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Introductory Business Statistics

7.2 Using the Central Limit Theorem

Introductory Business Statistics7.2 Using the Central Limit Theorem

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Table of contents
  1. Preface
  2. 1 Sampling and Data
    1. Introduction
    2. 1.1 Definitions of Statistics, Probability, and Key Terms
    3. 1.2 Data, Sampling, and Variation in Data and Sampling
    4. 1.3 Levels of Measurement
    5. 1.4 Experimental Design and Ethics
    6. Key Terms
    7. Chapter Review
    8. Homework
    9. References
    10. Solutions
  3. 2 Descriptive Statistics
    1. Introduction
    2. 2.1 Display Data
    3. 2.2 Measures of the Location of the Data
    4. 2.3 Measures of the Center of the Data
    5. 2.4 Sigma Notation and Calculating the Arithmetic Mean
    6. 2.5 Geometric Mean
    7. 2.6 Skewness and the Mean, Median, and Mode
    8. 2.7 Measures of the Spread of the Data
    9. Key Terms
    10. Chapter Review
    11. Formula Review
    12. Practice
    13. Homework
    14. Bringing It Together: Homework
    15. References
    16. Solutions
  4. 3 Probability Topics
    1. Introduction
    2. 3.1 Terminology
    3. 3.2 Independent and Mutually Exclusive Events
    4. 3.3 Two Basic Rules of Probability
    5. 3.4 Contingency Tables and Probability Trees
    6. 3.5 Venn Diagrams
    7. Key Terms
    8. Chapter Review
    9. Formula Review
    10. Practice
    11. Bringing It Together: Practice
    12. Homework
    13. Bringing It Together: Homework
    14. References
    15. Solutions
  5. 4 Discrete Random Variables
    1. Introduction
    2. 4.1 Hypergeometric Distribution
    3. 4.2 Binomial Distribution
    4. 4.3 Geometric Distribution
    5. 4.4 Poisson Distribution
    6. Key Terms
    7. Chapter Review
    8. Formula Review
    9. Practice
    10. Homework
    11. References
    12. Solutions
  6. 5 Continuous Random Variables
    1. Introduction
    2. 5.1 Properties of Continuous Probability Density Functions
    3. 5.2 The Uniform Distribution
    4. 5.3 The Exponential Distribution
    5. Key Terms
    6. Chapter Review
    7. Formula Review
    8. Practice
    9. Homework
    10. References
    11. Solutions
  7. 6 The Normal Distribution
    1. Introduction
    2. 6.1 The Standard Normal Distribution
    3. 6.2 Using the Normal Distribution
    4. 6.3 Estimating the Binomial with the Normal Distribution
    5. Key Terms
    6. Chapter Review
    7. Formula Review
    8. Practice
    9. Homework
    10. References
    11. Solutions
  8. 7 The Central Limit Theorem
    1. Introduction
    2. 7.1 The Central Limit Theorem for Sample Means
    3. 7.2 Using the Central Limit Theorem
    4. 7.3 The Central Limit Theorem for Proportions
    5. 7.4 Finite Population Correction Factor
    6. Key Terms
    7. Chapter Review
    8. Formula Review
    9. Practice
    10. Homework
    11. References
    12. Solutions
  9. 8 Confidence Intervals
    1. Introduction
    2. 8.1 A Confidence Interval for a Population Standard Deviation, Known or Large Sample Size
    3. 8.2 A Confidence Interval for a Population Standard Deviation Unknown, Small Sample Case
    4. 8.3 A Confidence Interval for A Population Proportion
    5. 8.4 Calculating the Sample Size n: Continuous and Binary Random Variables
    6. Key Terms
    7. Chapter Review
    8. Formula Review
    9. Practice
    10. Homework
    11. References
    12. Solutions
  10. 9 Hypothesis Testing with One Sample
    1. Introduction
    2. 9.1 Null and Alternative Hypotheses
    3. 9.2 Outcomes and the Type I and Type II Errors
    4. 9.3 Distribution Needed for Hypothesis Testing
    5. 9.4 Full Hypothesis Test Examples
    6. Key Terms
    7. Chapter Review
    8. Formula Review
    9. Practice
    10. Homework
    11. References
    12. Solutions
  11. 10 Hypothesis Testing with Two Samples
    1. Introduction
    2. 10.1 Comparing Two Independent Population Means
    3. 10.2 Cohen's Standards for Small, Medium, and Large Effect Sizes
    4. 10.3 Test for Differences in Means: Assuming Equal Population Variances
    5. 10.4 Comparing Two Independent Population Proportions
    6. 10.5 Two Population Means with Known Standard Deviations
    7. 10.6 Matched or Paired Samples
    8. Key Terms
    9. Chapter Review
    10. Formula Review
    11. Practice
    12. Homework
    13. Bringing It Together: Homework
    14. References
    15. Solutions
  12. 11 The Chi-Square Distribution
    1. Introduction
    2. 11.1 Facts About the Chi-Square Distribution
    3. 11.2 Test of a Single Variance
    4. 11.3 Goodness-of-Fit Test
    5. 11.4 Test of Independence
    6. 11.5 Test for Homogeneity
    7. 11.6 Comparison of the Chi-Square Tests
    8. Key Terms
    9. Chapter Review
    10. Formula Review
    11. Practice
    12. Homework
    13. Bringing It Together: Homework
    14. References
    15. Solutions
  13. 12 F Distribution and One-Way ANOVA
    1. Introduction
    2. 12.1 Test of Two Variances
    3. 12.2 One-Way ANOVA
    4. 12.3 The F Distribution and the F-Ratio
    5. 12.4 Facts About the F Distribution
    6. Key Terms
    7. Chapter Review
    8. Formula Review
    9. Practice
    10. Homework
    11. References
    12. Solutions
  14. 13 Linear Regression and Correlation
    1. Introduction
    2. 13.1 The Correlation Coefficient r
    3. 13.2 Testing the Significance of the Correlation Coefficient
    4. 13.3 Linear Equations
    5. 13.4 The Regression Equation
    6. 13.5 Interpretation of Regression Coefficients: Elasticity and Logarithmic Transformation
    7. 13.6 Predicting with a Regression Equation
    8. 13.7 How to Use Microsoft Excel® for Regression Analysis
    9. Key Terms
    10. Chapter Review
    11. Practice
    12. Solutions
  15. A | Statistical Tables
  16. B | Mathematical Phrases, Symbols, and Formulas
  17. Index

