If the absenteeism rates for a school district rise above 10%, the state reduces its aid to the school district. Stermerville Independent School District takes a sample of five schools within the district and finds the following absenteeism rates: 5.4%, 8.6%, 4.1%, 8.9%, and 7.8%. What is your best estimate of the absenteeism rate in Stermerville? Is it likely that the absenteeism rate is greater than 10%?

In this case, the universe or total population will be all Stermerville schools. If we assume that the sample of 5 schools is a representative sample, then what happens in that sample can be extrapolated to the rest of the universe (the other Stermerville schools). Here the independent variable is discrete and it is the schools, while the events are the percentage of absenteeism. Therefore, a good estimate of total absenteeism would be the average absenteeism of these 5 schools. In other words, the average absenteeism in Stermerville is approximately 7.0 % (does not exceed 10 %).

The percentage of total absenteeism can be calculated in this way because all Stermerville students are distributed among all schools. Therefore, the percentage of total absenteeism is equal to the total number of absent students among the total number of students, which is equivalent to the average percentage of absent students in all schools.