When I was a volunteer EMT, sometimes we would try to predict what type of calls we would get that day and how many times that call would happen. Each prediction for a specific type of emergency would depend on the time of year and if there were certain events, such as a music festival. For example, in the summertime with our station being the closest to the beach, we would try to guess how many calls there would be that day for a heat related emergency (ex: 4), and out of those, what would be the likelihood that our ambulance (perhaps ≤ 1) would get that emergency out of the 16 ambulances on call in the city. In a 12 hour shift on a weekend, just one ambulance can get up to 10 calls, each call averaging one hour (from first contact with patient to drop off at hospital and ambulance decontamination).
I don’t know about the people I worked with, but when attempting to make these predictions, I never used any math or calculations. I would make judgments and assumptions throughout the day based on the times between calls and our current location in the city (how close/how far from the beach, which hospital we were currently at). I suppose my sampling was non-random, specifically judgment sampling.
The type of sampling that would best be used is random sampling. In EMS, you never know what type of emergency call you will get, so I think simple random sample, or stratified sampling, would be the appropriate type of sampling.
Let’s go beyond the mechanics. Differential calculus is a tool,
Let’s go beyond the mechanics. Differential calculus is a tool, invented to solve the most challenging problems in science and engineering. For instance, Newton used differential calculus to express the equations of planetary motion around the Sun, as well as the rate at which a warm object cools off in
