CHAPTER 6 Taking All Kinds of Samples 77

Chapter 6

Taking All Kinds

of Samples

S

ampling — or taking a sample — is an important concept in statistics. As

described in Chapter 3, the purpose of taking a sample — or a group of indi-

viduals from a population — and measuring just the sample is so that you

do not have to conduct a census and measure the whole population. Instead, you

can measure just the sample and use statistical approaches to make inferences

about the whole, which is called inferential statistics. You can estimate a measure-

ment of the entire population, which is called a parameter, by calculating a statistic

from your sample.

Some samples do a better job than others at representing the population from

which they are drawn. We begin this chapter by digging more deeply into some

important concepts related to sampling. We then describe specific sampling

approaches and discuss their pros and cons.

IN THIS CHAPTER»

» ^{Grasping the concept of statistical}

error»

» ^{Setting up your sampling frame»}

» ^{Executing a sampling strategy}