🚀 go-pugleaf

What intrigues me is that the most elementary stats texts make a big
fuss about using n-1 for an unbiased estimate of the variance, but ignore
the fact that this gives a biased estimate for the SD. I recall
that n - 1.5 is nearer the target for the SD when the sample is
from a normally distributed population. I gather that minimising
the bias when estimating the SD is rather sensitive to the population
distribution - I'd like to know more about this.  But my big puzzle
remains - why is the biasedness of the usual SD estimator (with N-1)
so rarely mentioned, in stark contrast to the case of the variance.
Glyn M. Collis.