SAMPLING DISTRIBUTION OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEANS

Suppose we have two distinct populations with means and variances

respectively. Let independent random samples of sizes are
selected from the respective populations, and the differences between the means
of all possible pairs of samples be computed.
Then, a probability distribution of the differences can be obtained. Such a
distribution is called the sampling distribution of the differences of sample means
. We illustrate the sampling distribution of with the help of the
following example.

EXAMPLE

Draw all possible random samples of size n1 = 2 with replacement from a finite
population consisting of 4, 6, similarly, draw all possible random samples of size n = 2
with replacement from another finite population consisting of 1, 2, 3.
a) Find the possible differences between the sample means of the two populations
b) Construct the sampling distribution of and compute its mean and variance
c) Verify that

SOLUTION

Whenever we are sampling with replacement from a finite population, the total number of
possible samples is N^n (where N is the population size, and n is the sample size).Hence,
in this example, there are (3)^2 = 9 possible samples which can be drawn with
replacement from each population. These two sets of samples and their means are given
below:

Samples of size 2 are selected Samples of size 2 are selected

from first population from second population
 Since there are 9 samples from the first population as well as 9 from the second, hence,
there are 81 possible combinations of `x1 and`x2

The 81 possible differences`x1 –`x2 are presented in the following table:

d == 4 -1.0 =3
Similarly for other
values

Now for different values of d that are found in above table, we will construct the
sampling distribution.

b) The sampling distribution of is as follows:

Possible Outcomes
Thus the mean and the variance are

c) In order to verify the properties of the sampling distribution of we first need

to compute the mean and variance of the first population:
The mean and standard deviation of the first population are:

The mean and variance of the second population are:

Hence, two properties of the sampling distribution of are satisfied. The sampling
distribution of the differences has the following properties: