You randomly call 3,000 people across the nation and record the monthly rent or mortgage payment. how does finding the mean of this sample compare to investigating the sampling distribution of the mean? since the 3,000 people are spread across the nation, they can be grouped by different categories in order to find the sampling distribution of the mean. investigating the mean of the sample is the same as investigating the sampling distribution of the mean. this sample contains 3,000 people, but the mean is limited to paying rent or paying a mortgage. so the sampling distribution of the mean cannot be found. this is just one sample. the sampling distribution of the mean requires repeating this process with the same sample several times.