Applet overview: : This applet illustrates the relationship between three types of distributions important for statistical inference: population distribution, sample distribution, and sampling distribution. The population distribution by default is a normal distribution, however, the applet user can drag on the plot to create a new distribution. When the user clicks the sample button, a sample is randomly chosen from the population and plotted in one of the numbered plots below. The applet computes the mean of the sample and plots that in the simulated sampling distribution plot. The newest sample mean is plotted in the color that corresponds to the associated sample distribution plot. The user can generate as many samples as desired, explore different population distributions, and choose the sample size.