MathCastle
Statistics & DataSuperchallengeSampling Distributions

Sampling Distributions · Superchallenge problem

A town is 60%60\% rural and 40%40\% urban. Rural incomes have mean 5050 and SD 1010; urban incomes have mean 6060 and SD 2020 (thousands of dollars). A simple random sample of 100100 residents is compared with a stratified sample of 6060 rural and 4040 urban residents, whose estimate is 0.6xˉrural+0.4xˉurban0.6\bar x_{\text{rural}} + 0.4\bar x_{\text{urban}}. Treating the town as very large, by what factor is the variance of the simple random sample's mean larger than the variance of the stratified estimate? Express your answer as a common fraction.