ABSTRACT
At the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
• understand sampling distributions • determine the standard error of the means • understand point and interval estimates and confidence intervals • calculate confidence limits • estimate the mean and standard deviation of a population from sample data • estimate the mean of a population based on a small sample data using a Student’s t distribution
The concepts of elementary sampling theory and estimation theories introduced in this chapter will provide the basis for a more detailed study of inspection, control and quality control techniques used in industry. Such theories can be quite complicated; in this chapter a full treatment of the theories and the derivation of formulae have been omitted for clarity – basic concepts only have been developed.
