Lee Jek Ann

Zhao Kai Yuan

STAT 467
Meaningful Paragraph
Words: Parameter, Estimator, Estimate, Best Unbiased Estimator,
Biasness, Variance, Sufficient Statistic
Year 2016 is a big year not just for the American, but also for the people around the
world. It is the year of election of United States of America. It is going to determine
who is going to lead the world in the next 4 years. Xi Jin Ming and Ban Ki Moon are
the supporters of Democrats. They think that a lot of Nebraskans like Bernie Sanders.
So, they are really interested in how many people out of all Nebraskans really support
Bernie Sanders. Xi thinks that it is going to be impossible to collect all data from
everyone in Nebraska. Then, Ban tells Xi not to worry much. Instead of talking to
everyone in Nebraska, they just need to choose random numbers of people from
everywhere in Lincoln and surroundings rural areas. That way, Ban tells Xi that the
people that are interviewed will be the representatives of the actual population of
Nebraska. It is known as sampling method.
Xi thinks that they should use binomial distribution in this scenario and Ban
immediately agrees with Xis idea. After that, Ban tells Xi that they are in fact looking
for a parameter, p, which is the proportion of Nebraskan supporting Bernie Sanders.
Xi believes that it is easy to determine the parameter by just getting the information
from the samples. However, Ban disagrees with Xis opinion because he thinks that
they do not talk with everyone in Nebraska. Ban shows that there is a method of
solving the parameter called estimator. The estimator in this case is the formula that
shows them what are the proportion of Nebraskan that support Bernie Sanders going
to be while the estimate is the numerical value that they will get from the estimator.

The estimator and the estimate indicate that the sample they get may closer to the real
thing.
After listening to Bans explanation, Xi thinks that they just need to choose whatever
estimators he wants to use. Again, Ban opposes the idea of Xi and he tells Xi that they
need to find the best unbiased estimator so that they will get the best answer to
remove their doubt.
He tells Xi that they should determine the biasness of the estimator because they do
not really know the actual value of the parameter that they currently use. Xi wonders
the reason. Ban tells that the estimator they use may come out some estimates that are
lower or higher than the actual value of parameter. If the estimate has a positive bias,
it looks like he is more popular among Nebraskan than he actually is. If the estimate
has a negative bias, it looks like he is not that popular but actually he is. He also
explains that they need to use certain formula to determine the biasness of the
estimator. The formula is the expected value of estimator minus the parameter
estimated. The answer of the formula should be equal to zero if the estimator is
unbiased.
Furthermore, Ban states that they need to determine the variance of the estimator. If
they get a huge range of values in each estimate they calculate, then the variance of
the estimator is very high. It means that the estimator will not be effective. Therefore,
they need to get the smallest variance of the estimator. He explains that if one of the
estimators gets the smallest value of variance, the estimator must be the closest to the
actual value.
Right after that, Ban introduces the concepts of Uniformly Minimum Variance
Unbiased Estimator, which is also called UMVUE. He states that if an estimator
of a parameter is unbiased and if the variance of the estimator is the smallest one, this

is called the UMVUE. Xi asks Ban how to get it. Before showing the work, Ban
introduces the sufficient statistic (T(X)). If the conditional distribution of a random
sample of a statistic does not depend on the parameter, it is the sufficient statistic. In
this case, it is a binomial distribution. The sufficient statistic is the total number of

people in the sample that support Bernie Sanders (

Xi

and it does not involve

i=1

the parameter, p. Xi wonders that how do they know if the estimator is complete? Ban
says that they can use exponential family distribution to find whether the statistic is
complete or not.
After a long explanation from Ban, they immediately go to the Downtown to ask
anyone they have seen.