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Questions tagged [statistics]

Mathematical statistics is the study of statistics from a mathematical standpoint, using probability theory and other branches of mathematics such as linear algebra and analysis.

91 votes
4 answers
53k views

Intuition behind using complementary CDF to compute expectation for nonnegative random variables

I've read the proof for why $\int_0^\infty P(X >x)dx=E[X]$ for nonnegative random variables (located here) and understand its mechanics, but I'm having trouble understanding the intuition behind ...
bouma's user avatar
  • 1,135
1 vote
2 answers
773 views

Inclusion–exclusion principle; what is $(-1)^{n+1}$

could somebody kindly confirm that my understanding of inclusion-exclusion matches it's formula. for a 3 sets example; we add 3 unions, subtract the total of all 3 pairwise intersections and add the ...
ManOnTheMoon's user avatar
100 votes
7 answers
170k views

Density of sum of two independent uniform random variables on $[0,1]$

I am trying to understand an example from my textbook. Let's say $Z = X + Y$, where $X$ and $Y$ are independent uniform random variables with range $[0,1]$. Then the PDF is $$f(z) = \begin{cases} z &...
Zhulu's user avatar
  • 1,289
44 votes
2 answers
33k views

Proof of upper-tail inequality for standard normal distribution

$X \sim \mathcal{N}(0,1)$, then to show that for $x > 0$, $$ \mathbb{P}(X>x) \leq \frac{\exp(-x^2/2)}{x \sqrt{2 \pi}} \>. $$
user avatar
40 votes
6 answers
7k views

Motivation behind standard deviation?

Let's take the numbers 0-10. Their mean is 5, and the individual deviations from 5 are -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 And so the average (magnitude of) ...
BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft's user avatar
100 votes
11 answers
11k views

What's so special about standard deviation?

Equivalently, about variance? I realize it measures the spread of a distribution, but many other metrics could do the same (e.g., the average absolute deviation). What is its deeper significance? ...
aris's user avatar
  • 1,345
56 votes
6 answers
97k views

Showing that Y has a uniform distribution if Y=F(X) where F is the cdf of continuous X

Let $X$ be a random variable with a continuous and strictly increasing c.d.f. $F$ (so that the quantile function $F^{−1}$ is well-defined). Define a new random variable $Y$ by $Y = F(X)$. Show that $Y$ ...
user162381's user avatar
11 votes
6 answers
4k views

Recommend a statistics fundamentals book

To give you some background, I have a grasp on the basics of statistics and probability theory and even remember touching Bayes theorem at the university data mining course. But being a few years away ...
37 votes
5 answers
81k views

Proof of $\frac{(n-1)S^2}{\sigma^2} \sim \chi^2_{n-1}$

It's a standard result that given $X_1,\cdots ,X_n $ random sample from $N(\mu,\sigma^2)$, the random variable $$\frac{(n-1)S^2}{\sigma^2}$$ has a chi-square distribution with $(n-1)$ degrees of ...
Nana's user avatar
  • 8,419
28 votes
4 answers
36k views

Unbiased Estimator for a Uniform Variable Support

Let $ x_i $ be iid observations in a sample from a uniform distribution over $ \left[ 0, \theta \right] $. Now I need to estimate $ \theta $ based on $N$ observations and I want the estimator to be ...
Royi's user avatar
  • 8,974
112 votes
7 answers
197k views

Variance of sample variance?

What is the variance of the sample variance? In other words I am looking for $\mathrm{Var}(S^2)$. I have started by expanding out $\mathrm{Var}(S^2)$ into $E(S^4) - [E(S^2)]^2$ I know that $[E(S^2)]^...
MathMan's user avatar
  • 1,329
43 votes
7 answers
29k views

Intuitive Explanation of Bessel's Correction

When calculating a sample variance a factor of $N-1$ appears instead of $N$ (see this link ). Does anybody have an intuitive way of explaining this to students who need to use this fact but maybe ...
Boris's user avatar
  • 431
9 votes
1 answer
15k views

Finding UMVUE of $\theta$ when the underlying distribution is exponential distribution

Hi I'm solving some exercise problems in my text : "A Course in Mathematical Statistics". I'm in the chapter "Point estimation" now, and I want to find a UMVUE of $\theta$ where $X_1 ,...,X_n$ are i....
user88914's user avatar
  • 539
8 votes
3 answers
19k views

X,Y are independent exponentially distributed then what is the distribution of X/(X+Y)

Been crushing my head with this exercise. I know how to get the distribution of a ratio of exponential variables and of the sum of them, but i can't piece everything together. The exercise goes as ...
entourager's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
6k views

How do you differentiate the likelihood function for the uniform distribution in finding the M.L.E.?

There is a classic problem: Suppose that $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ form an i.i.d. sample from a uniform distribution on the interval $(0,\theta)$, where $\theta>0$ is unknown. I would like to find the MLE ...
user123276's user avatar
  • 3,465

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