Question: In a nationwide survey of 1000 companies with more than 50 employees, managers, were asked to rank various factors that influence their decisions in hiring employees. Each factor was ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not important and 10 being very important. The factor "educational background" received a mean ranking of 7.2.

a. Is the sample mean of 7.2 exactly the same as the population mean? Please explain.

b. If another sample of 1000 companies is taken, do you expect the sample mean to be 7.2 again? Why or why not?

c. Repeating this experiment many times with different samples, what values for the sample means would be possible? What values would repeat more often?