population mean

The average, or mean, of a population of scores.

The population mean is sometimes called the "true mean." It is a measure of the central tendency of a population of scores. For example, the mean intelligence of six people might be 103. This is an estimate of the population mean, which is the mean intelligence for all people (100).

(Note, in statistics, a population always refers to a population of scores, or numbers, not the "population" of people. For instance, the height of every person or the age of every person are both populations in the statistical sense.)

The symbol for population mean is (the greek letter"mu").

The population mean usually can't be known directly. It can be estimated by taking a representative sample of scores, and calculating the sample mean of those scores.