Stat of the Week Winner: August 17 – 23 2013

Thank you for your nominations in this week’s Stat of the Week Competition.

We have chosen Andrew Robertson’s nomination of Campbell Live’s GCSB Bill “poll” as the winner:

89% oppose the GCSB bill.

Self-selecting poll made out to be accurate by virtual of the number of people responding. They should have called it a petition, not a poll. A random Research NZ poll, asking a different question, put opposition at 52%.

Comments on this nomination from those members of the Statistics Department included:

“Self-selecting polls are an old favourite but this was a particularly egregious example, if only because of the way various politicians treated the result as being real data.”

And:

“Good use of counter evidence with a properly conducted sample survey.”

And Thomas blogged about this further.

Congratulations Andrew!