Author Question: A store manager wishes to determine whether his customers would be prepared to pay a little extra ... (Read 88 times)

KimWrice · **on:** Jul 25, 2018

A store manager wishes to determine whether his customers would be prepared to pay a little extra for organic produce. He uses a random number table to choose 50 random numbers between 1 and 200.

He stands outside the store on a Monday morning between 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon and interviews the people corresponding to the random numbers. For example random number 82 would correspond to the 82nd person to arrive. Do you think that the sample obtained in this way will be representative of all the store's customers?

Question 2

Administrators at a large university want to know the average debt incurred by their graduates. Surveys were mailed to 200 graduating seniors asking them to report their total student loan debt.

Identify the population, sample, and individuals in the study.

meryzewe · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 25, 2018

Answer to Question 1

No; explanations will vary. Possible answer: the sample was obtained from among people shopping on a Monday morning. That group is likely to include a relatively large number of people who do no have full time jobs and a relatively large number of parents. This group may tend to have different views than the entire population of customers. People with young children, for example, may be more concerned than most about the health effects of produce grown with pesticides.

Answer to Question 2

The population of interest is the student loan debt incurred by all graduates of the university. The sample is student loan debt of the 200 graduating seniors that were collected by the university administrators. The individuals are each graduating senior whose student loan debt was recorded.