STUDENTS FROM WAYMARSH STATE COLLEGE PROTEST

The following argument appeared in the editorial section of a local newspaper: “This past winter, 200 students from Waymarsh State College traveled to the state capitol building to protest against proposed cuts in funding for various state college programs. The other 12,000 Waymarsh students evidently were not so concerned about their education: they either stayed on campus or left for winter break. Since the group who did not protest is far more numerous, it is more representative of the state’s college students than the protesters. Therefore, the state legislature need not heed the appeals of the protesting students.”
Some of the basic concepts in statistics are population and sample. The term population refers to all measurements or observations of interest. For example, if we want to know the opinion of the students from Waymarsh State College about any particular subject, then the population consists of the opinion of all the students attending this college.
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