A researcher who wants to study income inequality in counties across the United States is excited to learn that he can access data for every county from the American Community Survey. His plan is to draw a sample of 100 counties from the entire population of more than 3,000 counties. To assess the validity of his sample statistics, he plans to estimate how far sample statistics would be, on average, from the actual population parameters.

a. Can the researcher estimate how far statistics would fall from the county parameters, on average? If he can do it, explain how. If he cannot, explain why.

b. Do you agree with the researcher’s plan to draw a sample from the population to learn about county-level inequality across the United States?