This page consists of a web page and Java applet we found on the web. The HTML and the applet are by Suresh Srinivasan of Thomson Technology Services Group. There is a link to his home page here.

Sample Distributions

Here is a Java applet that shows how sample means tend to the population mean as the sample size increases. To illustrate, consider the experiment of flipping a coin. If the coin is fair, in the long run there should be about equal numbers of heads and tails, although in small samples this may not be evident. The same tendency can be observed when sampling from distributions such as the Gaussian, Exponential and Uniform distributions.

The Probability Density Function (PDF) is overlaid on the sample histogram to show the expected shape of the sample distribution. Population data is shown in red and sample data in blue. The vertical lines show the population and current sample means. [Source].


Applet that illustrates sampling is shown here.


References

  1. Walpole, Ronald, E., Myers, Raymond H., "Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists", Fifth Edition.
  2. Press, William, H., et al, "Numerical Recipes, The Art of Scientific Computing"


Suresh Srinivasan

Return to Math Topics page
Return to Computer Science and Mathematics page