Howard collected data from a random sample of 600 people in his department asking whether or not they use the company's healthcare. Based on the results, he reports that 48% of the people in his company use the company's healthcare. Why is this statistic misleading

This statistic is misleading because Howard surveys only his department, and not membes of all the departments that the company has.

Step-by-step explanation:

This is a common statistics practice, when we want to study something from a population, we find a sample of this population.

However, the sample has to be representative

For example:

I want to estimate the proportion of New York state residents who are Buffalo Bills fans. So i ask, lets say, 1000 randomly selected Buffalo residents wheter they are Buffalo Bills fans, and expand this to the entire population of New York State residents. This is not representative of all New York State residents, just Buffalo residents.

In this problem, we have that:

Howard wants to know the proportion of employees of a company who use the company's healthcare. He asks only his department. However, a company as multiple departments, which leads to the statistics found in Howard's survey being misleading.