Previously, we learned about the connections between a population and the sampling distribution of a sample proportion from that population. That is, when taking many random samples of size [latex]n[/latex] from a population distribution with proportion [latex]p[/latex], the mean of the distribution of sample proportions is [latex]p[/latex] and the standard deviation of the distribution of sample proportions is [latex]\sqrt{\frac{p(1-p)}{n}}[/latex].

However, we rarely (if ever) know the true value of the population proportion. So instead, we can estimate the mean and standard deviation of the sampling distribution.