Practice Population vs Sample in Statistics
Use these practice problems to test your method after reviewing the concept explanation and worked examples.
Quick Recap
In statistics, the population is the entire group of individuals or items you want to study, while the sample is the smaller subset you actually collect data from. We use sample statistics to estimate unknown population parameters.
You want to know the average height of ALL teenagers in your country (population), but you can't measure everyone. So you measure 1000 teenagers (sample) and use that to estimate the whole.
Example 1
easyA researcher wants to know the average height of all 16-year-olds in the UK. She measures 500 randomly selected 16-year-olds. Identify the population and sample.
Example 2
mediumDistinguish between a parameter and a statistic. Give an example of each.
Example 3
easyA factory produces 10,000 light bulbs per day. Quality control tests 100 randomly chosen bulbs. Identify the population, sample, and explain why sampling is used.
Example 4
easyA website wants to know the average time spent on the site by all visitors. It studies 1,200 randomly selected visits from last month. Identify the population, the sample, and the parameter of interest.