Question

Suppose a Hallmark employee wants to find out how much money each adult will spend on Valentine's Day this year, on average. He asks every other customer who comes into the store to tell them how much they spend on Valentine's Day. He finds that the 68 participants in his sample spend an average $45 on Valentine's Day. The type of sample he gets is a _______.

1) Random Sample
2) Convenience Sample
3) Stratified Sample
4) Cluster Sample

Answer 1

The Hallmark employee used a Systematic Sample by asking every other customer about their spending, and the mean amount spent on produce being $12.84 describes a Statistic of the sample.

Step-by-step explanation:

The type of sample obtained by the Hallmark employee is a Systematic Sample. A systematic sample is created by selecting every kth individual from the population; in this case, the employee asks every other customer about their spending on Valentine's Day. This technique does not involve random selection, which is a characteristic of a Random Sample. Therefore, options 3) Stratified Sample and 4) Cluster Sample are also incorrect because they involve dividing the population into groups and sampling within these groups, which is not the case here. It is also not a Convenience Sample which would involve sampling individuals who are conveniently available without a set selection criterion.

The correct answer to the question about the study that finds the mean amount spent on produce per visit by the customers in the sample is $12.84 would be a Statistic, since it describes a characteristic of a sample, not the entire population.