Examples of the Central Limit Theorem

Law of Large Numbers

The law of large numbers says that if you take samples of larger and larger size from any population, then the mean of the sampling distribution, μ x – μ x – tends to get closer and closer to the true population mean, μ. From the Central Limit Theorem, we know that as n gets larger and larger, the sample means follow a normal distribution. The larger n gets, the smaller the standard deviation of the sampling distribution gets. (Remember that the standard deviation for the sampling distribution of X – X – is σ n σ n .) This means that the sample mean x – x – must be closer to the population mean μ as n increases. We can say that μ is the value that the sample means approach as n gets larger. The Central Limit Theorem illustrates the law of large numbers.

This concept is so important and plays such a critical role in what follows it deserves to be developed further. Indeed, there are two critical issues that flow from the Central Limit Theorem and the application of the Law of Large numbers to it. These are

  1. The probability density function of the sampling distribution of means is normally distributed regardless of the underlying distribution of the population observations and
  2. standard deviation of the sampling distribution decreases as the size of the samples that were used to calculate the means for the sampling distribution increases.

Taking these in order. It would seem counterintuitive that the population may have any distribution and the distribution of means coming from it would be normally distributed. With the use of computers, experiments can be simulated that show the process by which the sampling distribution changes as the sample size is increased. These simulations show visually the results of the mathematical proof of the Central Limit Theorem.

