November 1, 2011

The easy way out.

There are many ways that sophisticated pollsters can tilt the result of a survey: biased samples, carefully framed sets of questions, creative subsets of the data.

Based on a survey of protesters at Occupy Wall Street, pollster Doug Schoen wrote ” it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. . . .”.

The actual data from that very survey:

What would you like to see the Occupy Wall Street movement achieve? {Open Ended}
35% Influence the Democratic Party the way the Tea Party has influenced the GOP
4% Radical redistribution of wealth
5% Overhaul of tax system: replace income tax with flat tax
7% Direct Democracy
9% Engage & mobilize Progressives
9% Promote a national conversation
11% Break the two-party duopoly
4% Dissolution of our representative democracy/capitalist system
4% Single payer health care
4% Pull out of Afghanistan immediately
8% Not sure

Andrew Gelman says about this pol“as I like to remind students, the simplest way to lie with statistics is to just lie!”. 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »