UNIT II

DISTRIBUTIONS AND SAMPLING

Unit II of this textbook introduces you to the concept of statistical distribution. In lay terms, a statistical distribution is a numerical or graphical depiction of frequency counts or probabilities for various values of a variable that can occur. Distributions are important because most of the analyses done in business statistics are based on the characteristics of a particular distribution. In Unit II, you will study eight distributions: six population distributions and two sampling distributions.

Six population distributions are presented in Chapters 5 and 6. These population distributions can be categorized as discrete distributions or continuous distributions. Discrete distributions are introduced in Chapter 5, and they include the binomial distribution, the Poisson distribution, and the hypergeometric distribution. Continuous distributions are presented in Chapter 6, and they include the uniform distribution, the normal distribution, and the exponential distribution. Information about sampling is discussed in Chapter 7 along with two sampling distributions, the sampling distribution of and the sampling distribution of Three more populaN tion distributions are introduced later in the text in Unit III. These include the t distribution and the chi-square distribution in Chapter 8 and the F distribution in Chapter 10.