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Discovering the Laws of Sampling
Author(s) -
Rennolls Keith,
Massay Michael
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
teaching statistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.425
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1467-9639
pISSN - 0141-982X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9639.1991.tb00180.x
Subject(s) - intuition , sampling error , statistics , sampling (signal processing) , standard error , sample size determination , variance (accounting) , mathematics , sampling distribution , population variance , sample (material) , econometrics , mathematics education , calculus (dental) , computer science , epistemology , observational error , philosophy , economics , physics , medicine , accounting , dentistry , filter (signal processing) , estimator , computer vision , thermodynamics
Summary That the sample mean and variance are “good” estimates of the corresponding population parameters is easily accepted as “obvious” by students, but the concept of standard error of the mean is often found to be quite a hurdle. That this standard error decreases inversely as the square‐root of the sample size, and the mysterious appearance of the Normal distribution, are often taken as magical and incomprehensible effects, and non‐mathematical students can often be turned away from further understanding. This article describes a program which provides an experimental framework in which the student can rapidly develop an intuition for the basic properties of sampling.