Talk:Sampling distribution

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The shape of (or formula for) the sampling distribution depends on the distribution of the population, the statistic being considered, and the sample size used.

The prase shape of doesn't go well with the sampling distribution. The shape goes only with the curves which are a representation of the distribution and not the distribution itself. May be, this needs to be reworded. For the moment, I delete the phrase. -- Sundar 06:15, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

I'd just like to say that I found this a very useful and clear description. I've just been struggling to understand it in a stats textbook and this has made it much clearer. Thanks! Lou.weird 11:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

The case in the examples of sampling from a finite population of normal rvs needs attention and probably more explanation than can be fitted into the table. Either the finite population is treated as fixed, in which case the normal distribution of the values is irrelevant and the sample distribution relates to the values actually drawn for the finite population, or else the finite population is treated as itself random (which might be a strange idea). In the latter case the normal distribution is relevant, but the variance seems wrong ... consider the case of a complete sample n=N from the population of size N, then the variance should be the same as the variance of the mean of a sample of size N, σ²/N, whereas the formula gives zero. Melcombe (talk) 15:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)