A team of environmental biologists is studying the concentration of mercury in tilefish. They catch 200 tilefish in the same are
a in the Gulf of Mexico, and take muscle tissue samples from an identical site in each fish. They homogenize the tissue sample (chop it into small pieces so that it is the same throughout) from each fish and take 5 samples which are analyzed for mercury. What is the most likely reason the biologists caught so many fish, and analyzed so many samples from each fish? Question 4 options:
because they expect widely varying results from each fish
to improve their efficiency in processing fish samples
to obtain an average that accurately represents fish from this area
because the remaining tissue could be used in another experiment
The answer "to obtain an average that accurately represents fish from this area
" should be the answer because a large sample size is crucial for being a good representation of the whole population, and by taking many samples from each fish scientists can then determine the average mercury concentration within each fish, which then allow them to give a good estimate of the mercury concentration in the fish population because of their sufficient sample size.
