In Chapter 9, the concept of parameter estimation will be discussed at length. Suppose X is a random variable with mean and variance

In Chapter 9, the concept of parameter estimation will be discussed at length. Suppose X is a random variable with mean

μ and variance σ = 1.0. Suppose also that a random sample of size n is to be taken and is to be used as an estimate of μ. When the data are taken and the sample mean is measured, we wish it to be within 0.05 unit of the true mean with probability 0.99.

That is, we want there to be a good chance that the computed from the sample is “very close” to the population mean

(wherever it is!), so we wish What sample size is required?