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hesim-dev / hesim

Health economic simulation modeling and decision analysis
https://hesim-dev.github.io/hesim/
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Method of moments SD or SE (mom_gamma)? #95

Closed Healtheconomist closed 2 years ago

Healtheconomist commented 2 years ago

Hi,

The HESIM mom_gamma function state that it uses the standard deviation as input to parametrise the gamma distribution. Should this be the standard error instead?

C

dincerti commented 2 years ago

Hi, mom_gamma computes the parameters of the gamma distribution given the mean and standard deviation of the underlying (assumed to be gamma) distribution. If the distribution of interest was the distribution of a parameter estimated via frequentist means, then its standard deviation could rightfully be called the standard error, but that is a particular case. So in my view, the standard deviation is the correct and more general term.