Sampling Distribution of the Mean

Suppose we take several samples from a population, the means for each sample will not
necessarily be the same and will most likely vary from one sample to another.

Let us imagine that each of the samples taken consists of 10 25-year-old women residing
throughout Paraguay. By calculating the mean height and corresponding standard deviation for
each of these samples, we would see that the mean (ִ x ) and deviation (s) for each sample would
be different.

If we group the means of each sample into a set and establish a probability distribution for them,
we form a Sampling Distribution of Means that has its own mean (µx) and standard deviation (x)

Sample 1
x1
Population
Sample n
Sample 2
xn
x2

Sample 3
x3

From this last set we obtain the mean and the standard deviation and we will symbolize it as
follows

µx = Mean of the sampling distribution of means

x = standard deviation of the sampling distribution = sampling error

Let us agree that when we work with samples of size greater than 30 or samples of any size of
a normal distribution with µ = µx and = x ,, then the formula that we will use for
standardization is:

Whether
the population is infinite
(unknown) or sampling is done
with replacement.

Whether the population is finite

or sampling is done without
replacement.
Example 1
The heights of students from schools in the capital are approximately normally
distributed with a mean of 170.5 cm and a standard deviation of 8.4 cm. If samples of
size 36 are drawn, what is the probability that the height of the students is below 167
cm?

 The probability that the average height is less than 167 cm is 0.0062.

Example 2
A faculty in the capital city has 800 new students recently graduated from Secondary
Education. The Academic Department of the institution issued a report on the average
grade of incoming students in their last year of high school, where it is evident that the
grade has an approximate normal distribution with a mean of 3.5 and a standard
deviation of 2.5.
If we take a sample of 40 students. What is the probability that the grade point average
is less than 2.8?
 The probability that the average score is less than 2.8 is 0.0344