You just saw an ad on television that states the majority of the population would vote to make smoking illegal. The poll that is referenced shows 53% of those asked supported making smoking illegal. In the fine print at the bottom of the screen, you see that the margin of error is +/- 3%. What is your reaction? Explain.

The margin of error is a statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in the results of a survey. The larger the margin of error, the less confidence we should have that a poll result would reflect the result of a survey of the entire population.

Formula for confidence interval:

Confidence Interval= p^ +- MOE = 0.53 +- 0.03 = (0.50, 0.56)

This confidence interval reveals that the true proportion of the respondents who would vote to make smoking illegal will lie between 0.50 and 0.56. Thus my reaction would be to not necessarily believe the results since in one case, the results indicate a 50% voting to make smoking illegal.

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