Administrators at Texas A&M University were interested in estimating the percentage of students who are the first in their family to go to college. The A&M student body has about 46,000 members. How might the administrators answer their question by applying the three Big Ideas?

Administrators at a university were interested in estimating the percentage of students who are the first in their family to go to college. The student body has about 50,000 members. How might the administrators answer their question by applying the three Big Ideas?

Administrators at Texas A&M University were interested in estimating the percentage of students who are the first in their family to go to college. The A&M student body has about 46,000 members. A professor teaching a large lecture class of 350 students samples her class by rolling a die. Then, starting with the row number on the die (1 to 6), she passes out a survey to every fourth row of the large lecture hall. She says that this is a Simple Random Sample because everyone had an equal opportunity to sit in any seat and because she randomized the choice of rows. What do you think? Be specific.

The company 's annual report states, "Our survey shows that 87.34% of our employees are 'very happy 'working here." Comment on that claim. Use appropriate statistics terminology.

The president of the university plans a speech to an alumni group. He plans to talk about the proportion of student who responded in the survey that they are the first in their family to attend college, but the first draft of his speech treats that proportion as the actual proportion of current A&M students who are the first in their families to attend college. Explain to the president the difference between the proportion of respondents who are first attenders and the proportion of the entire student body that are first attenders. Use appropriate statistics terminology.

A professor teaching a large lecture class of 350 students samples her class by rolling a die. Then, starting with the row number on the die (1 to 6), she passes out a survey to every fourth row of the large lecture hall. She says that this is a Simple Random Sample because everyone had an equal opportunity to sit in any seat and because she randomized the choice of rows. What do you think? Be specific.

Concerned about reports of discolored scales on fish caught downstream from a newly sited chemical plant, scientists set up a field station in a shoreline public park. For one week, they asked fishermen there to bring any fish they caught to the field station for a brief inspection. At the end of the week, the scientists said that 18% of the 234 fish that were submitted for inspection displayed the discoloration. From this information, can the researchers estimate what proportion of fish in the river have discolored scales? Explain.

How long is your arm compared with your hand size? Put your right thumb at your left shoulder bone, stretch your hand open wide, and extend your hand down your arm. Put your thumb at the place where your little finger is, and extend down the arm again. Repeat this a third time. Now your little finger will probably have reached the back of your left hand. If your arm is less than four hand widths, turn your hand sideways and count finger widths until you reach the end of your middle finger. a) How many hand and finger widths is your arm? b) Suppose you repeat your measurement 10 time s and average your results . What parameter would this average estimate? What is the population? c) Suppose you now collect arm lengths measured in this way from 9 friends and average these 10 measurements. What is the population now? What parameter would this average estimate? d) Do you think these 10 arm lengths are likely to be representative of the population of arm lengths in your community? In the country? Why or why not?

Administrators at Texas A&M University were interested in estimating the percentage of students who are the first in their family to go to college. The A&M student body has about 46,000 members. The president of the university plans a speech to an alumni group. He plans to talk about the proportion of students who responded in the survey that they are the first in their family to attend college, but the first draft of his speech treats that proportion as the actual proportion of current A&M students who are the first in their families to attend college. Explain to the president the difference between the proportion of respondents who are first attenders and the proportion of the entire student body that are first attenders. Use appropriate statistics terminology.

Examine each of the following questions for possible bias. If you think the question is biased, indicate how and propose a better question.

Do you think high school students should be required to wear uniforms?

Major League Baseball tests players to see whether they are using performance-enhancing drugs. Officials select a team at random, and a drug-testing crew show up unannounced to test all 40 players on the team. Each testing day can be considered a study of drug use in Major League Baseball. a) What kind of sample is this? b) Is that choice appropriate?

What problems do you see with asking the following question of students? "Are you the first member of your family to seek higher education?"

Consider each of these situations. Do you think the proposed sampling method is appropriate? Explain. a) We want to know what percentage of local doctors accept Medicaid patients. We call the offices of 50 doctors randomly selected from local Yellow Pages listings. b) We want to know what percentage of local businesses anticipate hiring additional employees in the upcoming month. We randomly select a page in the Yellow Pages and call every business listed there.

(a) Explain why -x² will always be a negative number for any nonzero real numbers selected for x. (b) Explain why (-x)² will always be a positive number for any nonzero real number selected for x.