What is a systematic error?
A systematic error occurs when something is wrong with the technique being used or when an instrument is not calibrated correctly. This results in an error throughout the sample. 11. How does a statistic differ from a parameter? A statistic is a generalization concerning an entire sample, such as the mean, mode or median. A parameter is a generalization for an entire population, such as the mean, mode or median. In order to get a parameter, the entire population is involved whereas a statistic is derived from a sample of that population. 12. So how do we get from our sample statistic to an estimate of the population parameter? There are an infinite number of samples that can be taken from a large population. One sample from a population might yield a slightly different statistic than another sample taken from the same population but the statistics should be similar to each other. If more and more samples of the same size were taken from the population, the sampling distribution of the
