For her statistics project, Freda wants to find the proportion of high school students who believe learning math is necessary, regardless of their future majors. She conducts a survey on her statistics classmates and finds that 82% of them believe it is necessary to learn math. Is Freda’s sample a random sample and a good representation of the population in her study? If so, what can Freda conclude about the proportion of high school students who believe learning math is necessary? If not, propose a random sample on which Freda should be conducting her survey.
No, Freda's sample of her statistics classmates is not a random sample and may not be a good representation of the population of high school students as a whole. This is because her sample consists only of statistics classmates, who may have a higher interest or aptitude in math compared to the general population of high school students.
To obtain a random sample that is more representative of the population of high school students, Freda should consider conducting her survey on a larger and more diverse group of high school students from different grade levels and schools. She could randomly select schools and then randomly select students within those schools to participate in her survey. This would help ensure that her sample is more reflective of the overall population of high school students and allow her to draw more accurate conclusions about the proportion of students who believe learning math is necessary.