Reading Quiz 9 Flashcards
parameter
a number that describes the population
in statistical practice, value of a parameter
is not known bc can’t examine entire population
statistic
a number that can be computed from the sample data without making use of any unknown parameters
in practice, use statistic to
estimate unknown parameter
mean of a population
fixed parameter that is unknown when use sample for inference
μ
mean of a sample
average of the observations in the sample
x bar (x̅)
sample mean is an estimate of the mean μ of the underlying population
sampling variability
the value of a statistic varies in repeated sampling
not fatal!
population proportion
p
sample proportion
p̂
p hat
used to estimate unknown parameter p
sampling distribution of a statistic
the distribution of values taken by the statistic in all possible samples of the same size from the same population
statistic produced from a probability sample or randomized experiment
has sampling distribution that describes how statistic varies in repeated data production
sampling distribution answers question
what would happen if we repeated sample or experiment many times?
formal statistical inference
based on sampling distributions of statistics
bias
means that the center of the sampling distribution is not equal to the true value of the parameter
sampling distributions allow us
to describe bias more precisely by speaking of the bias of a statistic rather than bias in sampling method
bias again
high variability
statistic as an estimator of a parameter may suffer from bias
variability of a statistic
described by the spread of its sampling distribution
spread is determined by sampling design and size of sample
larger samples give
smaller spread
as long as population is much larger than sample
10 times the size
spread of sampling distribution approximately same for any population size
sampling distribution of a sample proportion
choose SRS of size n from larger population with population proportion p having some characteristic of interest
let p̂ be the proportion of the sample having that characteristic
mean of sampling distribution of p̂
exactly p
also written as mu p̂ = p
unbiased
a statistic used to estimate a parameter is unbiased if the mean of its sampling distribution is equal to the true value of the parameter being estimated
unbiased estimator
sample proportion p̂ is an unbiased estimator of p