when is it better to sample? and when is sampling unacceptable?

Answer 1

When the population size is very large, it becomes very difficult to work with the entire population. The work would be time consuming and there is a very good chance of calculation error. In these cases it is better to sample. In sampling, we take a representative set of the population which is much smaller than the actual population and do our statistical calculations. The calculations are much easier, faster and the results are accurate.

In some cases, sampling is not acceptable. When the population size isn't very large, sampling is unacceptable. If there is a large variance among the population data set, sampling can bring signigicant errors. If a representative set can't be determined from a population set then, sampling is unacceptable.

Hope this was helpful.