Bridge tour. Highestbridges.com, created by bridge architecture design and engineering expert Eric Sakowski, will be conducting the eighth annual High Over China Bridge Tour in September 2021. During this tour, participants will visit some major bridges in China, including the Beipanjiang Bridge, which is 565 m high and, as of 2016, the highest bridge in the world. To make its selection of bridges for this tour, Highestbridges.com has referred to information from various repositories including, China’s BRIDGE website (en.chinabridge.org.cn).

a. What is the variable of interest to the tour organizers?

b. Is the variable of interest quantitative or qualitative?

c. Are the bridges that will be visited a sample or a population in this context? Explain.

d. What data-collection method is used by the organizers? *1.31 Monitoring product quality. The Wallace Company of Houston is a distributor of pipes, valves, and fittings to the refining, chemical, and petrochemical industries. The company was a recent winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. One of the steps the company takes to monitor the quality of its distribution process is to send out a survey twice a year to a subset of its current customers, asking the customers to rate the speed of deliveries, the accuracy of invoices, and the quality of the packaging of the products they have received from Wallace.

a. Describe the process studied.

b. Describe the variables of interest.

c. Describe the sample.

d. Describe the inferences of interest.

e. What are some of the factors that are likely to affect the reliability of the inferences?