For example, if the sample proportion of heads in a coin tossing is estimated to be p, its variance is p(1−p)/N where N is the number of coin tosses; if the observed variance is larger than what is expected from this equation, and can be fitted by the formula p(1−p)/NE, then NE is the effective sample size. Note that this definition of NE is very similar to the “variance effective size” used in population genetics, but different from, and should not be confused with, the “inbreeding effective population size” (Ne) also used in population genetics (Wright, 1938).
