variance of a scalar (PR#546)
I thought that might be the reason. There is no mention of using n-1 rather than n in the denominator on the help page. Perhaps that might be added?
Um. What professional statistics package uses n, then? Are you suggesting that there is serious room for doubt?
I remember that my Casio calculator (in statistics mode) had some way of setting the denominator to be n-1 or n so obviously someone at Casio decided to cover both options. I was always taught to use n-1 but I've been too lazy to work through the derivations and figure out why one is better than the other. I agree that a single sample cannot tell you anything about the variance which is a good enough reason to convince me to keep using n-1. - Tel -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._