ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces measures of reliability and methods by which they can be used effectively in an investigation. It presents a measure that shows the reliability of the sample mean as an estimator of the population mean. The chapter outlines some basic principles of probability that underpin many of the methods of hypothesis testing. It demonstrates how one can calculate the probability of particular events occurring, and shows how the shapes of frequency histograms are related to probability. The chapter illustrates how the properties of one particular distribution, the normal distribution, are utilised more specifically along with measures of reliability in order to quantify the level of confidence that one can attach to the estimates of population parameters. It also describes the binomial, Poisson, and normal distributions and illustrates the relationship between them. The chapter also introduces interval estimates in the form of confidence intervals for means and proportions.
