Question

A friend of yours is not taking statistics, wonders why it is that anyone would choose to take a sample. "Obviously," she says, "you would get better information from a census." In a short paragraph, explain why it is that statisticians take samples rather than taking a cenus.

Answer 1

A census is where you poll everybody; a sample is where you choose a group of people to poll. Taking a census is inefficient because you can get almost completely accurate information from a large sample, but a sample would take significantly less time than a census since you wouldn't have to poll absolutely everybody in a population.