The best way for the biologist to estimate the population mean of the newborn elephants’ weights is to calculate the mean of 50 randomly selected weights in the table.
This method ensures that the sample is representative of the entire population of 500 newborn elephants, reducing potential bias that could arise from selecting weights in a non-random manner. A larger sample size (e.g., 50 weights) also provides a more accurate estimate of the population mean compared to a smaller sample (e.g., 5 weights).