="estimators" class="level3 unnumbered">
<h3 class="unnumbered anchored" data-anchor-id="estimators">Estimators</h3>
<p>An estimator is nothing more than a function mapping a data set to one or more numbers, which are called “estimates”. For example, the mean function maps a data set <span class="math inline">\(y_{1,\ldots, N}\)</span> to a number by <span class="math display">\[
\textrm{mean}(y) = \frac{1}{N} \sum_{n=1}^N y_n,
\]</span> and hence meets the definition of an estimator. Given the likeliho