The fluctuations in the number of particles of the ideal gas are calculated using the canonical and the grand canonical ensembles. The two results differ by a factor which accounts for the relative size of the total volume and the subvolume where the canonical ensemble fluctuations are calculated. This factor gives a simple example of explicit finite-size effects, because it arises from considering a fixed number of particles in the canonical ensemble. Our simulation results for the isothermal compressibility of the hard disk fluid with a finite number of particles are improved by applying this correction.
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