214
submitted 10 months ago by Rapidcreek@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] guacupado@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

You definitely haven't taken stats.

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Whilst it's quite amazing just how few people you need in your sample to get a +/- 3% error with a 95% confidence for the opinion of hundreds of millions, that narrow error margin with just a few thousand samples only works if the sample is representative of the population in general, which is unclear.

Plenty of cases of polls out there that are complete total bollocks because they were taken by calling by phone people in relativelly poor countries were only those in the middle class and above have a phone, and at times when most people were out working, so they ended up sampling an atypical subset of people rather than one representative of the whole society.

The way the question is posed also influences the results, sometimes quite subtly (the mere order or words or order of questions in multiple-question poll can sway the results).

So whilst what you said makes sense in response to the previous commenter's point, there's a lot more to good polling than merelly the number of samples necessary for a certain error margin in the 95% confidence interval when your sampling is random in a uniform distribution (emphasys on the later, as actually making sure the sampling is indeed like that in practice is often difficult and/or costly)

[-] hark@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Just like the polls done by those who "know stats" who predicted a clinton win in 2016.

this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
214 points (82.6% liked)

World News

38987 readers
1522 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS