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6 - Sufficiency and completeness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

G. A. Young
Affiliation:
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London
R. L. Smith
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Summary

This chapter is concerned primarily with point estimation of a parameter θ. For many parametric problems, including in particular problems with exponential families, it is possible to summarise all the information about θ contained in a random variable X by a function T = T(X), which is called a sufficient statistic. The implication is that any reasonable estimator of θ will be a function of T (X). However, there are many possible sufficient statistics – we would like to use the one which summarises the information as efficiently as possible. This is called the minimal sufficient statistic, which is essentially unique. Completeness is a technical property of a sufficient statistic. A sufficient statistic, which is also complete, must be minimal sufficient (the Lehmann–Scheffé Theorem). Another feature of a complete sufficient statistic T is that, if some function of T is an unbiased estimator of θ, then it must be the unique unbiased estimator which is a function of a sufficient statistic. The final section of the chapter demonstrates that, when the loss function is convex (including, in particular, the case of squared error loss function), there is a best unbiased estimator, which is a function of the sufficient statistic, and that, if the sufficient statistic is also complete, this estimator is unique. In the case of squared error loss this is equivalent to the celebrated Rao–Blackwell Theorem on the existence of minimum variance unbiased estimators.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Sufficiency and completeness
  • G. A. Young, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, R. L. Smith, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Essentials of Statistical Inference
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511755392.007
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  • Sufficiency and completeness
  • G. A. Young, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, R. L. Smith, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Essentials of Statistical Inference
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511755392.007
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Sufficiency and completeness
  • G. A. Young, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, R. L. Smith, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Book: Essentials of Statistical Inference
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511755392.007
Available formats
×