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Sampling Distributions: The Basic Practice of Statistics

This document summarizes key concepts from Chapter 11 of The Basic Practice of Statistics textbook. It discusses parameters and statistics, the law of large numbers, sampling distributions, the sampling distribution of the sample mean, and the central limit theorem. The chapter objectives are to define and distinguish between parameters and statistics, describe how the law of large numbers ensures sample means converge on the population mean for large samples, explain sampling distributions and how they describe the distribution of all possible sample statistics, and outline how the central limit theorem shows that the sampling distribution of the sample mean will be approximately normal for large sample sizes regardless of the population distribution.

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115 views14 pages

Sampling Distributions: The Basic Practice of Statistics

This document summarizes key concepts from Chapter 11 of The Basic Practice of Statistics textbook. It discusses parameters and statistics, the law of large numbers, sampling distributions, the sampling distribution of the sample mean, and the central limit theorem. The chapter objectives are to define and distinguish between parameters and statistics, describe how the law of large numbers ensures sample means converge on the population mean for large samples, explain sampling distributions and how they describe the distribution of all possible sample statistics, and outline how the central limit theorem shows that the sampling distribution of the sample mean will be approximately normal for large sample sizes regardless of the population distribution.

Uploaded by

Usernamefire
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CHAPTER 11:

Sampling Distributions
The Basic Practice of Statistics
6th Edition
Moore / Notz / Fligner

Lecture PowerPoint Slides

Chapter 11 Concepts
2

Parameters and Statistics

Statistical Estimation and the Law of Large


Numbers

Sampling Distributions

The Sampling Distribution of x

The Central Limit Theorem

Chapter 11 Objectives
3

Define and identify parameters and statistics


Describe the law of large numbers
Define and describe sampling distributions
Describe the sampling distribution of sample
means
Describe and apply the central limit theorem

Parameters and Statistics


4

As we begin to use sample data to draw conclusions about a wider population,


we must be clear about whether a number describes a sample or a population.
A parameter is a number that describes some characteristic of the
population. In statistical practice, the value of a parameter is not known
because we cannot examine the entire population.
A statistic is a number that describes some characteristic of a sample.
The value of a statistic can be computed directly from the sample data.
We often use a statistic to estimate an unknown parameter.
Remember s and p: statistics come from samples and
parameters come from populations
We write (the Greek letter mu) for the population mean and for the
population standard deviation. We write x(x-bar) for the sample mean and s
for the sample standard deviation.

Statistical Estimation
5

The process of statistical inference involves using information from a sample to draw
conclusions about a wider population.
Different random samples yield different statistics. We need to be able to describe
the sampling distribution of possible statistic values in order to perform statistical
inference.
We can think of a statistic as a random variable because it takes numerical values
that describe the outcomes of the random sampling process. Therefore, we can
examine its probability distribution using what we learned in earlier chapters.

Population
Sample

Collect data from a


representative Sample...
Make an Inference
about the Population.

Sampling Variability
6

This basic fact is called sampling variability: the value of a statistic


varies in repeated random sampling.
To make sense of sampling variability, we ask, What would happen if we
took many samples?

Population
Sample
Sample
Sample

Sample
Sample
Sample
Sample
Sample

The Law of Large Numbers


7

How can x be an accurate estimate of ? After all, different


random samples would produce different values of x .

If we keep on taking larger and larger samples, the statistic


x is guaranteed to get closer and closer to the parameter .
Draw observations at random from any population with finite mean .
The law of large numbers says that as the number of observations
drawn increases, the sample mean of the observed values gets
closer and closer to the mean of the population.

Sampling Distributions
8

The law of large numbers assures us that if we measure enough subjects, the
statistic x-bar will eventually get very close to the unknown parameter .
If we took every one of the possible samples of a certain size, calculated the
sample mean for each, and graphed all of those values, wed have a sampling
distribution.
The population distribution of a variable is the distribution of values of
the variable among all individuals in the population.
The sampling distribution of a statistic is the distribution of values
taken by the statistic in all possible samples of the same size from the
same population.
In practice, its difficult to take all possible samples of size n to obtain the
actual sampling distribution of a statistic. Instead, we can use simulation to
imitate the process of taking many, many samples.

Population Distributions vs.


Sampling Distributions
9

There are actually three distinct distributions involved when we


sample repeatedly and measure a variable of interest.
1)The population distribution gives the values of the variable
for all the individuals in the population.
2)The distribution of sample data shows the values of the
variable for all the individuals in the sample.
3)The sampling distribution shows the statistic values from
all the possible samples of the same size from the population.

The Sampling Distributionxof


10

When we choose many SRSs from a population, the sampling distribution


of the sample mean is centered at the population mean and is less
spread out than the population distribution. Here are the facts.

The Sampling Distribution of Sample Means

Suppose that x is the mean of an SRS of size n drawn from a large population
with mean and standard deviation . Then :

The mean of the sampling distribution of x is x

The standard deviation of the sampling distribution of x is

x
n

Note: These facts about the mean and standard deviation of x are true
no matter what shape the population distribution has.
If individual observations have the N(,) distribution, then the sample mean
of an SRS of size n has the N(, /n) distribution regardless of the sample
size n.

The Central Limit Theorem


11

Most population distributions are not Normal. What is the shape of the sampling
distribution of sample means when the population distribution isnt Normal?
It is a remarkable fact that as the sample size increases, the distribution of
sample means changes its shape: it looks less like that of the population and
more like a Normal distribution!
When the sample is large enough, the distribution of sample means is very
close to Normal, no matter what shape the population distribution has, as long
as the population has a finite standard deviation.
Draw an SRS of size n from any population with mean and finite
standard deviation . The central limit theorem(CLT) says that when n
is large, the sampling distribution of the sample mean x is approximately
Normal:


x is approximately N ,

The Central Limit Theorem


12

Consider the strange population distribution


from the Rice University sampling distribution
applet.
Describe the shape of the sampling
distributions as n increases. What do you
notice?
Normal Condition for Sample
Means
If the population distribution is Normal, then so is the
sampling distribution of x. This is true no matter what
the sample size n is.

If the population distribution is not Normal, the central


limit theorem tells us that the sampling distribution
of x will be approximately Normal in most cases if
n 30.

Example
13

Based on service records from the past year, the time (in hours) that a technician
requires to complete preventative maintenance on an air conditioner follows the
distribution that is strongly right-skewed, and whose most likely outcomes are close to 0.
The mean time is = 1 hour and the standard deviation is = 1.

Your company will service an SRS of 70 air conditioners. You have budgeted 1.1
hours per unit. Will this be enough?
The central limit theorem states that the sampling distribution of the mean time spent
working on the 70 units has:

0.12
x 1
n
70
The sampling distribution of the mean time spent working is approximately N(1, 0.12)
since n = 70 30.
x

1.1 1
0.83
0.12

P(x 1.1) P(Z 0.83)


1 0.7967 0.2033

If you budget 1.1 hours per unit, there is a 20%


chance the technicians
will not complete the

work within the budgeted time.

14

Chapter 11 Objectives
Review

Define and identify parameters and statistics


Describe the law of large numbers
Define and describe sampling distributions
Describe the sampling distribution of sample
means
Describe and apply the central limit theorem

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