Question: 2. A news program is doing a report on a controversial court case. Daniel VanHowen is being prosecuted for killing a woman in the park,
2. A news program is doing a report on a controversial court case. Daniel VanHowen is being prosecuted for killing a woman in the park, but all the evidence is circumstantial. Right before sentencing, the TV program decides to poll the TV-viewing audience. They wish to estimate the proportion of all people who think Mr. VanHowen is guilty. They decide to post a question on their Web site and ask the TV-viewing audience to answer it.
a. If the TV program plans to use these results to learn about how all people think about the case, why will the results be questionable?
b. The TV program decides to announce during the program that these opinions only reflect the TV-viewing, computer-using audience. They close the poll after 10 minutes. They had 2371 responses, of which 1542 think that Mr. VanHowen is guilty. What could the news programs have done to reduce the margin of error of the sample percentage of viewers who think that Mr. VanHowen is guilty?
c. Joseph, who works behind the scenes at this news program, decides to do a small opinion poll among the staff members. He walks around and asks everybody he can find: Don't you agree that Mr. VanHowen is guilty? What type of bias would this question lead to?
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