A band director is trying to decide what music to play for the halftime show. She surveys the marching band students to get their opinions about which music they would prefer. Which of the following sampling techniques would provide a stratified random sample that would accurately represent the students’ opinions?

A stratified random sample divides the population into meaningful groups, then randomly selects some members from every group. Here, the instrument types are the strata, so randomly choosing 2 students from each type of instrument is the stratified method. Selecting students from only one grade or one last-name group would leave other groups unrepresented.

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