Statistical Inference

Abstract

In the previous chapter we have seen how to describe a sample in order to produce potentially interesting hypotheses about its population. Some of the descriptions we have seen are based on graphical representations that are easily interpreted by humans, while others are based on parameters that summarize important properties of the sample distribution. In this chapter we will see how to infer predictions about a population. To this end we will explore the relationship between sample parameters and population parameters and we will propose some methods, both theoretical and computational, to assess the quality of parameter estimates from a sample.