specified, the distribution is known exactly. The family of chi-squared distributions can be indexed by the number of degrees of freedom : the number of degrees of freedom is a parameter for the distributions, and so the family is thereby ...
Parametric statistics is a branch of statistics which leverages models based on a fixed (finite) set of parameters. [1] Conversely nonparametric statistics does not assume explicit (finite-parametric) mathematical forms for distributions when modeling data. However, it may make some assumptions about that distribution, such as continuity or ...
Statistical purposes include estimating a population parameter, describing a sample, or evaluating a hypothesis. The average (or mean) of sample values is a statistic. The term statistic is used both for the function (e.g., a calculation method of the average) and for the value of the function on a given sample (e.g., the result of the average ...
In computer programming, two notions of parameter are commonly used, and are referred to as parameters and arguments—or more formally as a formal parameter and an actual parameter. For example, in the definition of a function such as y = f(x) = x + 2, x is the formal parameter (the parameter) of the defined function.
The Beta distribution on [0,1], a family of two-parameter distributions with one mode, of which the uniform distribution is a special case, and which is useful in estimating success probabilities. The four-parameter Beta distribution, a straight-forward generalization of the Beta distribution to arbitrary bounded intervals [,].
Typically, there are as many functions as there are parameters. For example, for a Gaussian distribution with unknown mean and variance, the jointly sufficient statistic, from which maximum likelihood estimates of both parameters can be estimated, consists of two functions, the sum of all data points and the sum of all squared data points (or ...
Estimation theory is a branch of statistics that deals with estimating the values of parameters based on measured empirical data that has a random component. The parameters describe an underlying physical setting in such a way that their value affects the distribution of the measured data.
Greek letters (e.g. θ, β) are commonly used to denote unknown parameters (population parameters). [3]A tilde (~) denotes "has the probability distribution of". Placing a hat, or caret (also known as a circumflex), over a true parameter denotes an estimator of it, e.g., ^ is an estimator for .