STAT 2040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Observational Error, Simple Random Sample, Statistical Inference
17 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Suppose your local movie theatre claims that a large bag of popcorn contains 920 calories on average. You get a sample of 20 large bags of popcorn, and find that they contain 1210 calories on average. We need to understand more about the correct techniques and sample groups necessary, and steps taken to really answer this question. Individuals/units/cases are the objects on which a measurement is taken. A population is the set of all individuals or objects of interest to an investigator. Eg. all bags of popcorn of this type (can be conceptually infinite, as the bags of popcorn are continuously being made) A parameter is a numerical characteristic of a population. Eg. the true mean calorie content of all bags of this type (unknown because the bags of popcorn is infinite) A sample is a numerical characteristic of a sample. Eg. the average calorie content of the 20 bags (1210 calories)
