A club wanted to determine whether it could increase attendance by changing its weekly meetings from Tuesday to anoth...

Ravina on March 16, 2022

CAN SOMEONE ELABORATE WHY B IS THE ANSWER?

It would really help to see how we got to that answer to help me better understand.

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Emil-Kunkin on March 18, 2022

Hi Ravina,

We are looking to find the error in the President's reasoning. The president asked people at a Tuesday meeting if they had an issue with Tuesday, and they overwhelmingly did not have an issue with that time, so the president concluded that Tuesday is a good day to hold meetings.

This is flawed because of a sampling error. Rather than asking all members of the club, the president only asked those who were at a meeting on a tuesday. This group of club members is unlikely to be representative of all club members. Since the meeting was on a tuesday, those who attended would by definition have been able to attend on a tuesday.

Let's take an analogous situation. Ask a group of people who were standing on top of a mountain if they were able to climb a mountain. If they all agreed, we would then say that every person was able to climb a mountain. This is not a reasonable conclusion, because the only people we asked were those who had already done it. This is the same error the club president commits.

By asking only those members present on a Tuesday, they automatically excluded those who were unable to attend on tuesday. Therefore, the people present on Tuesday are not representative of all members, who may have had conflicts that day.