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Course: AP®︎/College Statistics > Unit 9
Lesson 5: Sampling distributions for differences in sample proportions- Sampling distribution of the difference in sample proportions
- Mean and standard deviation of difference of sample proportions
- Shape of sampling distributions for differences in sample proportions
- Sampling distribution of the difference in sample proportions: Probability example
- Differences of sample proportions — Probability examples
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Differences of sample proportions — Probability examples
Practice using shape, center (mean), and variability (standard deviation) to calculate probabilities of various results when we're dealing with sampling distributions for the differences of sample proportions.
Intro and review
In this article, we'll practice applying what we've learned about sampling distributions for the differences in sample proportions to calculate probabilities of various sample results.
Skip ahead if you want to go straight to some examples.
Here's a review of how we can think about the shape, center, and variability in the sampling distribution of the difference between two proportions :
Shape
The shape of a sampling distribution of depends on whether both samples pass the large counts condition.
- If we expect at least
successes and at least failures in both samples, then the sampling distribution of will be approximately normal. - If one or more of these counts is less than
, then the sampling distribution won't be approximately normal.
Center
The mean difference is the difference between the population proportions:
Variability
The standard deviation of the difference is:
(where and are the sizes of each sample).
This standard deviation formula is exactly correct as long as we have:
- Independent observations between the two samples.
- Independent observations within each sample*.
*If we're sampling without replacement, this formula will actually overestimate the standard deviation, but it's extremely close to correct as long as each sample is less than of its population.
Let's try applying these ideas to a few examples and see if we can use them to calculate some probabilities.
Example 1
Yuki is a candidate is running for office, and she wants to know how much support she has in two different districts. Yuki doesn't know it, but of the voters in District A support her, while of the voters in District B support her.
Yuki hires a polling firm to take separate random samples of voters from each district. The firm will then look at the difference between the proportions of voters who support her in each sample .
Example 2
A company has two offices, one in Mumbai, and the other in Delhi.
- Each office has about
total employees. of the employees at the Mumbai office are younger than years old. of the employees at the Delhi office are younger than years old.
The company plans on taking separate random samples of employees from each office. They'll look at the difference between the proportions of employees in each sample that are younger than years old .
The company wonders how likely it is that the difference between the two samples is greater than percentage points.
Want to join the conversation?
- They call me Mr.Math(16 votes)
- thank your for the lesson(4 votes)
- your welcome for this lesson!(0 votes)
- Example 1, Question 1.1 - Solving for Standard Deviation
In the solution, "100" is used for both "n" values. I believe this is an error as the "n" values should correspond with the number of voters in each district, which would make them 8,000 and 6,000 for districts A and B, respectively.(0 votes)n
is the sample size, not the population size. Since the question states, "Yuki hires a polling firm to take separate random samples of 100 voters from each district," the sample size is 100 for each district.(1 vote)