Sampling Distribution Data Set 4 “Births” in Appendix B includes a sample of birth weights. If we explore this sample of 400 birth weights by constructing a histogram and finding the mean and standard deviation, do those results describe the sampling distribution of the mean? Why or why not?

A sample of 400 birth weights is considered. A histogram is plotted for this sample, and, thus, the mean and the standard deviation are computed.

The sampling distribution of the sample means is obtained by considering all possible samples of the same size from the same population.

The shape of the sampling distribution, the mean value and the standard deviation are computed for the set of samples that are considered.

Here, only one sample of 400 birth weights is selected, and the histogram is plotted for this sample. Further, the mean and the standard deviation of this sample are computed.

Since only one sample is considered, the mean and the standard deviation computed do not describe the sampling distribution of the sample mean.