Summary • Inductive inference requires working from our data, through study sample and study population, to a target population. • Problems and biases can crop up at each stage of this path. • The best way to proceed from sample to study population is to have drawn a random sample. • A population can be thought of as a group of individuals, but also as providing the probability distribution for a random observation drawn from that population. • Populations can be summarized using parameters that mirror the summary statistics of sample data. • Often data does not arise as a sample from a
...more
