Some of the most widely publicized surveys are those related to elections. Sometimes the projections made even a day before an election are grotesquely inaccurate, yet the exit polls on the day of election are almost always accurate. How do you explain this difference in the degree of accuracy?
Rent-A-Car Co. executives believe that the company accounts for about 50% of all ABCs that are rented. To test this belief, a researcher randomly identifies twenty major airports with on-site rental car lots. Observers are sent to each location and instructed to record the number of Rental Company ABCs observed in a four-hour period. About 500 are observed, and 30% are observed being returned to Rent- A-Car Co. What are the implications of this finding for the company executives’ belief? Can the company executives generalize these findings in order to make operational decisions?
