SOC222H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Statistical Inference, Frequency Distribution, Central Limit Theorem
Document Summary
Lecture 4 - sampling distribution and standard error. Statistics - values that come from a sample. Population - group that includes all the cases (individuals, objects, countries, or groups), in which the researcher is interested in making generalizations about. Sample - relatively small subset selected from a population (usually can"t know about the whole population) 57 countries are a sample bc there are many more countries in the pop. We use measures to describe both of these: Parameter -used to describe the population (values unknown in the pop) Statistic -used to describe the sample distribution (values from a sample) The main difference is that we usually know the values of statistics (sample) but almost never know the values of parameters (population). Probability sampling (random sample) - researcher to specify for each case in the population the probability of being selected for the sample. Only one that allows us to use inferential statistics (i. e. random sample)
