Question

An airline company advertises that 100% of their flights are on time after checking 5 flights from yesterday and finding that these 5 were on time.
a) What is population of interest?
b) What is the sample?
c) Was this a representative sample? Explain.
d) How should the company determine the percentage of their flights that are on time?

Answer 1

Answer with  explanation:

Given: An airline company advertises that 100% of their flights are on time after checking 5 flights from yesterday and finding that these 5 were on time.

a) population: A large group of observations have characteristics related to the point of the study.

Here, population: "All flights operated by the company"

b) Sample: It is a subset of the population.

Here, Sample: "5 flights from yesterday"

(c)

Since the number of flights per day operated by an airline company is much larger than 5 ( generally in hundreds).

i.e. the sample is too small to be able to assure that the results are true.

Hence, this is not a representative sample.

(d) To determine the percentage of their flights that are on time we use the following formula:

(Number of flights are on time) ÷ (Total flights) x 100