Monday 7 January 2019

Rahaf al-Qunun has escaped attack from the Grauniad---for now, at least. (Jan. 8, 2019)

  1. Morrissey9
    Good news, hopefully.
    So far it looks like the Grauniad has not been instructed to attack her.
    • Dennis Frank10.1
      Unscientific: only 171 in the sample. Political polls use a thousand or thereabouts here to get the standard margin of error, so in the UK with a population fifteen times bigger the sample required is around 15000.
      “Our results demonstrate that physically weak males are more reluctant than physically strong males to assert their self-interest”. I suspect their next study will discover that if you drop something, it falls down.
      • alwyn10.1.1
        “so in the UK with a population fifteen times bigger the sample required is around 15000”.
        Sorry Dennis but because you have a population 15 times as large doesn’t mean that the sample has to be larger to retain the same accuracy.
        If you think that 1,000 is enough in New Zealand it will be just as good in the UK.
        “The mathematics of probability prove that the size of the population is irrelevant unless the size of the sample exceeds a few percent of the total population you are examining. This means that a sample of 500 people is equally useful in examining the opinions of a state of 15,000,000 as it would a city of 100,000.”
        https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
        In neither case is your sample other than tiny compared to the population
        • Dennis Frank10.1.1.1
          Well, I was applying the logic of proportionality. My vague recollection from 1969 suggests you are correct and if polling practice, as defined by accepted convention, is to use around a thousand in the UK, then I take your point. In any case, as you imply, the sample they used was way too small.
          I did pass the stats exam at Auckland University that year, but not by much. Mumbo jumbo was my verdict on statistics…
  2. Ed11
    George Galloway providing his usual perceptive insight.
    This time into the yellow vest protests in France,
    As ever he nails it.

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