[R] Variance Computing- - HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Liaw, Andy]

First of all, your subscripting is wrong.  The first index is for row, and
the second for column.  Thus large[i,] refers to the i-th row of large,
rather than the i-th column.  Also, the code as you provided contain syntax
error.

Try:

set.seed(311)  ## Always a good idea to set seed for simulation!
large <- matrix(rnorm(1000*1000), 1000, 1000)
small <- matrix(rnorm(100*1000), 100, 1000)
var.large <- apply(large, 2, var)  ## Apply the var function to each column
var.small <- apply(small, 2, var)

The result looks like:
> summary(var.large); summary(var.small)
   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
 0.8617  0.9705  1.0010  1.0020  1.0320  1.1520 
   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
 0.5846  0.9021  0.9948  0.9990  1.0850  1.5360 

as expected:  The mean is about the same, but the spread is much smaller for
larger sample size.

This sort of things can be computed exactly using basic math stat, BTW.

Andy


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Padmanabhan, Sudharsha [mailto:sudAR_80 at neo.tamu.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 1:43 PM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: [R] Variance Computing- - HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am running a few simulations for clinical trial anlysis. I 
> want some help 
> regarding the following.
> 
> We know trhat as the sample size increases, the variance 
> should decrease, but 
> I am getting some unexpected results. SO I ran a code (shown 
> below) to check 
> the validity of this.
> 
> large<-array(1,c(1000,1000))
> small<-array(1,c(100,1000))
> for(i in 1:1000){large[i,]<-rnorm(1000,0,3)}
> for(i in 1:1000){small[i,]<-rnorm(100,0,3)}}
> yy<-array(1,100)
> for(i in 1:100){yy[i]<-var(small[i,])}
> y1y<-array(1,1000)
> for(i in 1:1000){y1y[i]<-var(large[i,])}
> mean(yy);mean(y1y);
> [1] 8.944
> [1] 9.098
> 
> 
> This shows that on an average,for 1000 such samples of 1000 
> Normal numbers, 
> the variance is higher than that of a 100 samples of 1000 
> random numbers.
> 
> Why is this so?
> 
> 
> Can someone please help me out????
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Regards
> 
> ~S.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list 
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo> /r-help
> 

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