If an expected value of an estimator is not equal to its parametric function to be estimated is said to be:
1 point
Unbiased estimator
Biased estimator
Consistent estimator
Efficient estimator
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Step-by-step explanation:
Bias of an estimator
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This article is about bias of statistical estimators. For other uses in statistics, see Bias (statistics). For other uses of the word Bias, see Bias (disambiguation).
In statistics, the bias (or bias function) of an estimator is the difference between this estimator's expected value and the true value of the parameter being estimated. An estimator or decision rule with zero bias is called unbiased. In statistics, "bias" is an objective property of an estimator. Bias can also be measured with respect to the median, rather than the mean (expected value), in which case one distinguishes median-unbiased from the usual mean-unbiasedness property. Bias is a distinct concept from consistency. Consistent estimators converge in probability to the true value of the parameter, but may be biased or unbiased; see bias versus consistency for more.
All else being equal, an unbiased estimator is preferable to a biased estimator, although in practice, biased estimators (with generally small bias) are frequently used. When a biased estimator is used, bounds of the bias are calculated. A biased estimator may be used for various reasons: because an unbiased estimator does not exist without further assumptions about a population; because an estimator is difficult to compute (as in unbiased estimation of standard deviation); because an estimator is median-unbiased but not mean-unbiased (or the reverse); because a biased estimator gives a lower value of some loss function (particularly mean squared error) compared with unbiased estimators (notably in shrinkage estimators); or because in some cases being unbiased is too strong a condition, and the only unbiased estimators are not useful.
Further, mean-unbiasedness is not preserved under non-linear transformations, though median-unbiasedness is (see § Effect of transformations); for example, the sample variance is a biased estimator for the population variance. These are all illustrated below.