Question

What does it mean when a statistic is biased?

   What does it mean when a statistic is biased?

Fundamentals of Statistics

Fundamentals of Statistics

Michael Sullivan III 5th Edition

Chapter 3, Problem 5

Instant Answer

Solved by Expert Trent Speier

07/24/2021

Step 1

In statistics, a parameter is a quantity that defines certain characteristics of a population. For example, the variance is a parameter that measures how spread out the values in a population are. Show more…

Show all steps

lock

Thanks for your feedback!

What does it mean when a statistic is biased?

Play audio

Feedback

Powered by NumerAI

Trent Speier and 72 other subject Intro Stats / AP Statistics educators are ready to help you.

Ask a new question

Labs

Want to see this concept in action?

NEW

Explore this concept interactively to see how it behaves as you change inputs.

View Labs

Key Concepts

Statistical Bias

Statistical bias refers to the systematic deviation of a statistic's expected value from the true value of the parameter it is intended to estimate. This means that, due to factors such as imperfect sampling methods or measurement errors, the statistic consistently overestimates or underestimates the true parameter, leading to misleading inferences.

Unbiased Estimator

An unbiased estimator is a statistic whose expected value equals the true parameter value it estimates. In other words, if you were to repeat the estimation process many times, the average of the estimates would be equal to the true parameter, indicating that there is no systematic error in the estimation procedure.

Expected Value

The expected value is a fundamental concept in probability and statistics representing the average outcome of a random variable over numerous trials. It is used to assess whether an estimator is biased by comparing the expected value of the estimator with the true parameter value: if they differ, the estimator is biased.

Recommended Videos

Transcript

Ace is your personal tutor. It breaks down any question with clear steps so you can learn.

Start Using Ace

Continue solving this problem

Create a free account to:

View full step-by-step solution
Ask follow-up questions with Ace AI
Save progress and study later