Question

to attract business, a clothing store mails discount coupons to local residents. to estimate the proportion of the store’s shoppers who are using the coupons, the store manager selects a random sample of 100 customers who visit the store on a weekend. the manager finds that 38 of them are using the coupons mailed to their homes. which of the following describes the population in this setting?
all residents of the town
the 38 shoppers who used coupons
the 100 randomly selected shoppers
all shoppers in the store on the weekend

Explanation:

To determine the population, we recall that the population is the entire group about which we want to make inferences. Here, the store manager wants to estimate the proportion of the store’s shoppers (who visit on the weekend) using coupons. So the population should be all shoppers in the store on the weekend.

• "All residents of the town" is too broad as we care about store shoppers, not all residents.
• "The 38 shoppers who used coupons" is a part of the sample (or a statistic), not the population.
• "The 100 randomly selected shoppers" is the sample, not the population.

Answer:

D. all shoppers in the store on the weekend (assuming the options are labeled with letters, and the last option is D. If the original options had labels like A, B, C, D with D being "all shoppers in the store on the weekend", then the answer is D. all shoppers in the store on the weekend)