A sociologist engaged in research on religious attitudes tells her assistant to select a random sample of ten members for interviews from a large suburban church. The sample selected consists of nine women and one man. Upon seeing the uneven distribution of sexes in the sample, the sociologist complains, "This sample can't be random: it's almost all women." Any comments?

Question

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The Answer is Whether or not a sample is random depends on how it was selected, not on its composition; the chance factors involved in random sampling occasionally lead to very atypical samples.

A Sociologist Engaged in Research on Religious Attitudes Tells Her