STAT2114/6114 Assignment 1

You would like to, with security cameras and surveillance videos, analyze the average number of brush
turkeys visiting your neighborhood in the past 10 workdays, assuming that they have some time-off during
the weekends. To do so you selected 5 from these 10 workdays and counted the number of brush turkeys in
your neighborhood in these 5 selected workdays. Below, you should try to include some middle steps and
try to do all the calculations by hand or with a non-programmable calculator.

Question 1 [2 mark]
a) [1 mark] What’s the observation unit in this survey sampling? (Any reasonable answer is fine)

b) [1 mark] What’s the targeted population in this survey sampling? (Any reasonable answer is fine)

Question 2 [9 mark]
Part 1
Suppose you select these 5 workdays with simple random sampling. Suppose the number of brush turkeys
visiting your neighborhood in these 5 selected days is, respectively,

6, 5, 4, 3, 2

a) [1 mark] What’s the sample mean?

b) [1 mark] What’s the sample variance?

c) [2 mark] Suppose the assumptions for normal approximation hold. Suppose the 0.975 upper quantile
0.05/2
for the t distribution with degrees of freedom 4 is given by t4 = 2.78. Could you construct a 95% con-
fidence interval for the average numbers of brush turkeys visiting your neighborhood in the past 10 workdays?

d) [1 mark] Suppose the assumptions for normal approximation hold. Suppose you choose to approxi-
mate the population variance by the sample variance in b) and use the quantile of the normal distribution
to construct a confidence interval. Recall population size is 10. How many times a confidence interval under
sample size 2 will be wider than a confidence interval under sample size 5?

Part 2
Now you decided to go through the surveillance videos in the past 10 workdays and found the number of
brush turkeys visiting your neighborhood in these 10 workdays is, respectively,

11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2

1
e) [1 mark] What’s the population mean?

f ) [1 mark] Does your 95% confidence interval in c) cover the population mean in e)? If not, what’s
wrong with your confidence interval?

g) [1 mark] What’s the population variance?

h) [1 mark] What’s the variance of the sample mean, given this population?

Question 3 [4 mark]
Now suppose you instead select these 5 workdays with stratified sampling. In particular
• In the previous 10 workdays, there are 2 Mon, 2 Tue, 2 Wed, 2 Thu, and 2 Fri.
• In your stratified sampling, you randomly select 1 Mon, 1 Tue, 1 Wed, 1 Thu, and 1 Fri.

Let Ni and ȳi be the population size and sample average in each stratum. Let ȳstr below be the strata-
weighted sample mean, which can estimate the population mean.
5
X Ni
ȳstr = ȳi
i=1
N

Suppose you found the numbers brush turkeys visiting your neighborhood in the previous 10 workdays are
indeed
Mon: 11, 10; Tue: 9, 8; Wed: 7, 6; Thu: 5, 4; Fri 3, 2
What’s the variance of ȳstr given this population? Compared your answer to Question 2h); which of simple
random sampling and stratified sampling has smaller variance for their estimator for the population mean,
given this population?