Since the 2009 pandemic of the H1N1 flu virus, people are now encouraged to take
ID: 3132011 • Letter: S
Question
Since the 2009 pandemic of the H1N1 flu virus, people are now encouraged to take the flu shot every year which includes the H1N1 flu vaccine. A clinic in a small town wants to investigate the effectiveness of their vaccine program ever since they started a new campaign to get more people to get the flu shot, which including having free flu clinics near all big grocery stores and schools. In the month of November 2010, there were a total of 3900 people, aged 6 to 60 years vaccinated. In the month of Jan 2011 the clinic resampled the population and found that a total of 445 people were already vaccinated in the sample of size 900.
a. Give an example of a situation where this capture-recapture method may be applied.
Explanation / Answer
One of the popular method to estimate the total number of individuals in a population is by capture-recapture sampling.
In capture-recapture sampling, an initial sample is obtained and marked.
A second sample is obtained independently and it is noted how many of the individuals in that sample was marked.
Example : This sampling teachnique is used to
i) estimate the abundance of an animal population such as the deer population in a particular state.
ii) to estimate the total number of homeless individuals in a given city.