Question

Determine whether each sample method is unbiased or biased. If the method is unbiased, use it to make a prediction. If the method is biased, explain why. 1. A cable company representative randomly calls 250 households to determine how many customers subscribe to the movie channels. Of the 250 households contacted, 22% do not subscribe to movie channels. If there are 5,240 customers, how many do not subscribe to movie channels.

Answer 1

The representative took a sample to estimate the proportion of customers that do not subscribe to movie channels.

He took a sample from the customer base and the sample proportion he gets is 22% (p = 0.22). This sample proportion is an unbiased estimator of the populations proportion, so we can use it to calculate how many customers do not subscribe to movie channels:

$n=N\cdot p=5240\cdot0.22\approx1153$

Answer: we can estimate that there are 1153 customers that do not subscribe to movie channels.