Final answer:
The sample in this situation refers to the 30 oysters that the marine biologist randomly selected from the research tank, which is used to make inferences about the entire population in the tank.
Step-by-step explanation:
The sample in this situation is D) The 30 oysters randomly selected from the tank. A sample refers to a subset of individuals selected from a population for the purpose of analysis. In research, understanding the difference between a sample and a population is essential. A sample is a manageable portion of the larger group, and the goal is to make inferences about the larger group based on this subset.
Important Concepts Related to Sampling
- Population: The entire group of individuals or instances that you are interested in studying.
- Sample Mean: An arithmetic average of the sample's observations, used to estimate the population mean.
- Central Tendency: This refers to measures such as the mode, median, and mean that describe the center of a data distribution.
- Sampling: The process of selecting a subset from the population to represent the whole.
When a marine biologist selects 30 oysters from a research tank, these oysters are the sample from which observations and calculations like the mean weight are derived. These results aim to give insights into the characteristics of the population of oysters in the tank.