How to identify and distinguish a sample and population mean? In a village the mean rent was 1830; a rental company comes and surveys with a sample size of 25 for a hypothetical testing to test if the μ is equals 1830 or not. This new survey gets a mean value of 1700 with a standard deviation of 200. For the company to deduce t-value(for hypothesis testing) which is sample mean and which will be population mean? I assumed 1830 to be the population mean but it turned out to be the sample mean and 1700 to be the population mean.

ajumbaretu

ajumbaretu

Answered question

2022-11-16

How to identify and distinguish a sample and population mean?
In a village the mean rent was 1830; a rental company comes and surveys with a sample size of 25 for a hypothetical testing to test if the μ is equals 1830 or not.
This new survey gets a mean value of 1700 with a standard deviation of 200.
For the company to deduce t-value(for hypothesis testing) which is sample mean and which will be population mean? I assumed 1830 to be the population mean but it turned out to be the sample mean and 1700 to be the population mean.

Answer & Explanation

yen1291kp6

yen1291kp6

Beginner2022-11-17Added 12 answers

t = x ¯ μ s n 1 n
Since this is a situation of unknown population variance, you must find s n 1 as this is an unbiased estimate of the population variance. x ¯ is the sample mean, μ is the hypothesised population mean. n is the sample size. s n 1   2 = n n 1 200 2 .
Edit: Perhaps you are getting confused because this is a one-tailed test on the left side of the T-Distribution. So ( x ¯ μ ) = μ x ¯ , is this why you believe that 1830 is the sample mean? Because the results of the survey are by definition the sample mean from the survey.
Layton Park

Layton Park

Beginner2022-11-18Added 3 answers

Obviously distinguishing the population mean from the sample mean is the second most important thing just next to calculating the t-value.
Basically, given question such as these, you need to first identify: what are we checking the observations against? Here, the company is checking their observations against 1830. Hence, this is the population mean.
They do their observations based on a sample of a particular size. Obviously, the word sample should ring bells that they are going to find the sample mean.
Note that in t- test, we check whether the mean if the sampled population is μ, which is our population mean. Here, μ is 1830. Why? Because, it is the population mean.
In contrast, the company takes observations and finds the mean as 1700. Thus is the sample mean, as they are working on a sample.

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