An administrator at a large university wants to conduct a survey to estimate the proportion of
students who are satisfied with the appearance of the university buildings and grounds. The
administrator is considering three methods of obtaining a sample of 500 students from the
70,000 students at the university.
A) Because of financial constraints, the first method the administrator is considering consists
of taking a convenience sample ton keep the expenses low. A very large number of students will
attend the first football game of the season, and the first 500 students who enter the football
stadium could be used as a sample. Why might such a sampling method be biased in producing
an estimate of the proportion of students who are satisfied with the appearance of the buildings
and grounds? - Answers The first 500 students do not represent the whole population of the
school. It is likely that most of those students that attended the football game have school pride,
which could be related to their opinion about how the school looks.
An administrator at a large university wants to conduct a survey to estimate the proportion of
students who are satisfied with the appearance of the university buildings and grounds. The
administrator is considering three methods of obtaining a sample of 500 students from the
70,000 students at the university.
B) Because of the large number of students at the university, the second method the
administrator is considering consists of using a computer with a random number generator to
select a simple random sample of 500 students from a list of 70,000 student names. Describe
how to implement such a method. - Answers Get a list of all 70,000 students @ the university
and give each one a # from 1 to 70000. Then use a computer to generate 500 random integers
from b/w 1 and 70000 w/o replacement. The students whose #s are picked are selected for the
sample.
An administrator at a large university wants to conduct a survey to estimate the proportion of
students who are satisfied with the appearance of the university buildings and grounds. The
administrator is considering three methods of obtaining a sample of 500 students from the
70,000 students at the university.
C) Because stratification can often provide a more precise estimate than a simple random
sample, the third method the administrator is considering consists of selecting a stratified
random sample of 500 students. The university has two campuses with male and female
students at each campus. Under what circumstance(s) would stratification by campus provide a
more precise estimate of the proportion of students who are satisfied with the appearance of
the university buildings and grounds the stratification by gender? - Answers Stratifying by
campus would be beneficial over stratifying by gender if the opinions about the schools
appearance differ more b/w the two campuses than if by gender.
As a part of the United States Department of Agriculture's Super Dump cleanup efforts in the
, early 1990s, various sites in the country were targeted for cleanup. Three of the targeted sites-
River X, River Y, and River Z- had become contaminated with pesticides because they were
located near abandoned pesticide dump sites. Measurements of the concentration of aldrin (a
commonly used pesticide) were taken at twenty randomly selected locations in each river near
the dump sites. The boxplots shown below display the five-number summaries for the
concentrations, in parts per million (ppm) of aldrin, for the twenty locations that were sampled
in each of the three rivers.
A) Compares the distributions of concentration of aldrin among the three rivers. - Answers The
median concentration of aldrin tends to be highest for river X and lowest for river Z. About 50%
of the concentrations of aldrin for river X and river Y are higher than all of the concentrations of
river Z. River X is skewed right, River Y is roughly symmetric, and River Z is slightly skewed left.
As a part of the United States Department of Agriculture's Super Dump cleanup efforts in the
early 1990s, various sites in the country were targeted for cleanup. Three of the targeted sites-
River X, River Y, and River Z- had become contaminated with pesticides because they were
located near abandoned pesticide dump sites. Measurements of the concentration of aldrin (a
commonly used pesticide) were taken at twenty randomly selected locations in each river near
the dump sites. The boxplots shown below display the five-number summaries for the
concentrations, in parts per million (ppm) of aldrin, for the twenty locations that were sampled
in each of the three rivers.
B) Construct a stemplot that displays the concentrations of aldrin for River X - Answers 3 I 47
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As a part of the United States Department of Agriculture's Super Dump cleanup efforts in the
early 1990s, various sites in the country were targeted for cleanup. Three of the targeted sites-
River X, River Y, and River Z- had become contaminated with pesticides because they were
located near abandoned pesticide dump sites. Measurements of the concentration of aldrin (a
commonly used pesticide) were taken at twenty randomly selected locations in each river near
the dump sites. The boxplots shown below display the five-number summaries for the
concentrations, in parts per million (ppm) of aldrin, for the twenty locations that were sampled
in each of the three rivers.
C) Describe a characteristic of the distribution of aldrin concentrations in River X that can be
seen the stemplot but cannot be seen in the boxplot. - Answers The stemplot reveals that there