Ratio estimator

Imagine you have a lot of toys and you want to know how many of them are red. Instead of counting all of them, which would take a really long time, you can use a guess based on the ratio of how many red toys there are compared to how many toys you have in total.

For example, if you have 20 toys and 5 of them are red, the ratio of red toys to total toys is 5:20, or 1:4. So, you can estimate that 25% of your toys are red (since there is one red toy for every four toys).

This is similar to what a ratio estimator does, but instead of toys, it is used in statistics. It is used to estimate the value of a certain characteristic in a population, based on the ratio of that characteristic in a smaller sample of the population.

For instance, imagine you want to know what percentage of all kids in your school like ice cream. It would be difficult to ask every single student, so you can take a smaller sample (say, ten) and ask them if they like ice cream. If six out of ten say they like ice cream, then the ratio of ice cream lovers in the sample is 6:10, or 3:5. You can then estimate that 60% of kids in the school like ice cream (since there are three ice cream lovers for every five kids).

This method helps save time and resources while still providing a good estimate of the characteristic you are interested in.