An Asymptotic Expansion for Samples from a Finite Population

Abstract

An asymptotic expansion is obtained for the distribution function of the standardized mean of a sample of $s$ observations taken randomly without replacement from a finite population of $n$ numbers. The expansion is given to order $1/n$ and agrees with the formal Edgeworth expansion. The proof of the result is obtained using an approximation to the characteristic function of the standardized sum.