Bessel's correction

In statistics, Bessel’s correction, named after Friedrich Bessel, is the use of n − 1 instead of n when estimating variance, where n is the number of observations in a sample. n − 1 is used to correct for the fact that samples understate the variance in the population on average. See bias of an estimator.

• “Use and abuse of statistics” by W.J. Reichmann, 1968 reprint, appendix 8.

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