What is the jackknife?
hardAnswer
- Leave-one-out precursor of the bootstrap.
- For each i, compute θ̂_(-i) = statistic on data without observation i.
- Jackknife SE = √((n-1)/n * Σ ).
- Bias correction: n * θ̂ - (n-1) * θ̄.
- Cheaper than bootstrap (n evaluations vs B ≈ 1000), but less general — works only for smooth statistics (fails for medians, quantiles).
- Foundation of influence-function-based robust statistics.
Check yourself — multiple choice
- Same as bootstrap
- Leave-one-out SE estimator; cheap (n evals) but only works for smooth statistics (fails on medians / quantiles)
- Only Bayesian
- Not real
Jackknife: LOO SE estimator; smooth statistics only; bootstrap ancestor.
#bootstrap#estimation
Practise Statistics Fundamentals
215 interview questions in this topic.