Let x
1, x
2 ….. x
n be an independently, and identically distributed (iid) random sample drawn from a population that follows the Normal Distribution N(μ, σ
2), where both the mean (μ) and variance (σ
2) are unknown. Let
xˉ be the sample mean. The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the variance (
σ^MLE2) is/are then characterized by