Question

The coach of a college basketball team records the resting pulse rates of the team's players. A confidence interval for the mean resting pulse rate of all collegians based on these data is of little use because __________.
A) the sample size is small, so the margin of error will be large.
B) the members of the basketball team can't be considered a random sample from the entire collegiate population.
C) many of the students on the team may refuse to respond.
D) the coach has sampled the entire population so there is no need for inference.

Answer 1

Answer:

B) the members of the basketball team can't be considered a random sample from the entire collegiate population.

Step-by-step explanation:

The coach is trying to estimate a parameter of a population (the mean resting pulse rates of alla collegians) from a sample statistic (the mean resting pulse of the basketball team's players).

The confidence interval for the parameter is of little use as the sample of team players is not representative of the population of collegians. The sample can not be considered random. Then, the estimation of the parameter will be biased.