Sampling is used every day

 

 

 

To predict voting intentions

 

To assist marketing strategies

 

To monitor the environment

 

 

To monitor health and safety

 

  In each of these situations a sample is used to give information about the much larger population. Samples are used to save time and money.

For example, it is only in a General Election that every voter gets the chance to vote, yet the outcome is often surprisingly accurately predicted by opinion polls which typically ask less than 2000 people their voting intention.

How are samples chosen? How accurate are they in predicting the behaviour of the population? What can be done to improve their accuracy? What is a confidence interval confident about? These are some of the topics covered by 'Sampling and Estimation' and by the 'Sampling Methods' module.

 

 
 
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Copyright 2001 © Neville Hunt, Sidney Tyrrell Coventry University
and James Nicholson, Gerry Mulhern, Queens University of Belfast
All rights reserved.  Last updated: 05 March 2002 .

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