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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Feb 2.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Methods. 2015 Jun;12(6):477–478. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.3414

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Sampling distributions of estimators can be used to predict the precision and accuracy of estimates of population characteristics. (a) The shape of the distribution of estimates can be used to evaluate the performance of the estimator. The population distribution shown is standard normal (μ = 0, σ = 1). The sampling distribution of the sample means estimator is shown in red (this particular estimator is known to be normal with σ = 1/√n for sample size n). (b) Precision can be measured by the s.d. of the sampling distribution (which is defined as the standard error, s.e.). Estimators whose distribution is not centered on the true value are biased. Bias can be assessed if the true value (red point) is available. Error bars show s.d.