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Correction factor versus sample size n.. When the random variable is normally distributed, a minor correction exists to eliminate the bias.To derive the correction, note that for normally distributed X, Cochran's theorem implies that () / has a chi square distribution with degrees of freedom and thus its square root, / has a chi distribution with degrees of freedom.
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 ...
This is known as Bessel's correction. [2] [3] Roughly, the reason for it is that the formula for the sample variance relies on computing differences of observations from the sample mean, and the sample mean itself was constructed to be as close as possible to the observations, so just dividing by n would underestimate the variability.
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.
Pearson's correlation coefficient is the covariance of the two variables divided by the product of their standard deviations. The form of the definition involves a "product moment", that is, the mean (the first moment about the origin) of the product of the mean-adjusted random variables; hence the modifier product-moment in the name.
This approximate formula is for moderate to large sample sizes; the reference gives the exact formulas for any sample size, and can be applied to heavily autocorrelated time series like Wall Street stock quotes. Moreover, this formula works for positive and negative ρ alike. [12] See also unbiased estimation of standard deviation for more ...
This algorithm can easily be adapted to compute the variance of a finite population: simply divide by n instead of n − 1 on the last line.. Because SumSq and (Sum×Sum)/n can be very similar numbers, cancellation can lead to the precision of the result to be much less than the inherent precision of the floating-point arithmetic used to perform the computation.
The Šidák correction is derived by assuming that the individual tests are independent. Let the significance threshold for each test be α 1 {\displaystyle \alpha _{1}} ; then the probability that at least one of the tests is significant under this threshold is (1 - the probability that none of them are significant).