Related Terms. A Rapid Application Development (RAD) system developed by Borland International, Inc. Delphi is similar to Visual Basic from Microsoft, but whereas Visual Basic is based on the BASIC programming language, Delphi is based on Pascal.
A parameter is a numerical value that states something about the entire population being studied. For example, we may want to know the mean wingspan of the American bald eagle. This is a parameter because it is describing all of the population. Parameters are difficult if not impossible to obtain exactly.
A parameter is any number calculated from a population. A statistic is any number calculated from a sample. It is important to remember that we are often concerned about the population and the calculated parameters associated with that population. However, we usually do not know or can not obtain these values, so we rely on sampling and statistics to provide us with inferences about the population.