Textbook Quotations
Posted by Nicole Sharp on 29 June 2005 at 16:23Every once in awhile textbooks manage to be amusing, but this is the first time I've seen a topic as dry as numeric methods manage to be amusing... or perhaps this is an indication of the sort of day I've had...
"There is a long story about why the denominator of [the varience equation] is N ? 1 instead of N. If you have never heard that story, you may consult any good statistics text. Here we will be content to note that the N ? 1 should be changed to N if you are ever in the situation of measuring the variance of a distribution whose mean is known a priori rather than being estimated from the data. (We might also comment that if the difference between N and N ? 1 ever matters to you, then you are probably up to no good anyway — e.g., trying to substantiate a questionable hypothesis with marginal data.) (emphasis in original)
jms18 said
On 06 December 2005 at 21:18test comment on old entry