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From: mjc@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA (Monica Cellio)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Statistics
Message-ID: <280@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 4-Feb-85 00:41:08 EST
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-c.280
Posted: Mon Feb  4 00:41:08 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Feb-85 07:14:34 EST
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 19

[ 43% of all statistics are meaningless. ]

From: rlgvax!ccice5!ccice6!daf@seismo (David Fader)
>My polls show that most people that were asked by me (over 70%)
>would favor an abortion prohibiting law except in cases of severe
>birth defects (e.g. a condition where the infant is born with no brain),
>danger to the mother's life,incest and rape.

But there's one little problem you seem to be overlooking.  What did you do,
go out and ask your friends?  Do you find it hard to believe that you and
your friends might share similar political views? What *method* did you use
to make this a valid poll?  If you want to say that 70% of your friends
oppose abortion, fine, but if you're going to try to generalize from that to
the general public, back it up with a valid method.

						-Dragon
-- 
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