Question

What is (define) the standard error of a sample statistic (e.g., the standard error of the mean of a sample) and how is it related to (1) the variance in the population being sampled, and (2) the sample size?

Answer 1

The standard error (SE) of a statistic is the approximate standard deviation of a statistical sample population. The standard error is a statistical term that measures the accuracy with which a sample distribution represents a population by using standard deviation. In statistics, a sample mean deviates from the actual mean of a population—this deviation is the standard error of the mean.

1) Sampling error depends on the variance in the population. As variance increases, sampling error increases

2) Sampling error depends on the size of the sample, relative to the size of the population. As sample size increases, sampling error decreases