Answer: the smallest number of people required for the sample to meet the conditions for performing inference is 100
Explanation:
Given that;
36% of US population has never been married
32% are divorced
27% are married
5% are widowed
Taking a simple random sample of individuals to test this claim;
we need expected count in each cell to be at least 5, here the smallest proportion is 5% = 0.05
so we only need to satisfy condition for its expected count;
n × 0.05 ≥ 5
n = 5 / 0.05 = 100
Therefore the smallest number of people required for the sample to meet the conditions for performing inference is 100