Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each description under standard deviation or standard error.
Groups: Standard deviation (SD) · Standard error (SE)
- Quadruple the sample and it halves
- Describes the population's own variability, independent of sample size
- Spread of sample MEANS around the true population mean
- Spread of individual data points around the mean
- Computed as sigma divided by the square root of n
Hints
- One describes raw scores; the other describes the behavior of sample means.
- Anything that shrinks with n, or divides sigma by sqrt(n), is the standard error.
Show the answer
Standard deviation (SD): Spread of individual data points around the mean, Describes the population's own variability, independent of sample size
Standard error (SE): Spread of sample MEANS around the true population mean, Quadruple the sample and it halves, Computed as sigma divided by the square root of n
Why
SD is about individual scores and does not depend on sample size; SE is about sample means, equals sigma/sqrt(n), and shrinks as n grows. Confusing the two is exactly the pitfall this lesson warns against.
Practise Sampling and Representativeness
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