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— | blog:variance_uneq_measurements [2015/11/19 10:43] (current) – created - external edit 127.0.0.1 | ||
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+ | ====== Variance of averaged measurements of unequal size ====== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Suppose that we have a random variable $X$ that we can only take averaged samples from. This means we cannot directly obtain a sample $X_i$, but only a sample of the mean of $k$ $X_i$' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Call the averaged samples we obtain $S_{k_i}$, where $k_i$ denotes the number of $X$'s that have been averaged. Then we have for a fixed value of $k_i$ (see e.g. [[http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | $$\mathrm{Var}(S_{k_i}) = \langle(S_{k_i} - \langle S_{k_i} \rangle)^2\rangle = \langle(S_{k_i} - \langle X \rangle)^2\rangle = \frac{\mathrm{Var}(X)}{k_i}, | ||
+ | |||
+ | where $\langle\rangle$ indicates the expectation value and we somehow know $\langle X \rangle$, to avoid having to care about [[http:// | ||
+ | More generally, we have for all $k_i$ | ||
+ | $$\langle k_i(S_{k_i} - \langle X \rangle)^2\rangle = \mathrm{Var}(X).$$ | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | If we have $N$ random averaged samples $S_{k_1},\ S_{k_2},\ \ldots,\ S_{k_N}$, then | ||
+ | $$ | ||
+ | \begin{align} | ||
+ | & \langle k_1 (S_{k_1} - \langle X \rangle)^2 + k_2 (S_{k_2} - \langle X \rangle)^2 + ... + k_N (S_{k_N} - \langle X \rangle)^2\rangle\\ | ||
+ | =& \langle k_1 (S_{k_1} - \langle X \rangle)^2\rangle + \langle k_2 (S_{k_2} - \langle X \rangle)^2\rangle + \ldots + \langle k_N (S_{k_N} - \langle X \rangle)^2\rangle\\ | ||
+ | =& \mathrm{Var}(X) + \mathrm{Var}(X) + \ldots + \mathrm{Var}(X)\\ | ||
+ | =& N \cdot \mathrm{Var}(X). | ||
+ | \end{align} | ||
+ | $$ | ||
+ | |||
+ | In other words, the expectation value of every term $k_i (S_{k_i} - \langle X \rangle)^2$ is $\mathrm{Var}(X)$, | ||
+ | $$\frac{1}{N} \sum_{i = 1}^{N} k_i (S_{k_i} - \langle X \rangle)^2.$$ | ||