Shormann Algebra 2 Rules & Definitions Exam 1 Practice

A parameter describes the true numerical value of a characteristic for the entire population. It’s a fixed value that characterizes the whole group, like the average height of every person in a country or the overall proportion with a certain trait. Because we usually don’t know that exact value, we estimate it using data from a sample. A statistic, then, is the value computed from the sample data (for example, the sample mean or sample proportion) used to infer the parameter. Frequency refers to how often something occurs in data, not the population’s overall value, and a sample is just the subset drawn from the population for study.