It's how you ask the question that matters

[andrewducker]

The New York Times took a poll.  They asked half the people whether they thought that gay men and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the US army.  60% said yes.  They asked the other half whether they thought that homosexuals should be allowed to serve openly in the US army.  44% said yes.

One can only assume that people are made of crazy.  And stupid.

From

Comments

Arh, the clasic six sigma question

[aberbotimue.livejournal.com]

Not known for my writing skills, so I hope I get this lot across o.k.

My experience is from corporate sampling.. where the confidence is closer to 98 - 99 percent.. I believe the recognised confidence in public survey is 95%

The error rate goes down as the sample goes up.. The fact this is, and it IS a low sample rate is taken account by the error rate of 4% - which for a sample of 5-600 is about right..

so, rather than the percentages, let’s have a quick look at the actual figures..

1054 people were called.. that’s the ones that weren't busy and took the call.. and as many folks have pointed out that better be a representation of all states, and all backgrounds.. I assume not talking into account most serving armed forces, their phones just aren’t useful at the moment in Afghanistan, nor criminals.. nor anyone that works high up in most organisations, as their PA's would have taken that call..

Total yes % no % Yes # No #
gay & lesbians 542 60 40 325.2 216.8
homosexuals 542 44 56 238.48 303.52

so if that distorts when i post, 325 v's 238

when you take the 4% into account, you get a bunch of thresholds...

-4% +4%
gay & lesbians 303.52 346.88
homosexuals 216.8 260.16

what to look for here is the distance from the upper of one to the lower of the other.. if they overlap, the error is making the statistics show the same thing..

in this case the gap is around 43 people. which is 0.039667897

or 4% ( nothing to do with the error, if your not following )

remember that 95%..

"Wilful wrong" as it has been put here, isn't covering the 4% error it's the confidence I touched upon at the beginning.. ( although not something I had heard it called before, but from pigeonhed's description of whet it was when he read about it..

In my world, Its 99%, and the remaining 1% I call the "people that want to get fired" in the public world, i guess a better descriptive are tossers.. with a few that just didn't understand I'll let them off and more to the point, that’s a deficiency in the survey.

therefore the confidence percentage wipes out 54.2 peoples answers...

meaning our difference of 43 people can be looked at with a bit of statistical scepticism...

I know I am at the upper ends of all the threasholds, but if asking a few thousand more people would make it so I can't complain, then I'll belive the statistics. More to the point, if you belive the statistics as they stand, then follows that my statistics are just as valid..

For me.. I have to agree with pretty much all of what pigeonhed has said..

Is it significant, that’s what Andrew originally asked.. I think yes.. and are they stupid, I have agree, yes.. but are the statistics sound.. No.. not convinced.. up the sample rate to closer to 2k, and the error would drop, and it would blow my sums out of the water..