Investopedia contributors come from a range of backgrounds, and over 25 years there have been thousands of expert writers and editors who have contributed. Thomas J. Brock is a CFA and CPA with more ...

Example 1: The population from which samples are selected is {1,2,3,4,5,6}. This population has a mean of 3.5 and a standard deviation of 1.70783. The next display shows a histogram of the population.

Central Limit Theorem: A sampling distribution of the mean is approximately normally distributed if the sample size is sufficiently large. This is true no matter what the population distribution is.

Consider the example in the section "Stratified Sampling". The study population is a junior high school with a total of 4,000 students in grades 7, 8, and 9. Researchers want to know how much these ...