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From: mjc@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA (Monica Cellio)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Statistics
Message-ID: <283@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 6-Feb-85 23:00:30 EST
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-c.283
Posted: Wed Feb  6 23:00:30 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Feb-85 07:23:12 EST
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 18

[ No quotes here; we all know the exchange by now... ]

I am generally skeptical of polls because it is very hard to get a
representative sample of the public (where "public" can sometimes be defined
by the issue, e.g. only computer users for a programming language preference
poll, etc).  Any poll that does not have a representative sample is pretty
much by definition invalid.  If I see reference to a poll that does not
mention that an effort was made to get a representative sample (how this was
done always makes interesting reading, but is not essential), I usually don't
give it a second look.  The few exceptions are pollsters who reputedly always
make this effort (pros such as Gallup).  No offense meant, but you aren't one
of those pollsters whose results I will consider semi-valid on the basis of
your name alone.

						-Dragon
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