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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

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