Sabina Has a Cow
One day on the way to market, Sabina notices that seven of her neighbor’s cows have gotten out and
are stomping around in her zucchini patch. Although she is understandably upset, Sabina has always
wondered how many cows the neighbor actually owns since some of the farmers and ranchers tended
to fib a little when it came to the accumulation of land and livestock. Taking into consideration that the
cows have sequentially numbered tags in their ears, she makes a note of the numbers on the seven
cows’ tags before herding them back into their pasture.
Write down the 7 numbers from the cow tags you selected from your bag:
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
Estimate the number of cows in the neighbor’s herd given that the cows are quite thoroughly mixed, so
it’s likely that the seven tags are a random sample from the sequence of numbers assigned to the cows.
For now we’ll assume the sequence begins at 1. Explain how you reached your estimate. Note any
statistics used, calculations performed, or theory applied to reach your conclusion. Post your solution on
a large sticky to share.