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Student's t Distribution

When the population standard deviation is unknown, the mean has a Student's t distribution. The Student's t
distribution was created by William T. Gosset, an Irish brewery worker. The brewery wouldn't allow him to
publish his work under his name, so he used the pseudonym "Student".

The Student's t distribution is very similar to the standard normal distribution.

 It is symmetric about its mean

 It has a mean of zero
 It has a standard deviation and variance greater than 1.
 There are actually many t distributions, one for each degree of freedom
 As the sample size increases, the t distribution approaches the normal distribution.
 It is bell shaped.
 The t-scores can be negative or positive, but the probabilities are always positive.

Degrees of Freedom

A degree of freedom occurs for every data value which is allowed to vary once a statistic has been fixed. For
a single mean, there are n-1 degrees of freedom. This value will change depending on the statistic being used.

Population Standard Deviation Unknown

If the population standard deviation, sigma is unknown, then the mean has a student's t (t) distribution and the
sample standard deviation is used instead of the population standard deviation.

The maximum error of the estimate is given by the formula for E shown. The t here is the t-score obtained
from the Student's t table. The t-score is a factor of the level of confidence and the sample size.

Once you have computed E, I suggest you save it to the memory on your calculator. On the TI-82, a good
choice would be the letter E. The reason for this is that the limits for the confidence interval are now found
by subtracting and adding the maximum error of the estimate from/to the sample mean.

Notice the formula is the same as for a population mean when the population standard deviation is known.
The only thing that has changed is the formula for the maximum error of the estimate.

Estimating the Proportion

You are estimating the population proportion, p.

All estimation done here is based on the fact that the normal can be used to approximate the binomial
distribution when np and nq are both at least 5. Thus, the p that were talking about is the probability of
success on a single trial from the binomial experiments.
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Recall:

The best point estimate for p is p hat, the sample proportion:

If the formula for z is divided by n in both the numerator and the denominator, then the formula for z

becomes:

Solving this for p to come up with a confidence interval, gives the maximum error of the estimate

as: .

This is not, however, the formula that we will use. The problem with estimation is that you don't know the
value of the parameter (in this case p), so you can't use it to estimate itself - if you knew it, then there would
be no problem to work out. So we will replace the parameter by the statistic in the formula for the maximum
error of the estimate.

The maximum error of the estimate is given by the formula for E shown. The Z here is the z-score obtained
from the normal table, or the bottom of the t-table as explained in the introduction to estimation. The z-score
is a factor of the level of confidence, so you may get in the habit of writing it next to the level of confidence.

When you're computing E, I suggest that you find the sample proportion, p hat, and save it to P on the
calculator. This way, you can find q as (1-p). Do NOT round the value for p hat and use the rounded value in
the calculations. This will lead to error. Once you have computed E, I suggest you save it to the memory on
your calculator. On the TI-82, a good choice would be the letter E. The reason for this is that the limits for
the confidence interval are now found by subtracting and adding the maximum error of the estimate from/to
the sample proportion.

Sample Size Determination

The sample size determination formulas come from the formulas for the maximum error of the estimates. The
formula is solved for n. Be sure to round the answer obtained up to the next whole number, not off to the
nearest whole number. If you round off, then you will exceed your maximum error of the estimate in some
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cases. By rounding up, you will have a smaller maximum error
of the estimate than allowed, but this is better than having a larger one than desired.

Population Mean

Here is the formula for the sample size which is obtained by solving the maximum error of the estimate
formula for the population mean for n.

Population Proportion

Here is the formula for the sample size which is obtained by solving the maximum error of the estimate
formula for the population proportion for n. Some texts use p hat and q hat, but since the sample hasn't been
taken, there is no value for the sample proportion. p and q are taken from a previous study, if one is available.
If there is no previous study or estimate available, then use 0.5 for p and q, as these are the values which will
give the largest sample size, and it is better to have too large of a sample size and come under the maximum
error of the estimate than to have too small of a sample size and exceed the maximum error of the estimate.