In fall semester 2013, there were 20,329 students at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. There were 10,571 female students and 9758 male students.
a. What proportion of the students were female? Round your result to the third decimal place.
b. By using the numbers 1 through 10,571 to represent the female students and the numbers 10,572 through 20,329 to represent the male students, the author used technology to randomly select 1000 students without replacement. The random sample consisted of 523 female students and 477 male students. What proportion of the sample were female students? Round your result to the third decimal place.
c. Does your result from part (b) equal your result from part (a)? If no, is that due to sampling or nonsampling error?
d. If we did not know the proportion of the population who are female students and used the result we found in part (b) to estimate it, would that be part of descriptive statistics or inferential statistics? Explain.