“ You’re also likely not going to have the resources to take twenty-thousand different samples.”

There are methods to calculate how many estimated samples you need. It’s not in the 20k unless your population is extremely high

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jdhwosnhw 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I’m not sure what you mean by “higher population” but fyi what determines the required number of samples is a function of the full shape of the underlying distribution. For instance the Berry Esseen inequality puts bounds on the convergence rate as a function of the first two central moments of the underlying distribution. But the point is that the convergence rate to Gaussian can be arbitrarily slow!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry%E2%80%93Esseen_theorem

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kqr 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> It’s not in the 20k unless your population is extremely high

Common misconception. Population size has almost nothing to do with the necessary sample size. (It does enter into the finite population correction factor, but that's only really relevant if you have a small population, not a large one.)

...actually, come to think of it, you meant to write "unless your population variance is extremely high", right?

	▲	firesteelrain 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Right and the methods I had in mind were the usual ones: proportion-based, mean-based, and power analysis, depending on what’s being measured. Thanks for catching that