Here our population is \(N\) = whatever the number of pennies are being used in the US, a value which we don’t know and probably never will. The population parameter of interest is now the population mean year of all these pennies, a value denoted mathematically by the Greek letter \(\mu\) (pronounced “mu”). In order to estimate \(\mu\), we went to the bank and obtained a sample of 50 pennies and computed the relevant point estimate: the sample mean year of these 50 pennies, denoted mathematically by \(\overline{x}\) (pronounced “x-bar”). An alternative and more intuitive notation for the sample mean is \(\widehat{\mu}\). However, this is unfortunately not as commonly used, so in this book we’ll stick with convention and always denote the sample mean as \(\overline{x}\).