Question

Despite protests from civil libertarians and gay rights activists, many people favor mandatory AIDS testing of certain at-risk groups, and some people even believe that all citizens should be tested. What proportion of the adults in the United States favor mandatory testing for all citizens? To assess public opinion on this issue, researchers conducted a survey of 1014 randomly selected adult U.S. citizens ("Large Majorities Continue to Back AIDS Testing," Gallup Poll Monthly [1991]: 25-28). The article reported that 466 of the 1014 people surveyed believed that all citizens should be tested. Use this information to estimate \(\pi\), the true proportion of all U.S. adults who favor AIDS testing of all citizens.

Short answer

The estimated proportion of all U.S. adults who favor mandatory AIDS testing for all citizens, denoted by \(\pi\), can be calculated as \( \pi = \frac{466}{1014} \).

Step-by-step solution

Identify the relevant data

From the exercise, we know that the survey included 1014 people, and out of these, 466 were in favor of mandatory testing. So, these are the values we will use to do the calculation.

Calculate the proportion

The proportion is calculated by dividing the number of people favoring mandatory testing (466) by the total number surveyed (1014). This will give us the estimated proportion (\(\pi\)) of all US adults who favor mandatory AIDS testing of all citizens.

Perform the calculation

The calculation is thus \( \pi = \frac{466}{1014} \)