Common-coin averaging

ID: common-coin-averaging

In the copied-coin model, for every , so the sample mean is exactly , however large is. Its expected value is and its variance is , matching each observation's marginal variance. The off-diagonal covariances in the variance of a sum explain the difference:
For an IID sample, those off-diagonal terms are zero. Repeating the same random input therefore does not create the reduction in fluctuations obtained from fresh independent draws. The general common-plus-individual structure is described by compound-symmetry covariance.

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