Statistics Dictionary
To see a definition, select a term from the dropdown text box below. The statistics
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Standard Error
The standard error is a measure of the variability of a
statistic.
It is an estimate of the
standard deviation
of a
sampling distribution. The standard error depends
on three factors:
-
N: The number of observations in the population.
-
n: The number of observations in the sample.
-
The way that the random sample is chosen.
If the population size is much larger than the sample size, then the sampling
distribution has roughly the same standard error, whether we sample
with
or
without replacement
. On the other hand, if the sample represents a
significant fraction (say, 1/20) of the population size, the standard error
will be noticeably smaller, when we sample without replacement.
