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. For each scenario, identify the kind of sample used by the university administrators: i. Select several dormitories at random and contact everyone living in the selected dorms. ii. Using a computer-based list of registered students, contact 200 freshmen, 200 sophomores, 200 juniors, and 200 seniors selected at random from each class. iii. Using a computer-based alphabetical list of registered students, select one of the first 25 on the list by random and then contact the student whose name is 50 names later, and then every 50 names beyond that.

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?

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.

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

The managers of a large company wished to know the percentage of employees who feel "extremely satisfied" to work there. The company has roughly 24,000 employees. They contacted a random sample of employees and asked them about their job satisfaction, obtaining 437 completed responses. For each scenario suggested by a different manager, determine the sampling method. i. Use the company e-mail directory to contact 150 employees from among those employed for less than 5 years, 150 from among those employed for 5-10 years, and 150 from among those employed for more than 10 years. ii. Use the company e-mail directory to contact every 50th employee on the list. iii. Select several divisions of the company at random. Within each division, draw an SRS of employees to contact.

The company plans to have the head of each corporate division hold a meeting of their employees to ask whether they are happy on their jobs. They will ask people to raise their hands to indicate whether they are happy. What problems do you see with this plan?

A company hoping to assess employee satisfaction surveys employees by assigning computer-generated random numbers to each employee on a list of all employees and then contacting all those whose assigned random number is divisible by 7. Is this a simple random sample?

Occasionally, when I fill my car with gas, I figure out how many miles per gallon my car got. I wrote down those results after six fill-ups in the past few months. Overall, it appears my car gets 28.8 miles per gallon. a) What statistic have I calculated? b) What is the parameter I'm trying to estimate? c) How might my results be biased? d) When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) checks a car like mine to predict its fuel economy, what parameter is it trying to estimate?

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.

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

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?

A local TV station conducted a “PulsePoll” about the upcoming mayoral election. Evening news viewers were invited to phone in their votes, with the results to be announced on the latenight news. Based on the phone calls, the station predicted that Amabo would win the election with 52% of the vote. They were wrong: Amabo lost, getting only 46% of the vote. Do you think the station’s faulty prediction is more likely to be a result of bias or sampling error? Explain

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.

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.