Question

To choose a mascot for a new middle school, 8th-grade students were polled, and their top choice was selected as the mascot. Was the sample a biased sample?

Answer 1

The sample is biased because only 8th-grade students were polled and the choice of 8th grade students might not be the representative choice of other grades in the middle school.

Answer 2

Answer:

Yes, the sample was biased.

Step-by-step explanation:

We are told that to choose a mascot for a new middle school, 8th-grade students were polled, and their top choice was selected as the mascot.

We know that an unbiased sample is an accurate representation of the entire population and it can help us draw conclusions about the population.

For an unbiased sample each member of a population should equally likely to be chosen and the sample should be representative of the population as a whole.  

For an unbiased sampling for mascot students should be chosen randomly from each grade of the middle school.

Since all the students were polled from the same grade, so their choice can not represent the choices of all the students of the school, therefore, the sample was a biased sample.