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variance of a scalar (PR#546)

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

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In-Reply-To: <200005190904.KAA22592@toucan.stats.ox.ac.uk>; from ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk on Fri, May 19, 2000 at 10:04:09AM +0100