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I have an assignment that gives 48 counts of the same phenomena occurring over the same time interval. I am asked to
a) Calculate the mean of the counts b) Calculate the standard error of the sample c) Calculate the standard error of the mean value
I am having trouble figuring out the difference between what part b) and c) are asking. So I suppose the question I am asking is:
What is the difference between the standard error of the sample and the standard error of the mean value.
From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_error#Standard_error_of_mean_versus_standard_deviation:
Put simply, the standard error of the sample is an estimate of how far the sample mean is likely to be from the population mean, whereas the standard deviation of the sample is the degree to which individuals within the sample differ from the sample mean. If the population standard deviation is finite, the standard error of the sample will tend to zero with increasing sample size, because the estimate of the population mean will improve, while the standard deviation of the sample will tend to the population standard deviation as the sample size increases.
