Sampling error and sampling distributions

Question 1

What is sampling error?

Answer 1

The error associated with examining statistics calculated from a sample rather than the population.

Question 2

Why does sampling error occur?

Answer 2

Because in our sample we do not have all the
members of the population

Question 3

Why do population parameters and sample statistics differ?

Answer 3

Because of sampling error

Question 4

How do you reduce sampling error?

Answer 4

Have a bigger sample

BIGGER SAMPLE = SAMPLING ERROR IS LESS LIKELY

SMALLER SAMPLE = SAMPLING ERROR IS MORE LIKELY

Question 5

What term is used to describe a distribution of a sample statistic (e.g. mean, s.d., median,
etc…) obtained by repeatedly sampling from a population?

Answer 5

Sampling distribution

Question 6

What is sampling distribution?

Answer 6

A distribution of a sample statistic (e.g. mean, s.d., median, etc…) obtained by repeatedly sampling from a population

Question 7

List the 3 steps to generate a sampling distribution

Answer 7

1) Take a sample from a population

2) Calculate a sample statistic (e.g. mean, s.d., median)

3) Add the new statistic to a frequency plot (a histogram) of the sample statistic
* e.g. Sampling Distribution of the (sample) mean
* Sampling Distribution of the (sample) s.d.
* Sampling Distribution of the (sample) median

Question 8

What does sampling distribution tell us?

Answer 8

How the statistic changes as we take different samples of the population (see if our results vary if we take different samples from the population)

Question 9

Why do we need sampling distribution?

Answer 9

So that we can be confident in the inferences we want to draw based on our data