Can you reach the precision floor?
Change the experiment, repeat it, and compare empirical spread with the exact bound.
Sampling distribution · one estimate per trial
Simulated estimatesEfficient mean referenceChosen estimator, exact
—across repeated trials
—theoretical, not fitted
—σ² / n, using all data
A simulated variance slightly below the CRB is Monte Carlo fluctuation, not a violation.
Can you “beat” the bound by shrinking toward zero?
Watch the variance fall, then move the true mean away from the shrinkage target.
Exact sampling distributions · no Monte Carlo
Unbiased sample meanShrinkage estimatorTrue μ
—α²σ² / n
—(1 − α)²μ²
—variance + squared bias
Tα = α X̄ · target = 0
n = 16 and σ = 2, so the unbiased variance bound is 0.25.
Fixed α; no prior is assumed. A lower MSE here is a pointwise bias–variance tradeoff, not a violation of the unbiased CRB.
Move the sensors. Reshape the bound.
Drag any anchor or the target. The Fisher matrix and its inverse update immediately.
Known anchors · local information at the true target
Anchors A1–A4True target PCRB ellipse
Unit-Mahalanobis CRB ellipse; not a confidence region.