A Mathematically Sensible Explanation of the Concept of Statistical Population

Abstract

In statistics education, the concept of population is widely felt hard to grasp, as a result of vague explanations in textbooks. Some textbook authors therefore chose not to mention it. This paper offers a new explanation by proposing a new theoretical framework of population and sampling, which aims to achieve high mathematical sensibleness. In the explanation, the term population is given clear definition, and the relationship between simple random sampling and iid random variables are examined mathematically.