A series of N sequential configurations and their energies were generated by a VMC calculation. The N energies were divided up into b blocks each containing energies. The average value for each block and the variance of the block averages are then given by
When the block size is large enough such that the individual block averages can be considered as being independent, the value of might be expected to be inversely proportional to . This is because the individual error in the mean, is proportional to . In an attempt to calculate this constant of proportionality, the statistical inefficiency, s, is defined as
It is possible to calculate a value for s from the N energies by plotting the value of s for a series of block sizes. Finally, from the definition of the variance in the mean for a series of N values and a correlation length , we have
It is clear that for the case of a single block that constitutes the whole sample (i.e. ) s is equivalent to in (). For the energies produced in a VMC calculation the value of s proved to be much smaller than expected, about 2.8. This meant that every third move of all the electrons could be written out as an independent configuration. Where results are presented later in this report for fitting with 1000 configurations this required a 3000 move VMC calculation, and 30,000 moves were required to generate 10,000 configurations.