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The distribution of these means, or averages, is called the "sampling distribution of the sample mean". This distribution is normal (, /) (n is the sample size) since the underlying population is normal, although sampling distributions may also often be close to normal even when the population distribution is not (see central limit theorem).
The sample size is an important feature of any empirical study in which the goal is to make inferences about a population from a sample. In practice, the sample size used in a study is usually determined based on the cost, time, or convenience of collecting the data, and the need for it to offer sufficient statistical power. In complex studies ...
In quota sampling, the population is first segmented into mutually exclusive sub-groups, just as in stratified sampling. Then judgement is used to select the subjects or units from each segment based on a specified proportion. For example, an interviewer may be told to sample 200 females and 300 males between the age of 45 and 60.
Thus the sample mean is a random variable, not a constant, and consequently has its own distribution. For a random sample of N observations on the j th random variable, the sample mean's distribution itself has mean equal to the population mean () and variance equal to /, where is the population variance.
In statistics, a population is a set of similar items or events which is of interest for some question or experiment. [1] [2] A statistical population can be a group of existing objects (e.g. the set of all stars within the Milky Way galaxy) or a hypothetical and potentially infinite group of objects conceived as a generalization from experience (e.g. the set of all possible hands in a game of ...
The sampling distribution of a mean is generated by repeated sampling from the same population and recording the sample mean per sample. This forms a distribution of different means, and this distribution has its own mean and variance. Mathematically, the variance of the sampling mean distribution obtained is equal to the variance of the ...
That distribution depends on the numbers of red and black elements in the full population. For a simple random sample with replacement, the distribution is a binomial distribution. For a simple random sample without replacement, one obtains a hypergeometric distribution. [6]
A "parameter" is to a population as a "statistic" is to a sample; that is to say, a parameter describes the true value calculated from the full population (such as the population mean), whereas a statistic is an estimated measurement of the parameter based on a sample (such as the sample mean, which is the mean of gathered data per sampling ...