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EXCERPT: The Lesson intends to help students differentiate and explain three statistical terms at the heart of statistical inference.
The specifc learning goals of the lesson are as follows.
1. Students should recognize the difference between statistics (numbers based on a sample) and a parameter (number based on an entire population).
2. Students should be able to explain why sample means are important for inference on a population.
3. Students should be able to define the population mean, using words like "typical/central/mean/expected" value of an entire group of individuals.
Students will practice applying statistical techniques to data collected from samples and experience first hand how sample information can be applied to understand an aspect of a larger population; without samples, this understanding of the population would be practically impossible. This is the central idea of statistics.
Contact: Dan Nordman
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