ood estimate. With any of these approaches, the estimator is just a function from data to a number.</p>
<p>In analyzing estimators, the data set is being modeled as a random variable. It is assumed that the observed data is just one of many possible random samples of data that may have been produced. If the data is modeled a random variable, then the estimator applied to the data is also a random variable. The simulations being done for the bootstrap are attempts to randomly sample replicated data sets and 