Menu
×
   ❮   
HTML CSS JAVASCRIPT SQL PYTHON JAVA PHP HOW TO W3.CSS C C++ C# BOOTSTRAP REACT MYSQL JQUERY EXCEL XML DJANGO NUMPY PANDAS NODEJS R TYPESCRIPT ANGULAR GIT POSTGRESQL MONGODB ASP AI GO KOTLIN SASS VUE DSA GEN AI SCIPY AWS CYBERSECURITY DATA SCIENCE
     ❯   

Statistics - Gathering Data


Gathering Data

Gathering data is the first step in statistical analysis.

Say for example that you want to know something about all the people in France.

The population is then all of the people in France.

It is too much effort to gather information about all of the members of a population (e.g. all 67+ million people living in France). It is often much easier to collect a smaller group of that population and analyze that. This is called a sample.

A representative sample

The sample needs to be similar to the whole population of France. It should have the same characteristics as the population. If you only include people named Jacques living in Paris who are 48 years old, the sample will not be similar to the whole population.

So for a good sample, you will need people from all over France, with different ages, professions, and so on.

If the members of the sample have similar characteristics (like age, profession, etc.) to the whole population of France, we say that the sample is representative of the population.

A good representative sample is crucial for statistical methods.

Note: Data from a proper sample is often just as good data from the whole population, as long as it is representative!

A good sample allows you to make accurate conclusions about the whole population.


×

Contact Sales

If you want to use W3Schools services as an educational institution, team or enterprise, send us an e-mail:
sales@w3schools.com

Report Error

If you want to report an error, or if you want to make a suggestion, send us an e-mail:
help@w3schools.com

W3Schools is optimized for learning and training. Examples might be simplified to improve reading and learning. Tutorials, references, and examples are constantly reviewed to avoid errors, but we cannot warrant full correctness of all content. While using W3Schools, you agree to have read and accepted our terms of use, cookie and privacy policy.

Copyright 1999-2024 by Refsnes Data. All Rights Reserved. W3Schools is Powered by W3.CSS.