AP Stats

Chapter 12 Practice

1. For their class project, a group of Statistics students decides to survey the student body to assess
opinions about the proposed new student center. Their sample of 200 contained 50 first-year students,
50 sophomores, 50 juniors, and 50 seniors.

a) Do you think the group was using an SRS? Why?

This is not an SRS because not every group of 200 had a chance to be chosen. For example, there
Is no way that the group could have all seniors.
b) What sampling design do you think they used? Stratified Sample (strata being class)

2. The website www.buzzfeed.com is an entertainment and news website, known for fun and silly
content. In 2021, a Buzzfeed poll asked visitors of the site to select between 8 different ice cream
choices. Of the 9072 respondents, 17% said that they wanted vanilla ice cream.

a) What kind of sample was this? Voluntary response

b) Define the parameter of interest. The % of people that prefer a particular ice cream flavor
c) How much confidence would you place in using 17% as an estimate of the fraction of people
who prefer vanilla ice cream? None, since the people participating in the survey
were not selected using a random design. This technique introduces bias.

3. Major League Baseball test 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) Who is the population of interest? Major League Baseball Players

b) What kind of sample is this? Cluster
c) Is that choice appropriate? Yes, since a random selection process was used.

4. Consumers Union, in an attempt to get information about U.S. adults, asked all subscribers whether
they had used alternative medical treatments and, if so, whether they had benefited from them. For
almost all of the treatments, approximately 20% of those responding reported cures or substantial
improvement in their condition. Consumers Union received replies from 12% of its subscribers.

a) What is the population of interest? All U.S. adults

b) What is the population parameter of interest? The proportion of adults that have used and
benefited from alternative medicine.
c) What is the sampling frame? All Consumers Union subscribers
d) What was the sample? 12% of Consumer Union subscribers
e) What was the sampling method and was it randomized? Non-randomized Convenience Sample
f) Who (if anyone) was left out of the study? Those who are not Consumers Union subscribers
and those that did not respond.
g) Are there any sources of bias you can detect and any problems you see in generalizing to the
population of interest? Undercoverage bias since the convenience sample leaves out all non-
subscribers. Nonresponse bias because those that did not respond may have responded
differently than those who did respond.
5. In order to determine how adults of legal drinking age in their city feel about whether drinking and
driving was a problem, researchers waited outside a bar they had randomly selected from a list of such
establishments. They rolled a ten-sided die and it came up 4, so they stopped the fourth person who
came out of the bar, then every 10th person after that, and asked whether they thought drinking and
driving was a serious problem.

a) What is the population of interest? All adults from that particular city
b) What is the population parameter of interest? The proportion who think drinking and driving
is a serious problem.
c) What is the sampling frame? Patrons of this particular bar.
d) What was the sample? Every 10th person leaving the bar.
e) What was the sampling method and was it randomized? Randomized Systematic Sample
f) Who (if anyone) was left out of the study? Those who do not go to that bar.
g) Are there any sources of bias you can detect and any problems you see in generalizing to the
population of interest? Those interviewed had just left the bar. They may think drinking and
driving is less of a problem than other adults (convenience and response bias). Also a particular
bar would tend to cater to a certain demographic, which would not represent the entire
population (undercoverage bias).
6. The Environmental Protection Agency took a map of a region near a former industrial waste dump and
placed a grid of 552 squares on it. It randomly selected any 16 of those squares from which to collect
soil samples and checked each for evidence of toxic chemicals.

a) What type of sampling was used? Simple Random Sample (SRS)

b) Is there any sort of bias associated with this sampling procedure? No
c) One researcher suggests that plots closer to the old dump site could contain more
contaminants than those farther away. How could the sampling procedure be improved to take
this into account? They could stratify by distance from the dump site.

7. In a large city school system with 20 elementary schools, the school board is considering the adoption
of a new policy that would require elementary students to pass a test in order to be promoted to the
next grade. The PTA wants to find out whether parents agree with this plan. Listed below are some of
the ideas proposed for gathering data. For each, indicate what kind of sampling strategy is involved
and what (if any) biases might result.

a) Put a big ad in the newspaper asking people to log their opinions on the PTA website.
Voluntary response. Only those who see the ad, have internet access, and feel strongly enough
Will respond which is voluntary response bias.
b) Randomly select one of the elementary schools and contact every parent by phone.
Cluster sampling. We still need to be careful b/c one school may not be typical of all.
c) Send a survey home with every student, and ask parents to fill out and return the next day.
Attempted Census. This will have nonresponse bias.
d) Randomly select 20 parents from each elementary school. Send them a survey, and follow up
with a phone call if they do not return the survey within a week.
Stratified sampling that should be unbiased
8. Two members of the PTA committee in the previous problem have proposed different questions to
ask in seeking parents’ opinions.
Question 1: Should elementary school-aged children have to pass high-stakes tests in order to remain
with their classmates?

Question 2: Should schools and students be held accountable for meeting yearly learning goals by
testing students before they advance to the next grade?

a) Do you think responses to these two questions might differ? How? What kind of bias is this?
Question 1 will probably get many “No” answers while question 2 will probably get many “Yes”
answers. This is response bias due to the wording of the question.
b) Propose a question with more neutral wording that might better assess parental opinion.
Do you think standardized tests are appropriate for deciding whether a student should be
promoted to the next grade? Answers will vary but something similar to this would be good.