Population
a set of similar items or events which is
of interest for some question or
experiment
Thus, a population is any complete
group with at least one characteristic in
common
However, in reality, there are too many
units in a population to consider every
one
Therefore, if we can examine every
single one, we must conduct a census
Technical Terms in Statistics (continued)
Sample
A sample is a subset of units in a
population, selected to represent all
units in a population of interest
It is a partial enumeration because it is
a count from part of the population
Information from the sampled units is
used to estimate the characteristics for
the entire population of interest