Solved – How to get an unbiased estimator

biasestimatorsmeanself-studyunbiased-estimator

Defining the sample mean as $\bar{x} = \frac{1}{N}\sum_{n=0}^{N-1}x_n$, and having $N$ realizations of a random variable $x$ with mean $\mu$ and variance $\sigma^2$
Defining $\bar{x}^2=\hat{\mu^2}$, I get that $Bias(\bar{x}^2) = E[\bar{x}^2] – \mu^2=E[\bar{x}]^2+Var(\bar{x}) – \mu^2 = \mu^2+ \frac{\sigma^2}{N} – \mu^2 = \frac{\sigma^2}{N}$ is a biased estimator.
Would it be possible to obtain an unbiased estimator of $\mu^2$?
Any help is appreciated!

Best Answer

Suppose $X_1, \dots, X_N \sim (\mu, \sigma^2)$. Then observe that $$\mu^2 = \mu_2 + \sigma^2$$ where I am using $\mu_2$ to represent the second moment $\mathbb{E}[X^2]$.

Then, a well-known unbiased estimator of $\sigma^2$ is $$S^2 = \dfrac{1}{N-1}\sum_{i=1}^{N}(X_i-\bar{X})^2$$ where $\bar{X} = \dfrac{\sum_{i=1}^{N}X_i}{N}$.

Furthermore, in general, if we have a function $g$ such that $\mathbb{E}[g(X_i)] = k$ for each $i$ (i.e., the expected value is the same for each variable in the random sample), we can use $$\mathbb{E}\left[\dfrac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^{N}g(X_i)\right] = \dfrac{1}{N}(Nk)=k\text{,}$$ which means, that, therefore, $\dfrac{1}{N}\sum_{i=1}^{N}g(X_i)$ is an unbiased estimator of $k$. Use this to find an unbiased estimator of $\mu_2$.

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