PSY 350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Statistic, Statistical Parameter, Psy
Document Summary
Describe the distribution of sample means and how it is calculated. Explain the central limit thorem and the law of large numbers. And discuss how both follow from the distribution of sample means. Use the distribution of sample means to identify the probability of a given sample mean when we know the population mean and standard error. The natural discrepancy, or amount of error, between a sample statistic and its corresponding population parameter. We compute sample statistics based on the data we have. But those sample statistics are probably not identical to the population parameters. Even with a large, representative sample, unless the sample equals the population, we will always have some degree of sampling error. Imagine you have a population where you know the true mean and sd. You draw one sample and calculate the mean. Your sample mean might be close to the population mean, or it could be quite larger or smaller.
