Discussion
 
Weaknesses:
The biggest weakness of our floppy disk study is that we sampled only fifty AOL disks and fifty Imation disks. Nearly every disk that was tested was marked as good. If the sample size were much larger, we could have seen a different result. Another weakness in the study is that disks were not really a simple random sample. All of our floppy disks for each type came from the same box. Depending on how the factory packages disks into boxes, there is a good chance that all disks tested came from the same machine.

Extrapolation:
Any extrapolation can cause error in the final result to a certain degree. Since our sample sizes are relatively small the amount of error would probably be high. Extrapolating AOL disks would show that all AOL disks are good. Extrapolating Imation disks will show that 49 out of 50 are good.

Corrections:
To make our study more representative of the populations--all AOL and Imation floppies-- the sample sizes should be increased to at least a few thousand. Despite the amount of time and funds it would require, it should produce a more accurate result. If the test for thousands of disks still shows that AOL and Imation disks are the same, then it could be safer to extrapolate that to the entire population.


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