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Size of a Sample

12 March, 2015 - 12:02
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The size of a sample (often called the number of observations) is important. The examples you have seen in this book so far have been small. Samples of only a few hundred observations, or even smaller, are sufcient for many purposes. In polling, samples that are from 1200 to 1500 observations are considered large enough and good enough if the survey is random and is well done. You will learn why when you study confidence intervals.

Be aware that many large samples are biased. For example, call-in surveys are invariable biased because people choose to respond or not.