REAL EXAMPLES OF SAMPLING PROBLEMS D .Meeter

FSU Stat.

1. The Commerce Department of Florida wishes to know what proportion of air travelers to Florida are tourists. How would you design a sample survey to sample the largest 13 airports to get monthly figures for each airport and for the state as a whole? Also, they wish to have the same information concerning car travelers.

2. The Revenue Department wants to see whether a major discount chain is correctly ringing up sales tax. This chain has over 160 stores in Florida.

3. The Florida State University wants to know how many square feet of each type of room space it has (classrooms, laboratories, offices, hallways, closets, bathrooms, locker rooms, auditoria, etc.) Blueprints are available for each floor of every building giving the square footage of all rooms.

4. The Department of Transportation wants to have a method of sampling the vaults in which tollway receipts are sent to the bank to safeguard against "skimming" the money.

5. The Department of Agriculture wants to have a method of sampling orange groves so that, if the groves are destroyed due to citrus canker, a fair compensation can be agreed upon.

6. The Department of Agriculture wants to have a method of sampling trucks loaded with fertilizer so that it can determine whether the customer is getting "8-8-8" when that is what they pay for.

7. The Department of Natural Resources wants to sample bird hunters who use state land to see how many birds they shoot.

8. A major manufacturing company want to know what percent of vouchers are charged to the wrong account, overall and for 53 different departments, or for 143 accounts.

9. The Department of Agriculture wants to evaluate its method of sampling pine plantations to estimate the percent surviving.

10. A biologist wants to know how many species of arthropods live in the water off of Turkey Point.

11. WFSU-FM wants to know how many people listen to it.

12. The Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services wants to know what factors govern elderly people's choice of living quarters.

Terms to identify: population, elements, measurement, sampling units, frame, strata.

Terms to discuss: reliability and validity of response measurement.