Statistics: Estimating Population Proportions and Means

Flashcards covering vocabulary and key concepts from soft statistical methods for estimating population proportions and means, hypothesis testing, and related statistical terms.

Confidence Interval

A range of values used to estimate the true population parameter, calculated from sample data.

Population Proportion (p)

The proportion of a specific characteristic in the entire population.

Sample Proportion (p̂)

The proportion of a specific characteristic in a sample.

Margin of Error

The maximum expected difference between the true population parameter and a sample estimate.

Type I Error

Rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually true.

Type II Error

Failing to reject the null hypothesis when it is actually false.

Null Hypothesis (H0)

The hypothesis stating that there is no effect or no difference; it is the statement being tested.

Alternative Hypothesis (Ha)

The hypothesis stating that there is an effect or a difference; it is what you aim to support.

Standard-Wald Method

A common method used to construct confidence intervals for proportions.

Bootstrapping

A resampling method used to estimate the distribution of a statistic by repeatedly sampling with replacement.

Student’s t-Distribution

A probability distribution used for estimating population parameters when the sample size is small.

Critical Value

A point on the scale of the test statistic beyond which we reject the null hypothesis.

P-value

The probability of observing data as extreme as the sample data, assuming that the null hypothesis is true.

Independent Samples

Samples collected from different populations or groups that are not related.

Dependent Samples (Matched-Pairs)

Samples where observations in one sample are paired with observations in another sample.

Confidence Level

The probability that the confidence interval contains the true population parameter.

Two-tailed Test

A hypothesis test where the area of rejection is divided between both tails of the distribution.

One-tailed Test

A hypothesis test where the area of rejection is in only one tail of the distribution.

Sample Size (n)

The number of observations in a sample used for statistical analyses.

Robust Test

A statistical test that provides reliable results under a variety of conditions.

StatCrunch

A web-based statistical software used for data analysis.