A candidate for a political office claims that he will win the election. A poll is conducted, and 35 of 150 voters indicate that they will vote for the candidate, 100 voters indicate that they will vote for his opponent, and 15 voters are undecided.
a. What is the population parameter of interest?
b. What is the value of the sample statistic that might be used to estimate the population parameter?
a. The population parameter of interest in this scenario is the proportion of voters in the entire population who will vote for the candidate.
b. The value of the sample statistic that might be used to estimate the population parameter is the sample proportion. To calculate this, you divide the number of voters who indicated they will vote for the candidate by the total number of voters in the sample.
In this case, there are 35 voters who indicated they will vote for the candidate out of a total of 150 voters. So, the sample proportion can be calculated as:
Sample Proportion = Number of voters who will vote for the candidate / Total number of voters in the sample
= 35 / 150
Therefore, the value of the sample statistic is 0.2333 (rounded to four decimal places), or approximately 23.33%.