Activity

1. A study in a school to determine the average height of high school students. Tell which of the
following samples would be fair or unfair samples? Give reasons
a. the basketball team
b. every 5th person from an alphabetical list of all boys
c. the first three students who enter each homeroom on Monday
d. all 15 year old students
e. The senior classes in high school
- Choosing option A, the basketball team, as the sample of the study may constitute a loophole for
the entire research. This is because the focus of the study is to determine the “average” height of the
entire high school students, if we choose the basketball team the height measurement will be limited
to the minimum requirement that a player has and not concerning the whole high school students
in general. Also, for the second option, it will be unfair for the study since it only includes boys
which we all know have a material difference I height with girls making it not concerning gain the
entire population in general. On the other hand, option C might constitute fairness since it gives all
the elements of the population equal chance or probability of being chosen as a sample since it uses
Simple random sampling. However, the only flaw it has is that it limits to students present on
Monday only making it a little unfair. For options D and E, the fairness depends on the focus of the
study because it can entail cluster sampling which choses one final cluster which is either all 15 year
old students or the senior classes in high school.
2. A student in school wants to find out the TV shows the students watch. Which of the following samples
would be fair or unfair sample? Give reasons
a. the students in a school canteen
- This situation might fall under convenience sampling which chooses the most preferred location or
venue to conduct the study. This does not give equal opportunities for the rest of the population making it
a little bit unfair in general.
b. all members of the school choir
- Without deeper context, this situation might entail fair sample because it can actually fall down to
cluster sampling. Furthermore, choir members are of various students, meaning there are dynamics of
student demographics which follows the thought if giving equal probability to every element.
c. every 10th student in the alphabetical list in each class
- This entails systematic random sampling which basically constitutes fair sample because equal chances
are given to every element with a system of choosing who to include which in this case, refers to every
10th student.
d. the students waiting in a gym to watch basketball match
- This might constitute fair sample in such a way that it does not limit the sample to any certain
demographics. All students who are in the gym might be randomly selected as a sample. However, the
flaw this sample has is that it limits the location or venue because it does state that for the students in the
gym only which might represent convenience sampling, making it a little bias.
3. Suppose there are 50 students in your class. Explain how you will choose:
a. a simple random sample of 10 students
- There are many ways we can constitute simple random sampling in this case, one would be the popular
fish bowl method. We can put the names of the 50 students in a container then randomly choose 10 from
it. Also, we can use in Excel the function of RAND.
b. a systematic random sample of 10 students
- We can execute systematic random sampling by actually using the master list of the section. In the
master list, where students’ names are written in alphabetical order, we choose every 5 th student from the
list. This comes from our computed ratio when we divide the population by the desired sample size.
4. Your school wants to find the mean income of the families of the students in school. Describe how you
would choose a stratified random sampling of the families of the students of the school.
-Stratified random sampling in this case can be executed by dividing the entire population into strata. The
strata might include year levels, from 1st year to 4th year. In each stratum, we choose randomly our sample
base on the ratio of the entire population. In this way we are giving every element the chance to be
included as the sample. When we finally chose sample from each stratum, focus on the study by
collecting data about their families’ income.