Accuracy and precisionAccuracy and precision are two measures of observational error. Accuracy is how close a given set of measurements (observations or readings) are to their true value, while precision is how close the measurements are to each other. In other words, precision is a description of random errors, a measure of statistical variability. Accuracy has two definitions: More commonly, it is a description of only systematic errors, a measure of statistical bias of a given measure of central tendency; low accuracy causes a difference between a result and a true value; ISO calls this trueness.
Sample mean and covarianceThe sample mean (sample average) or empirical mean (empirical average), and the sample covariance or empirical covariance are statistics computed from a sample of data on one or more random variables. The sample mean is the average value (or mean value) of a sample of numbers taken from a larger population of numbers, where "population" indicates not number of people but the entirety of relevant data, whether collected or not. A sample of 40 companies' sales from the Fortune 500 might be used for convenience instead of looking at the population, all 500 companies' sales.
Exponential distributionIn probability theory and statistics, the exponential distribution or negative exponential distribution is the probability distribution of the time between events in a Poisson point process, i.e., a process in which events occur continuously and independently at a constant average rate. It is a particular case of the gamma distribution. It is the continuous analogue of the geometric distribution, and it has the key property of being memoryless. In addition to being used for the analysis of Poisson point processes it is found in various other contexts.
Linear regressionIn statistics, linear regression is a linear approach for modelling the relationship between a scalar response and one or more explanatory variables (also known as dependent and independent variables). The case of one explanatory variable is called simple linear regression; for more than one, the process is called multiple linear regression. This term is distinct from multivariate linear regression, where multiple correlated dependent variables are predicted, rather than a single scalar variable.
Probability distributionIn probability theory and statistics, a probability distribution is the mathematical function that gives the probabilities of occurrence of different possible outcomes for an experiment. It is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon in terms of its sample space and the probabilities of events (subsets of the sample space). For instance, if X is used to denote the outcome of a coin toss ("the experiment"), then the probability distribution of X would take the value 0.5 (1 in 2 or 1/2) for X = heads, and 0.
List of convolutions of probability distributionsIn probability theory, the probability distribution of the sum of two or more independent random variables is the convolution of their individual distributions. The term is motivated by the fact that the probability mass function or probability density function of a sum of independent random variables is the convolution of their corresponding probability mass functions or probability density functions respectively. Many well known distributions have simple convolutions. The following is a list of these convolutions.
StatisticsStatistics (from German: Statistik, () "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal".
Mean squared errorIn statistics, the mean squared error (MSE) or mean squared deviation (MSD) of an estimator (of a procedure for estimating an unobserved quantity) measures the average of the squares of the errors—that is, the average squared difference between the estimated values and the actual value. MSE is a risk function, corresponding to the expected value of the squared error loss. The fact that MSE is almost always strictly positive (and not zero) is because of randomness or because the estimator does not account for information that could produce a more accurate estimate.
Cross-correlationIn signal processing, cross-correlation is a measure of similarity of two series as a function of the displacement of one relative to the other. This is also known as a sliding dot product or sliding inner-product. It is commonly used for searching a long signal for a shorter, known feature. It has applications in pattern recognition, single particle analysis, electron tomography, averaging, cryptanalysis, and neurophysiology. The cross-correlation is similar in nature to the convolution of two functions.
Weighted least squaresWeighted least squares (WLS), also known as weighted linear regression, is a generalization of ordinary least squares and linear regression in which knowledge of the unequal variance of observations (heteroscedasticity) is incorporated into the regression. WLS is also a specialization of generalized least squares, when all the off-diagonal entries of the covariance matrix of the errors, are null.
ErgodicityIn mathematics, ergodicity expresses the idea that a point of a moving system, either a dynamical system or a stochastic process, will eventually visit all parts of the space that the system moves in, in a uniform and random sense. This implies that the average behavior of the system can be deduced from the trajectory of a "typical" point. Equivalently, a sufficiently large collection of random samples from a process can represent the average statistical properties of the entire process.
Probability axiomsThe Kolmogorov axioms are the foundations of probability theory introduced by Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov in 1933. These axioms remain central and have direct contributions to mathematics, the physical sciences, and real-world probability cases. An alternative approach to formalising probability, favoured by some Bayesians, is given by Cox's theorem. The assumptions as to setting up the axioms can be summarised as follows: Let be a measure space with being the probability of some event , and .
