INTRODUCTION TO SAMPLING

Shoppers often sample a small piece of cheese before purchasing

any. They decide from one piece what the larger chunk will taste
like. A chemist does the same thing when he takes a sample of
alcohol from a still, determines that it is 90 proof, and infers that all the alcohol in the still is
90 proof.
If the chemist tests all the alcohol or the shoppers taste all the cheese, there will be none to
sell. Testing
all of the product often destroys it and is unnecessary. To determine the characteristics of the
whole, we
have to sample only a portion.
Suppose that, as the personnel director of a large bank, you need to write a report describing
all the
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􀁗􀁄􀁖􀁎􀀃
locating all these thousands of people. They are not easily accessible as a group—many have
died,
moved from the community, left the country, or acquired a new name by marriage. How do
you write
the report? The best idea is to locate a representative sample and interview them in order to
generalize
about the entire group.
Time is also a factor when managers need information quickly in order to adjust an operation
or
change a policy. Consider an automatic machine that sorts thousands of pieces of mail daily.
Why wait
for an entire day’s output to check whether the machine is working accurately (whether the
population
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vals, and if necessary, the machine can be adjusted right away.
Sometimes it is possible and practical to examine every person
or item in the population we wish to describe. We call this a
complete enumeration, or census. We use sampling when it is not
possible to count or measure every item in the population.
Statisticians use the word population to refer not only to
people but to all items that have been chosen for study. In the
cases we have just mentioned, the populations are all the cheese
in the chunk, all the whiskey in the vat, all the employees of the
large bank who voluntarily left in the last 10 years, and all mail sorted by the automatic
machine since
the previous sample check. Statisticians use the word sample to describe a portion chosen
from the
population. Sample is not just a portion (subset) of the population but a “representative
subset” of the
population that is expected to exhibit the properties of the entire population.
Statistics and Parameters
Mathematically, we can describe samples and populations by
using measures such as the mean, median, mode, and standard
deviation, which we introduced in Chapter 3. When these terms
describe the characteristics of a sample, they are called statistics. When they describe the
characteristics
of a population, they are called parameters. A statistic is a characteristic of a sample; a
parameter is
a characteristic of a population.
Suppose that the mean height in inches of all tenth graders in the United States is 60 inches.
In
this case, 60 inches is a characteristic of the population “all tenth graders” and can be called a
population
parameter. On the other hand, if we say that the mean
height in Ms. Jones’s tenth-grade class in Bennetsville is 60
inches, we are using 60 inches to describe a characteristic of
the sample “Ms. Jones’s tenth graders.” In that case, 60 inches
would be a sample statistic. If we are convinced that the mean height of Ms. Jones’s tenth
graders is
an accurate estimate of the mean height of all tenth graders in the United States, we could use
the
sample statistic “mean height of Ms. Jones’s tenth graders” to estimate the population
parameter
“mean height of all U.S. tenth graders” without having to measure all the millions of tenth
graders
in the United States.
To be consistent, statisticians use lowercase Roman letters to
denote sample statistics and Greek or capital letters for population
parameters. Table 6-1 lists these symbols and summarizes
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Types of Sampling
There are two methods of selecting samples from populations:
nonrandom or judgment sampling, and random or probability
sampling. In probability sampling, all the items in the population
have a chance of being chosen in the sample. In judgment
sampling, personal knowledge and opinion are used to identify the items from the population
that
are to be included in the sample. A sample selected by judgment sampling is based on
someone’s
expertise about the population. A forest ranger, for example, would have a judgment sample
if he
decided ahead of time which parts of a large forested area he would walk through to estimate
the
total board feet of lumber that could be cut. Sometimes a judgment sample is used as a pilot
or trial
sample to decide how to take a random sample later. The rigorous statistical analysis that can
be
done with probability samples cannot be done with judgment samples. They are more
convenient
and can be used successfully even if we are unable to measure their validity. But if a study
uses
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􀁑-
venience at too high a price.
Using statistics to estimate
parameters
N, μ, s, and n, x 􀃯, s: standard
symbols
Judgment and probability
sampling
TABLE 6-1 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN POPULATIONS AND SAMPLES
Population Sample
DEFINITION Collection of items being considered Part or portion of the population
chosen for study
CHARACTERISTICS “Parameters” “Statistics”
SYMBOLS Population size = N
Population mean = μ
Population standard deviation = σ
Sample size = n
Sample mean = x–
Sample standard deviation = s