Assignment #4 Designing Samples
The Student Assembly at Baruch College
wants to determine which activity students would most enjoy: a dance, an ice
cream social, a carnival, or a movie night. The SA has one week to survey
students and gather the input it needs to make a decision. Because Baruch has a
large student body of over 2,000, contacting each student is not reasonable, so
members of the SA agree to contact a sample of students.
1. Several students have ideas on how
to gather this information. Consider each of the following suggestions. Describe
the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
a. Kira suggests that the
thirty Student Assembly members should vote on which activity is most
favorable.
b. Dorian suggests that
each member ask five friends which activity they prefer. Therefore, 150
students would be sampled.
c. Jewel suggests placing a
comment box in the cafeteria, so that any student can participate in the
sample.
d. Matt thinks that the SA
should select several professors at random and survey students in their classes.
e. Grace knows that the computer in the
student records office can select students at random who can be included in the
sample.
2. Describe a different method that
could be used to generate a sample of Baruch College students to vote on which
activity they prefer. Use what you know about sampling to justify your answer.
3. For each of the following sampling
methods, identify the groups in the population that are underrepresented.
a. To obtain a sample of
households, a consumer reporter dials numbers taken at random from a telephone
directory.
b. A car manufacturer
wishes to survey a sample of drivers, so he randomly selects the names of car
owners from a list of vehicle registrations.
c. A college professor
wants to know what percentage of young adults, ages 18 to 22, consider
education a top priority. He obtains a list of all students on campus from the
registrar and randomly selects names from the list.
d. A radio station wishes to examine
the proportion of its listeners who voted in the last presidential election.
They conduct a poll by asking listeners to call the station.
4. Now think about how you could sample
the student population at School of the Future. How would you distribute your
survey in order to obtain representative data.?
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