Chapter 4 Sampling Distributions
At the end of the previous chapter, we explored the Geometric Distribution and the Binomial Distribution. In this chapter, we consider what is called the sampling distribution, which is a term for describing the distribution of a statistic. For example, if we take a survey of a random sample of a population and compute the proportion of “yes” responses to a particular question, then it’s helpful to consider the distribution of all possible sample proportions.
We explore sampling distributions for two common statistics: the sample proportion and the sample mean. We then consider the distributions of a difference of sample proportions and a difference of sample means. In each case, the goal is the same — to describe the center, spread, and shape of the sampling distribution and determine when the normal approximation to the sampling distribution is reasonable.
