Question

Martina's favorite Mexican dish is enmoladas con pollo, tortillas filled with chicken and cheese and topped with a spicy sauce. She wants to know how many people in her neighborhood have tried this dish. Martina plans to survey every tenth person who enters a neighborhood Mexican restaurant for one week. Will her survey method produce a representative sample of the people in her neighborhood?

Answer 1

Martina's survey method of sampling every tenth person at a Mexican restaurant may not be representative due to selection bias and time constraints. A random sampling method would lead to a more representative sample.

Step-by-step explanation:

Martina's plan to survey every tenth person who enters a neighborhood Mexican restaurant for one week may not produce a representative sample of the people in her neighborhood. One of the concerns with her method is that it only includes individuals who visit the Mexican restaurant, thereby excluding all those who do not, which could lead to selection bias.

Additionally, the timing of the survey (one week) may not account for varying schedules, meaning that she might miss out on surveying individuals who visit the restaurant on different weeks or at different times.

To increase representativeness, Martina might consider a random sampling method, which could involve randomly selecting participants from the neighborhood's entire population, rather than just the restaurant-goers, and doing so over a longer period or at different times and days to account for variable schedules.