Texas A&M Administrators at Texas A&M University were interested in estimating the

Chapter 11, Problem 37

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Texas A&M 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) What problems do you see with asking the following question of students? Are you the first member of your family to seek higher education? b) 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. c) 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. d) For each of these proposed survey designs, identify the problem and the effect it would have on the estimate of the percentage of students who are the first in their family to go to college. i. Publish an advertisement inviting students to visit a website and answer questions. ii. Set up a table in the student union and ask students to stop and answer a survey. e) 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.