Assignment 3: Example from our life that illustrates the principle of the law of large numbers
February 2, 2008
An example from our lives that would illustrate the principle of the law of large numbers is the time that we go to bed. Both of us usually go to bed around the same time each night. However, there are times when we are sick and go to bed early, and there are also times when we have big papers due, and stay up really late. If you were to collect data from one of us during a week where we were sick, or had a paper due, the data would not be very representative of when we usually go to sleep. However, if you were to collect data over a long period of time, you would see that these early nights, or very late nights are outliers. You would not be able to see this, however, if you just had a few data points. This illustrates the Law of Large Numbers, which says that the more data points that you collect, the closer your mean will be to the true mean.
A strength of using this method is that the more data that is taken, the more representative the mean will be of what truly occurs. For example our bedtime would be better represented if we recorded the times we went to bed for five months. This amount of data would be a better representation than if we were only to take data for one month. A weakness would be the outliers that are random, and affect the mean, but are not representative of the normal bedtime.
References:
MacEwan, B. (2008, Spring Semester). Psychology 261. Class Lectures. University of Mary Washington.
(Done by Carolyn & Kate)
