Back to Understand that statistics can be used to gain information about a population by examining a sample — Problem 4 · Task Set 34

Understanding Statistics and Sampling

Grade 7·21 problems·~35 min·Common Core Math - Grade 7·standard·7-sp-a-1

Work through problems with immediate feedback

Fluency Practice

A health research team randomly selects $2{,}000$ adults from a national medical registry and finds that those who sleep $7$ – $8$ hours per night have fewer health problems. Which best describes the quality of this study's sample?

Low quality — the sample is too small to tell us anything about all adults.

Low quality — only adults registered in a medical system were eligible, which may systematically miss groups without regular access to medical care.

High quality — the sample is large, randomly selected from a broad population, and likely to produce a reliable estimate.

High quality — scientists conducted the study, so it must be reliable.