Statistics Interview question: What is the difference between a parameter and a statistic?

Statistics is one subject that a student must study and become well versed in if he hope to become a data scientist. In the last post I made I answered the question of what is the difference between a population and a sample, and that post can be found here:- https://medium.com/@tracyrenee61/statistics-interview-question-what-is-the-difference-between-a-population-and-a-sample-2e42a4412c05

In this blog post I intend to answer the interview question: “What is the difference between a parameter and a statistic?”

A parameter is a number describing a whole population, such as a population mean. In quantitative research, the goal is to understand the characteristics of populations by finding parameters. It is often too difficult or unfeasible to collect data from every member of the population, so data is collected from samples.

A statistic is a number describing a sample, such as a sample mean. In inferential statistics it is possible to use sample statistics to make educated guesses about population parameters.

The symbolism of parameters and statistics can be seen below:-

It is not always clear as to whether a number is a population or a parameter, and this must be determined before progress…