Lab 4 Worksheet
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PohuyistLab 4 Worksheet
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PohuyistPsych 248 – Lab 4 - Binomial Probability & Sampling Distributions
Name: ____________________________________________
Part I: Understanding Binomial Probability Distribution
First, let’s try to understand binomial probabilities for events like coin tosses where there are only 2 possible outcomes.
Find a coin to flip and below circle your outcomes for 20 coin tosses (circle H for head or T for tail after each toss).
1.H T 2. H T 3. H T 4. H T 5. H T 6. H T 7. H T 8. H T 9. H T 10. H T
11.H T 12. H T 13. H T 14. H T 15. H T 16. H T 17. H T 18. H T 19. H T 20. H T
How many heads did you get in total? (count and record): ____ heads out of 20 coin flips
As each person in class reports their number of heads record an X above that number to make a histogram below. What
number do you think will be most common? ______
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Number of Heads Found in our Class
Use the online binomial calculator here: http://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/applets/bin.html
1. What is the relationship between p and how normal the binomial distribution looks? (With N = 10, try values of p
equal to .4, .3, .2, .1 and .6, .7, .8, .9)
_____________________________________________________________
2. What is the relationship between N (number of trials) and the shape of the distribution? (With p = .5, try values of N
ranging from 5 up to 900)
_____________________________________________________________
3. Now, calculate the following probabilities using the online calculator
If you toss a fair coin 24 times how many heads do you expect? _____ (μ = pn)
What is the SD of the binomial distribution? ______ (σ = √npq)
What is the probability of getting more than 15 heads? p = ________
What is the probability of getting 15 or more heads? p = ________
What is the probability of getting exactly 15 heads in 24 tosses? p = ________
Part II: Understanding Sampling Distribution
A. Sampling Distribution
Go to http://onlinestatbook.com/stat_sim/sampling_dist/ (Click the "Begin" button)
Click the "Animated " button.
Five scores from a normal distribution (first graph) will be sampled and plotted in a histogram (second
graph). The mean of the sample will be computed and plotted in a second histogram (third graph) .
Repeat this 3 or 4 times or until you understand the how the third graph "Distribution of Means" is created.
The mean is a blue line. The red line under graphs extends from the mean to 1 SD in each direction.
NEXT, click the "10,000 samples" button to draw 10,000 random samples from the population (top
histogram) with n = 5 scores in each sample.
The sampling distribution of the mean is the second histogram. With large number of repeats (over
10,000) the shape of the sample distribution will look approximately normal. (Hint: skew and kurtosis
are close to 0).
1. The mean of the population is 16. What did you get for the mean of the sampling distribution? ________
2. What value did you find for skew?: ______ What is the kurtosis value?: _______
3. Repeat drawing 10,000 samples. Does the sampling distribution always look approx. normally distributed?
________
Understanding Standard Error. The distribution plotted in above (third graph) is the sampling distribution of
the mean for sample size of 5. The standard error is the standard deviation of a sampling distribution. It is the
“typical” amount you expect sample means to vary from the population mean.
On the third graph, change the value of N to 5, 10, 16, 20, and 25. With each value of N, click 10,000
samples.
Note how the shape of the sampling distribution changes as you change the N values.
Record the sd of the sampling distributions (standard error) below for:
N= 5 _________ N=10_________ N=16 _________ N=25 _________
1. What happens to the standard error of the mean as sample size increases? ___________________________
2. What happens to the shape of the sampling distribution as sample size increases? _____________________
3. As the sample size decreases, the difference between the sample mean and the population mean __________
Understanding Bias. A statistic is unbiased if the mean of the sampling distribution of that statistic =
something very close to the population parameter. The difference between them is small and equally likely to be
high or low. Test to see if the sample mean is an unbiased estimate of the population mean.
Any statistic you can compute has a sampling distribution. Let’s create sampling distributions for other
statistics: Median, Standard deviation, Variance, Range and compare it to the Mean.
Leave the third graph set to default of Mean with n = 5.
In the bottom histogram (fourth graph) change the statistic to (Median, Standard deviation, Variance,
and Range Range). Keep n=5. Click 10,000 samples.
Compare the shapes. Notice the shapes are fairly normal or skewed?
4. Is the sample mean an unbiased estimate of the population mean? ___________
5. Is the sample sd an unbiased estimate of the population variance? _________
6. What if the population isn’t normal? At top change the population distribution shape-- instead of normal try
skewed and uniform distributions. Is the sampling distribution of the mean still symmetrical? ______
