An island has 12 fur seal rookeries breeding places To estim

An island has 12 fur seal rookeries (breeding places). To estimate the fur seal pup population in Rookery A,

5827

fur seal pups were tagged in early August. In late August, a sample of

500

pups was observed, and

204

of these were found to have been previously tagged. Use a proportion to estimate the total number of fur seal pups in Rookery A.The estimated total number of fur seal pups in Rookery A is

nothing.

(Round to the nearest whole number.)

Enter your answer in the answer box.

Solution

After the 5827 pups tagged in early august were released, they mixed uniformly with the whole seal population. The result of this mixing was as found in late august, but those 500 observed in late august gave a ratio which would be a strong estimate of the true ratio; no matter, we would setup the proportion using these ratios

We want to find p, the whole population :

p/5827 = 500/204

p = 14281.86 = 14282 sur seal pups