1. Estimating Population Parameters

2. Symbols for some of the common characteristics
A parameter is any numerical characteristic of a population.
Eg. Population proportion, population mean, population standard deviation
A statistic is a numerical characteristic calculated from a sample
Eg. Sample proportion, sample mean, sample standard deviation
Symbols for some of the common characteristics
Characteristic
Sample statistic symbol
Population parameter symbol
Mean
“mu”
Proportion p
“pi”
Standard deviation s
“sigma”

3. Copy the following, filling in the correct words from the list below
When organisations require………….they either use data collected by somebody else (secondary data), or collect it themselves (primary data).
This is usually done by …………, that is collecting data from a …………….. sample of the …………… they are interested in. If it is of any use, the sample must represent the whole population we are interested in and not be ………… in any way. The point of collecting data is to deduce information about the entire population, this is called making ………….
data
sampling
representative
population
biased
inferences
Sampling inferences data
Population representative biased