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Fundamentals of Statistics 3

The standard error of the mean describes the variability of sample means from the population mean. It is calculated as the population standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size. While individual values in a sample may vary widely, the mean of samples will vary far less. According to the empirical rule, about 68% of sample means will fall within one standard error of the true population mean, 95% within two standard errors, and virtually all within three standard errors. The standard error allows us to determine how far off a sample mean might be from the population mean due to chance variation in sampling.

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163 views2 pages

Fundamentals of Statistics 3

The standard error of the mean describes the variability of sample means from the population mean. It is calculated as the population standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size. While individual values in a sample may vary widely, the mean of samples will vary far less. According to the empirical rule, about 68% of sample means will fall within one standard error of the true population mean, 95% within two standard errors, and virtually all within three standard errors. The standard error allows us to determine how far off a sample mean might be from the population mean due to chance variation in sampling.

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Deepika Kohli
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Fundamentals of Statistics 3: Sampling :: The standard error of the mean

We saw with the sampling distribution of the mean that every sample we take to estimate the unknown
population parameter will overestimate or underestimate the mean by some amount. But what's interesting
is that the distribution of all these sample means will itself be normally distributed, even if the population is
not normally distributed. The central limit theorem states that the mean of the sampling distribution of the
mean will be the unknown population mean. The standard deviation of the sampling distribution of the mean
is called the standard error. In fact, it is just another standard deviation, we just call it the standard error so
we know we're talking about the standard deviation of the sample means instead of the standard deviation of
the raw data. The standard deviation of data is the average distance values are from the mean.
k, so, the variability of the sample means is called the standard error of the mean or the standard
deviation of the mean !these terms will be used interchangeably since they mean the same thing" and it
looks like this.
#tandard $rror of the %ean !#$%" &
The symbol sigma represents the population standard deviation and n is the sample si'e. (opulation
parameters are symboli'ed using )reek symbols and we almost never know the population parameters. That
is also the case with the standard error. *ust like we estimated the population standard deviation using the
sample standard deviation, we can estimate the population standard error using the sample standard
deviation.
When we repeatedly sample from a population, the mean of each sample will vary far less than any
individual value. +or e,ample, when we take random samples of women's heights, while any individual height
will vary by as much as -. inches !a woman who is /'-0 and one who is 1'-0", the mean will only vary by a
few inches.
The distribution of sample means varies far
less than the individual values in a
sample.If we know the population mean
height of women is 65 inches then it would
be extremely rare to have a sampe mean of
30 women at ! inches.
In fact, if we took a sample of 20 women and found an average height of 3'-, then we would wonder whether
these were really from the total population of women. (erhaps it was a population of lympic 4olleyball
players. It is possible that a random sample of women from the general population could be 3'- but it is
e,tremely rare !like winning the lottery".
The standard deviation tells us how much variation we can e,pect in a population. We know from
theempirical rule that 5/6 of values will fall within . standard deviations of the mean. #ince the standard
error is just the standard deviation of the distribution of sample mean, we can also use this rule.
#o how much variation in the standard error of the mean should we e,pect from chance alone7 8sing the
empirical rule we'd e,pect 396 of our sample means to fall within - standard error of the true unknown
population mean. 5/6 would fall within . standard errors and about 55.:6 of the sample means will be
within 2 standard errors of the population mean. *ust as ';scores can be used to understand the probability
of obtaining a raw value given the mean and standard deviation, we can do the same thing with sample
means.

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