A greenhouse owner wants to test the effectiveness of a new fertilizer on African violets. She has 60 violet seedlings that were grown for 8 weeks. She wants to test the new fertilizer on 10 of the plants, and decides to use a simple random sample to select them. Which of the following statements is true?

Question

A greenhouse owner wants to test the effectiveness of a new fertilizer on African violets. She has 60 violet seedlings that were grown for 8 weeks. She wants to test the new fertilizer on 10 of the plants, and decides to use a simple random sample to select them. Which of the following statements is true?

She needs to select the 10 biggest plants to test the new fertilizer.
She needs to select the 10 smallest plants to test the new fertilizer.
She needs to number each plant 1–60 and randomly select 10 plants.
She needs to put the plants in 6 groups of 10 and randomly select 1 of the groups.

Answer 1

The statement "She needs to number each plant 1–60 and randomly select 10 plants" is true. To conduct a simple random sample, each plant should be numbered and the selection should be made randomly, ensuring each plant has an equal chance of being selected.