Here are three examples of very different population distributions and the evolution of the sampling distribution to a normal distribution as the sample size increases. The top panel in these cases represents the histogram for the original data. The three panels show the histograms for 1,000 randomly drawn samples for different sample sizes: n=10, n= 25 and n=50. As the sample size increases, and the number of samples taken remains constant, the distribution of the 1,000 sample means becomes closer to the smooth line that represents the normal distribution.

Figure 7.3 is for a normal distribution of individual observations and we would expect the sampling distribution to converge on the normal quickly. The results show this and show that even at a very small sample size the distribution is close to the normal distribution.

...
Figure 7.3

Figure 7.4 is a uniform distribution which, a bit amazingly, quickly approached the normal distribution even with only a sample of 10.

...
Figure 7.4

Figure 7.5 is a skewed distribution. This last one could be an exponential, geometric, or binomial with a small probability of success creating the skew in the distribution. For skewed distributions our intuition would say that this will take larger sample sizes to move to a normal distribution and indeed that is what we observe from the simulation. Nevertheless, at a sample size of 50, not considered a very large sample, the distribution of sample means has very decidedly gained the shape of the normal distribution.

...
Figure 7.5

The Central Limit Theorem provides more than the proof that the sampling distribution of means is normally distributed. It also provides us with the mean and standard deviation of this distribution. Further, as discussed above, the expected value of the mean, μ x – μ x – , is equal to the mean of the population of the original data which is what we are interested in estimating from the sample we took. We have already inserted this conclusion of the Central Limit Theorem into the formula we use for standardizing from the sampling distribution to the standard normal distribution. And finally, the Central Limit Theorem has also provided the standard deviation of the sampling distribution, σ x – =σn σ x – =σn, and this is critical to have to calculate probabilities of values of the new random variable, x – x – .

Figure 7.6 shows a sampling distribution. The mean has been marked on the horizontal axis of the x – x – 's and the standard deviation has been written to the right above the distribution. Notice that the standard deviation of the sampling distribution is the original standard deviation of the population, divided by the sample size. We have already seen that as the sample size increases the sampling distribution becomes closer and closer to the normal distribution. As this happens, the standard deviation of the sampling distribution changes in another way; the standard deviation decreases as n increases. At very large n, the standard deviation of the sampling distribution becomes very small and at infinity it collapses on top of the population mean. This is what it means that the expected value of µ x – µ x – is the population mean, µ.

..
Figure 7.6

At non-extreme values of n,this relationship between the standard deviation of the sampling distribution and the sample size plays a very important part in our ability to estimate the parameters we are interested in.

Figure 7.7 shows three sampling distributions. The only change that was made is the sample size that was used to get the sample means for each distribution. As the sample size increases, n goes from 10 to 30 to 50, the standard deviations of the respective sampling distributions decrease because the sample size is in the denominator of the standard deviations of the sampling distributions.

..
Figure 7.7

The implications for this are very important. Figure 7.8 shows the effect of the sample size on the confidence we will have in our estimates. These are two sampling distributions from the same population. One sampling distribution was created with samples of size 10 and the other with samples of size 50. All other things constant, the sampling distribution with sample size 50 has a smaller standard deviation that causes the graph to be higher and narrower. The important effect of this is that for the same probability of one standard deviation from the mean, this distribution covers much less of a range of possible values than the other distribution. One standard deviation is marked on the X¯X¯ axis for each distribution. This is shown by the two arrows that are plus or minus one standard deviation for each distribution. If the probability that the true mean is one standard deviation away from the mean, then for the sampling distribution with the smaller sample size, the possible range of values is much greater. A simple question is, would you rather have a sample mean from the narrow, tight distribution, or the flat, wide distribution as the estimate of the population mean? Your answer tells us why people intuitively will always choose data from a large sample rather than a small sample. The sample mean they are getting is coming from a more compact distribution. This concept will be the foundation for what will be called level of confidence in the next unit.

..
Figure 7.8
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