Stein's example (or phenomenon or paradox), in decision theory and estimation theory, is the phenomenon that when three or more parameters are estimated simultaneously, there exist combined estimators more accurate on average (that is, having lower expected mean squared error) than any method that handles the parameters separately. It is named after Charles Stein of Stanford University, who discovered the phenomenon in 1955.[1] An intuitive explanation is that optimizing for the mean-squared error of a combined estimator is not the same as optimizing for the errors of separate estimators of the individual parameters. In practical terms, if the combined error is in fact of interest, then a combined estimator should be used, even if the underlying parameters are independent; this occurs in channel estimation in telecommunications, for instance (different factors affect overall channel performance). On the other hand, if one is instead interested in estimating an individual parameter, then using a combined estimator does not help and is in fact worse. ... Many simple, practical estimators achieve better performance than the ordinary estimator. The best-known example is the James–Stein estimator, which works by starting at X and moving towards a particular point (such as the origin) by an amount inversely proportional to the distance of X from that point.
