In: Statistics and Probability
3.2 Which of the following are statistics, and which of the following are parameters?
a.The mean height of a sample of basketball players in the National Basketball Association.
b.The mean weight of the population of football players on the Washington Redskin team
c.The mean blood pressure of the population of patients in the cardiac ward of a hospital
d.The mean blood grade of students in a certain elementary algebra section at a college, which is used to estimate the mean grade of all students in all sections of elementary algebra at the college.
The difference between statistics and parameter is that while statistics describes a sample, a parameter describes the whole population.
So a) This is a statistic as we have considered the mean height of a sample of players.
b) this is a parameter as the whole population is considered here.
c) Again since the whole population is considered this is a parameter
d) The mean blood grade of students in a certain elementary algebra section at a college is not relatively as large as a population. Even though this is used to estimate the mean grade of students of other sections we have not considered each and every value so this is an example of a statistic.