CHAPTER 4 ESTIMATION OF PARAMETERS

LESSON 1 Computing the Point Estimate of a Population Mean

ENTRY CARD
A. Circle the letter of the best answer for each of the following.
1. What do you call the set of all people, objects, events, or ideas you want to investigate?
a. Sample b. population c. data d. statistics
2. A sample refers to _________ of a population.
a. A subset b. a list c. a description d. another name
3. What is the mean of 13, 27, 29, 17 and 14?
a. 29 b. 28 c. 20 d. 13
4. What do you call a number that describes a population characteristic?
a. sample statistic b. parameter c. variable d. decimal
5. Which of the following symbols denotes population mean?
a. Χ b. 𝜎 c. 𝜇 d. s
6. Which of the following symbols denotes population standard deviation?
a. 𝜇 b. Χ c. 𝜎 d. s
7. In statistics, error refers to:
a. mistake resulting in wrong decisions
b. mistake resulting from computation
c. difference between two parameters values
d. difference between an observed value and a parameter

Definitions
The mean is the arithmetic average computed from the population samples.
Estimate is a value or a range of values that approximate a parameter. It is based on sample statistics computed
from sample data.
Parameters are numerical descriptive measures of populations and they are usually unknown.

Activity 1 Wake-up Time

Prepare a tally board with the following headings and entries.
Time Tally Frequency
5:00
5:30
6:00
6:30
7:00
7:30
Total
Average
Point of
estimate

The final result is a number that is called point of estimate of the mean 𝜇 of the population where samples come
from. In symbols, we write:
XX = 𝝁
This expression is read as “The mean of the means is equal to the population mean 𝝁 (read myu).”

Point estimate is a value or a range of values that approximate a parameter. It is based on sample statistics
computed from sample data.
Estimation is the process of determining parameter values. Mean and standard deviation are the

Interval Estimate is a range of values of values that may contain the parameter of a population.

Statistics&Probability SHS11 Chapter4Lesson1

Figure 1.The relationship between point estimate, confidence interval, and z‐score.

A population may be finite or infinite.

• Finite population is countable.

Example: The number of customers served in a restaurant.
• Infinite population is a hypothetical collection of elements or determined by probability.
Example: probability of getting heads or tails in tossing a coin experiment.
In-Class Activity 1

Mr. Santiago’s company sells bottled coconut juice. He claims that a bottle contains 500 ml of such juice. A consumer
group wanted to know if his claim is true. They took six random samples of 10 such bottles and obtained the capacity,
in ml, of each bottle. The result as follows:

Sample1 500 498 497 503 499 497 497 497 497 495
Sample2 500 500 495 494 498 500 500 500 500 497
Sample3 497 497 502 496 497 497 497 497 497 495
Sample4 501 495 500 497 497 500 500 495 497 497
Sample5 502 497 497 499 496 497 497 499 500 500
Sample6 496 497 496 495 497 497 500 500 496 497

Compute for the point of estimate of population means

500+498+497+503+499+497+497+497+497+495
X r1 =
10

4980
=
10

= 498 (mean of the population means or point of estimate)

Statistics&Probability SHS11 Chapter4Lesson1

COMPUTING MORE MEANS
Compute the mean for each remaining columns
Sample Column Sum of Scores Mean
1 2996 499.33
2 2984 497.33
3 2987 _____
4 2984 _____
5 2984 _____
6 2988 _____
7 2991 498.50
8 2988 _____
9 2987 _____
10 2981 _____
Over-all Mean _____

A good estimator has the following properties:

1. When the mean of a sample static from a large number of different random samples equals the
true population parameter, then the sample statistic is an unbiased estimate of the population
parameter.
2. Across the many repeated samples, the estimates are not very far from the true parameter
value.

The following figures illustrate bias where the vertical line represents the population mean and the
dots represent sample means from the X sampling distribution.

𝑎
= 0.025
2

𝜇 𝜇 𝜇
Negative bias Unbiased Positive bias
(Under estimate) (On target estimate) (Over estimate)

To solve for standard deviation of 60 bottled drinks.

Σ(𝑋−𝐗)2
Recall: s2 =
𝑛−1

Σ(𝑋−𝐗)2
s=√
𝑛−1

where:
Σ =′ sum of ′
X = column mean
X = overall mean
n = number of cases
Statistics&Probability SHS11 Chapter4Lesson1
 Steps Solution
1. Find the sum of the values Σ(𝑋−𝐗)2
in the numerator and divide
s2 =
𝑛−1
it by 9 (from n-1 =10-1=9) 2 (499.33−497.83)2 + (497.33−497.83)2 +⋯…(496−497.83)2
s =
10−1
s2 = _________
The result is called variance

2. Extract the square root of s=√

the variance.
The value is called _______________________

3. Describe/interpret the result. (Applying the obtained value of s)

On the average, the sample mean is _______ away from the mean of the
ten values..

Exercises:
I. Find (a) the point of estimate of the population parameter 𝜇 , and the (b) standard deviation of the problem
below.

Mr. Domingo conducted a survey among ten random samples of people who are in favor of truck ban in
a section of metropolitan area. He determined the percentages of those who are in favor of the ban. Assuming
that the only error present in the sampling error, he wanted to determine the point estimate of the population
mean percentage and the standard deviation based on 500 observations. The following numbers represent the
percentages of the ten surveys.

47.0 56.4 50.1 60.2 48.0 55.3 60.0 59.5 63.0 57.5

II. Scores in a long test in Science

78 75 86 82 70 85 83 86
80 92 82 85 80 88 84 86
90 88 90 78 83 90 86 84
75 85 77 88 85 90 85 83
83 86 83 84 86 92 85 80
76 88 79 84 80 88 80 88

Statistics&Probability SHS11 Chapter4Lesson1