help-octave
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: var(1) = 0 ??


From: Muhali
Subject: Re: var(1) = 0 ??
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:05:57 -0800 (PST)

> why would you expect a different result?

this is where it is getting philosophical, or Bayesian, if you want. If you
pick one number out of an unknown population, we just don't know whether
there is variance in the population or not. There is no best estimate for
the variance; 0 is just as good as any other. So I would very much prefer a
result of NaN, but it is mostly convention as I said.

At least the help text, which has (n-1) in the denominator, should be
adjusted accordingly.

M.


--
View this message in context: 
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/var-1-0-tp4334677p4335089.html
Sent from the Octave - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]