Question

Each customer entering a department store will either buy or not buy some merchandise. An experiment consists of following 4 customers and determining whether or not they purchase any merchandise. How many sample points exist in the above experiment? (Note that each customer is either a purchaser or non-purchaser.)

A. 2B. 4C. 6D. 8E. none of the above

Answer 1

The experiment consists of following 4 customers and determining whether or not they purchase any merchandise. The total number of sample points is 14.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine the number of sample points in the experiment, we need to consider the number of options each customer has: to buy or not to buy. For each customer, there are 2 possible outcomes. Since there are 4 customers in total, the total number of sample points is equal to 2 multiplied by itself 4 times, which is 2^4 = 16.

However, we need to remember that each customer can either buy or not buy, so the sample points that represent all customers not buying any merchandise or all customers buying merchandise are not possible. Therefore, we subtract these two unrealistic scenarios from the total number of sample points, giving us 16 - 2 = 14.

Therefore, there are 14 sample points in the above experiment. So, the correct answer is E. none of the above.