Population

A population is any entire collection of people, animals, plants or things from which we may collect data. It is the entire group we are interested in, which we wish to describe or draw conclusions about.

In order to make any generalisations about a population, a sample that is meant to be representative of the population, is often studied. For each population there are many possible samples. A sample statistic gives information about a corresponding population parameter. For example, the sample mean for a set of data would give information about the overall population mean.

It is important that the investigator carefully and completely define the population before collecting the sample, including a description of the members to be included.