A sales person from a computer company is interested in knowing ofall people tha

Question

A sales person from a computer company is interested in knowing ofall people that have purchased a computer, how many also purchaseda printer. She randomly selected 30 customers that have purchased acomputer from her during her career at the company. Based on theresults from the 30 people, she makes an estimate of the totalnumber of people who have bought a computer and printer.

a) What statistical term describes the 30 customers?
b) What statistical term describes all customers who have purchaseda computer?

I'm not sure what statistical words should be used to describe thecustomers. I believe it is sample for part A and population forpart B. Let me know if I am wrong and why those are not the correctterms to use.

Explanation / Answer

Yes, that's right. . That didn't call for much of an answer, so I'll throw in anextra one, just to confuse you :). The customers thatpurchased a computer from her during her career at the companywould be the "sampling frame"--the subset of the population fromwhich you draw your sample. (For example, if you were doing atelephone survey of people in California, the population ofinterest would be residents of California, the sampling frame wouldbe the people whose phone numbers were on whatever list of phonenumbers you were able to put together, and the sample would be thepeople you actually surveyed.) . Actually, looking at the wording of part (b), it's a bitambiguous about whether by "customers who purchased a computer"they mean the "all people who have purchased a computer," which isthe population she's trying to draw inferences on (and thus the"population") or the "customers who have purchased a computer fromher during her time with the company" (which would be the samplingframe). If they intended the population, which is the mostplausible reading, then they should have repeated the word "people"from the first sentence instead of switching to "customers." But they probably would have written part b more carefully ifthey'd intended it to refer to her customers.

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