{"id":768,"date":"2006-10-30T10:44:11","date_gmt":"2006-10-30T10:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/30\/polling-for-dummies\/"},"modified":"2006-10-30T10:44:11","modified_gmt":"2006-10-30T10:44:11","slug":"polling-for-dummies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/30\/polling-for-dummies\/","title":{"rendered":"Polling for Dummies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Because I&#8217;m a Bad Person, I no longer remember who pointed me to <a href=\"http:\/\/zenoferox.blogspot.com\/2006\/10\/primer-on-polling.html\">Halfway There&#8217;s primer on polling<\/a>, but it&#8217;s really an excellent of the effects of sample size, and why it&#8217;s legitimate to project results based on small numbers of interviews. Some important notes from the conclusion:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Second, even a poll that is supposed to be within its estimated margin of error 95% of the time will be wrong and fall outside those bounds 5% of the time. That&#8217;s one time in twenty. Therefore, whenever you see a political poll whose results seem way out of whack, it could be one of those flukes. Remember, polling is based on probability and statistics: it&#8217;s accurate in the long run rather than in every specific instance. In a hot contest where lots of polls are taken, a candidate&#8217;s campaign is likely to release only those polls that show the candidate in good shape. The 5% fluke factor may be just enough to keep hope alive among those people who believe everything they read.<\/p>\n<p>Pollsters take their results with a grain of salt, so you should, too. But it&#8217;s not because of sample size.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Read, as they say, the whole thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because I&#8217;m a Bad Person, I no longer remember who pointed me to Halfway There&#8217;s primer on polling, but it&#8217;s really an excellent of the effects of sample size, and why it&#8217;s legitimate to project results based on small numbers of interviews. Some important notes from the conclusion: Second, even a poll that is supposed&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/30\/polling-for-dummies\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Polling for Dummies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,28,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in_the_news","category-politics","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}