Question

Consider the population that consists of all students enrolled at your college. a. Give an example of a question about this population that could be answered by collecting data and using it to estimate a population characteristic. b. Give an example of a question about this population that could be answered by collecting data and using it to test a claim about this population.

Short answer

Examples of questions about the student population at the college that could be answered by collecting data: a) A population characteristic could be estimated with the question - 'What is the average age of the students?' b) A claim about the population could be tested with the question - 'Is there a significant difference between the mean GPA of male and female students?'

Step-by-step solution

Understand statistical approach to estimate a population characteristic

Estimating a population characteristic involves us taking a sample from the population and using this to infer something about the population as a whole. For example, a question that could be answered by collecting data to estimate a population characteristic for the student population at the college could be: 'What is the average age of the students enrolled at our college?' To answer this, we collect data, we could take a random sample of students from the college, calculate their average age, and then use this as an estimation of the average age of all the students at the college.

Understand statistical process to test a claim about a population

Testing a claim about the population involves formulating a hypothesis about the population, then collecting data to test whether the data supports this claim. An example of a question about the student population at the college that could be answered by collecting data to test a claim could be: 'Is there a significant difference between the mean GPA of male and female students at our college?' In this case, the claim (or hypothesis) is that there is a difference in mean GPA between male and female students. We could collect data on the GPAs of a samples of male and female students, and perform a t-test to see if there is a significant difference.