<P> In statistics, a sampling distribution or finite - sample distribution is the probability distribution of a given random - sample - based statistic . If an arbitrarily large number of samples, each involving multiple observations (data points), were separately used in order to compute one value of a statistic (such as, for example, the sample mean or sample variance) for each sample, then the sampling distribution is the probability distribution of the values that the statistic takes on . In many contexts, only one sample is observed, but the sampling distribution can be found theoretically . </P> <P> Sampling distributions are important in statistics because they provide a major simplification en route to statistical inference . More specifically, they allow analytical considerations to be based on the probability distribution of a statistic, rather than on the joint probability distribution of all the individual sample values . </P>

What is distribution of values taken by a statistic