NUR 80A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Standard Score, Statistical Inference, Sampling Distribution
Document Summary
Inferential statistics based on laws of probability; provides means for drawing conclusions about a population given data from a sample. Inferential statistics are based on the assumption of random sampling the best means to secure a sample that is representative of the population. Samples are however rarely identical to population because of sampling error. Inferential statistics are used to determine whether sample statistics are good estimates of population parameters. Sampling distribution of the mean theoretical distribution of the mean using the values of the statistic computed from an infinite number of samples as the data points in the distribution: e. g. Calculating the mean test scores of different samples of 25 applicants, 10 000 times: demonstrates that the sampling distribution of the mean 1) follows normal distributions, 2) with an infinite sample, equals the population mean. Normal distribution = 68% of cases fall between +1 sd and -1 sd (standard deviation)
