Sampling and Probability
7 videos • 92 views • by Fourth Z This is Playlist 5 in the Introduction to Behavioral and Social Statistics series. One of the most important and useful concepts we will learn in this course is statistical inference. Practicing good inference requires an understanding of the basic foundations of inference. That foundation is built on an understanding of sampling and probability. Thus, we will begin our study of inference by learning very basic sampling and probability theory. For this unit of study, as well as part of the next, we need to set aside the question, "Why is this important?" and focus on learning the concepts. The importance will become obvious later, when we begin to use inferential methods in our statistical analysis. You can think of this a bit like learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide. It would be easy to ask why you are doing all this mathematical stuff. Later, however, you learn how important it is to your life. What you learn in this unit will be important to your research life, so dig deep. Learn it well. The anticipated learning outcomes for this playlist are these: 1. You can explain the concept of probability. 2. You can explain each of the rules of probability. 3. You can calculate the probability of obtaining units using discrete and continuous data. 4. You can describe the elements of a probability distribution. 5. You can compare and contrast parameters and statistics. 6. You can define a sampling distribution and explain how it is related to a population distribution. 7. You can explain how we use sampling distributions to determine if a statistic is unbiased and stable. 8. You can explain the Central Limit Theorem and describe why this theorem is important to researchers.