Does anyone know why the statistics field settled on k = 1/n?
I am guessing that this is the default assumption of equal weighting or equal scaling of the variances that you are pooling. If you want to assign non-equal weights you should have some specific reason to do so.
I don't think it's "superior", it's just the simplest default in the absence of any additional information.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.