Question

I have a giant jar, like a silo. Inside this silo is a bunch of marbles. The colors of the marbles are red, blue, green, orange, and yellow. I'm really curious how many red marble are in the creepy silo (I really like red). There are way too many in the silo for me to look at all of them, so I decide to take a look at a sample of marbles. To do this, I made a hole in the side of the silo and some marbles fell out. In my sample of 50 marbles, I get 25 red and 25 of the other colors. I go home and tell my wife that I found a giant silo that is filled halfway with red marbles (she's not excited).

Do you think I have enough evidence to say that it is filled half way with red marbles based on the way that I sampled? Why or why not?

Answer 1

No, the method of sampling is wrong an hence there isn't enough evidence to say that it is filled half way with red marbles.

It could have been possible, that the particular place from where the hole was made had a higher concentration of red balls than the other colored balls. In which case it could have been possible that if I had made a hole elsewhere then I might have had a different concentration for red colored balls. Hence, it is not correct to assume that you have enough evidence to support with this sampling that the jar is half filled with red balls.