Download Estimating Population Parameters

Estimating Population
Parameters
A parameter is any numerical characteristic of a population.
Eg. Population proportion, population mean, population standard deviation
A statistic is a numerical characteristic calculated from a sample
Eg. Sample proportion, sample mean, sample standard deviation
Symbols for some of the common characteristics
Characteristic
Sample statistic
symbol
Mean
x
Proportion
p
Standard deviation
s
Population parameter
symbol



“mu”
“pi”
“sigma”
Copy the following, filling in the correct words
from the list below
data
When organisations require………….they
either use data collected by
somebody else (secondary data), or collect it themselves (primary data).
sampling that is collecting data from a
This is usually done by …………,
…………….. sample of the ……………
representative
population they are interested in. If it is of
any use, the sample must represent the whole population we are
interested in and not be …………
biased in any way. The point of collecting data
is to deduce information about the entire population, this is called making
………….
inferences
Sampling
inferences
data
Population
representative
biased