On 21 Nov 2001 10:18:01 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ronny Richardson) wrote:
> As I understand it, the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) guarantees that the > distribution of sample means is normally distributed regardless of the > distribution of the underlying data as long as the sample size is large > enough and the population standard deviation is known. > > It seems to me that most statistics books I see over optimistically invoke > the CLT not when n is over 30 and the population standard deviation is > known but anytime n is over 30. This seems inappropriate to me or am I > overlooking something? [ snip, rest ] It seems to me that you have doubts which *might* be justifiable. Do you have a professor who is prone to glib generalizations? Do you have a lousy text? I do wonder if your textbooks actually say what you accuse them of, or if you are guilty of hasty overgeneralization. I have scanned textbooks in search of errors like those, but I hardly ever find any. Gross mis-statements tend to be in "handbooks" and in (unfortunate) interpretative articles by non-statisticians. (Can you cite "chapter and verse"?) -- Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
