Final answer:
The correct answer is option: D) Creating separate decision thresholds for each group, could mitigate the impact of an artificially inflated worthiness score. The ±3 percent sampling error indicates the margin of error in poll results. Increasing the sample size is a way to decrease sampling error, and differential privacy can provide more data while protecting privacy.
Step-by-step explanation:
If we know one group's worthiness score has been artificially inflated, an approach to rectify this for fairness could be creating separate decision thresholds for each group. This method acknowledges the discrepancy and attempts to mitigate its impact without penalizing the inflated group or artificially adjusting other groups' scores. While removing the group from the dataset might seem like a simple solution, it doesn't resolve the issue of fairness for the inflated group. Adding the inflation to other data or balancing the error rate by prioritizing the other group could introduce additional biases instead of solving the initial problem.
The ±3 percent sampling error indicates the range within which the true value is expected to lie with a certain level of confidence. It is the margin of error for the poll's results; hence if a candidate's reported support is 50%, we can be certain that the true support is between 47% and 53%.
To decrease the sampling error, one could increase the sample size. More data points tend to lead to a more accurate representation of the whole population, hence lowering the likelihood of a sampling error. Additionally, using differential privacy technologies or institutional mechanisms can give researchers access to more data while protecting individual privacy, leading to more reliable outcomes.