Question

Sample vs. Population. Considering Anxiety as your research interest, describe the difference between a sample and population. Why is it important to understand the difference between a sample and population in a statistics course?

Answer 1

Scenario:

Suppose you have surveyed 100000 people to identify the affect of anxiety on health of human body. and instead of studying/analyzing the whole 100000 observation(i.e very large observations) for your study, you use only 10,000 observation.

• Then in this case the 100000 people you surveyed is your population.
• and instead of studying 100000 you choose to take only 10,000 observation for study then it is considered as you sample (In short sample is a subset of population)

Importance of sampling:

• definition 1) Population : entire collection of elements or whole area under consideration .
• 2) sample: subset of population
• sometimes it not possible to study/Analyze the whole population under study, so by using various sampling methods we derive estimate of population parameters, we use the sample based on corresponding populations.
• also we derive conclusion from sample data about population
• sampling helps the researcher to avoid the cost ,helps to solve the problem in less time and also to manage entire population study.

Note: There are various sampling techniques used for taking samples from population for e.g. Simple random sampling, Systematic Random Sampling.