By Susan A. Peters and AnnaMarie Conner
(Grades 9–12+) Originally published in October 2016, this lesson introduces students to bootstrapping methods for making inferences about a population parameter using a randomly selected sample from the population. Students use random samples of salaries for petroleum engineering graduates—graduates employed in the profession earning the highest mean starting salary in 2014—and technology tools to calculate and interpret interval estimates for the mean population starting salary. They also explore the effects of sample size and confidence level on margin of error. Students draw conclusions using both the context of the activity and bootstrapping distributions generated from simulations. Students’ explorations conclude with drawing inferences about a population proportion.
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