Telephone poll The City Council decides to conduct a telephone poll.
Pollsters ask a carefully chosen random sample of adults this question: Do you favor the construction of a new prison to deal with the high level of violent crime in our State? In what way might the proportion of Yes answers fail to accurately reflect true public opinion? Explain briefly. What kind of bias is this?
Question 2
To check the effect of cold temperatures on the battery's ability to start a car researchers purchased a battery from Sears and one from NAPA. They disabled a car so it would not start, put the car in a warm garage, and installed the Sears battery.
They tried to start the car repeatedly, keeping track of the total time that elapsed before the battery could no longer turn the engine over. Then they moved the car outdoors where the temperature was below zero. After the car had chilled there for several hours the researchers installed the NAPA battery and repeated the test. Is this a good experimental design?
A) No, because the car and the batteries were not chosen at random.
B) Yes
C) No, because temperature is confounded by brand.
D) No, because they should have tested more temperatures.
E) No, because they should have tested other brands of batteries, too.
A Fossil Hominid Exhibit at The Museum of Osteology, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
A pleasant smile can go a long way, even through telephone lines.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Seagram Building, New York City.
Scheduling patient appointments by telephone.
Adding a Poll on Biology Forums
The charge for telephone calls T is partly constant and partly varies with the number N of ...