Parameters

A population can be described by parameters, which specify some numerical quantity of the population. Examples of parameters are the mean, or the standard deviation. As populations are rarely known, parameters cannot be calculated exactly in most cases. Therefore parameters are usually estimated by statistics, which are computed from samples of a population.

Parameters are normally denoted using Greek symbols, whereas the corresponding statistics are denoted using Latin letters. Below you find a list of the most important parameters and the corresponding statistics.