LEARNING JOURNAL UNIT 7
ACTIVITIES COMPLETED
10/03/2017 completed the unit 6 written assignment assessment for three students
12/03/2017 completed the unit 7 learning journal task
13/03/2017 completed the unit 7 self-quiz
14/03/2017 completed the unit 7 discussion forum assignment
15/03/2017 completed the unit 7 reading assignment
2. Vocabulary and R functions
a) What is a sampling distribution (include an APA citation)? _________
A sampling distribution is the values a statistic can take from a random sample in a given
population (Yakir, 2011). A sampling distribution is basically the probability distribution of a
statistic which is a function of the sample obtained through large number of samples drawn from
a particular population.
b) What is the Law of Large Numbers?________
Law of Large Numbers is a principle of probability according to which the frequencies of events
with the same likelihood of occurrence even out, given enough trials. In other words, the Law of
Large Numbers relates to the distribution of a sample which states that the distribution of a
sample lean towards the expectation with the sample size increases to larger sizes (Yakir, 2011).
So it is fair to conclude that the law of large numbers requires that the average of the results
obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and should tend to
become closer as more trials are performed.
An example of the law of large numbers is if a coin is tossed let’s say 1,000,000 times the results
of heads to tails in the outcomes would be a ratio of 1:1 unlike if the same coin is tossed 5 times
the results would not actually be 1:1 ratio.
In simple terms when we carry out an experiment several times, example 1000000, we are more
likely to get 500,000 heads and 500000 tails; therefore, 500000/500000 gives the ratio of 1:1.
This means that as the number of trials gets very high, the resulting ratio gets almost the same.
This is the law of large numbers.
3) Describe in your own words (do not directly quote any source) the difference between
the distribution of a sample and the sampling distribution. Use an example in which the
original population has a binomial distribution. You will probably use concepts from the
book or another source, so be sure to cite any concepts that come from such sources (even if
you paraphrase).
Sampling distribution can be applied to various statistics, not simply the mean. Sample
distribution refers to the distribution of individual values actually observed in a particular sample
For instance, in a university, we want to know the sampling distribution of the statistics and
probability scores of the students from year 1 to year 4, all we have to do is to collect a portion
(sample) of the marks of the students for year 1, year 2, year 3 and year 4. These are the samples
from the population which are the students. It follows that we will then find the mean of the
scores for each year. The distribution of these mean actually is what is called the sampling
distribution. The mean is the statistic. It tells us how the test statistic, which is the mean,
changes from one sample to the next
On the other hand, sampling distribution means the theoretically derived probability distribution
of a statistic. It is the distribution of a statistic for all possible sample outcomes of a certain size.
Example
The frequency of color blindness in the Caucasian American male population is estimated to be
about 8%. We take a random sample of size 25 from this population. The population is definitely
larger than 20 times the sample size, therefore, we can approximate the sampling distribution by
B(n=25, p=0.08). What are the mean and standard deviation of the count of color blind
individuals in the SRS of 25 Caucasian American males?
Solution: In this case, we need to get the mean and standard deviation of the binomial
distribution. So to get the mean from the B(n=25, p=0.08) is:
> n=25
> p=0.08
Now with this, we are assigning the value of n and p for the binomial distribution. So the mean
is:
> n*p
[1] 2
For the variance, we compute
> v=n*p*(1-p)
>v
[1] 1.84
So for the standard deviation, we compute
> sqrt(n*p*(1-p))
[1] 1.356466
Therefore, we have the mean, variance, and the standard deviation of the count of color blind
individuals in the SRS of 25 Caucasian American males to be 2, 1.84, and 1.35 respectively.
Reference
Yakir, B. (2011). Introduction to statistical thinking (with R, without calculus). Retrieved from
https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/140868/mod_resource/content/2/MATH1208Ann
otatedBook.pdf
