• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    98 hours ago

    You don’t understand how sample sizes or margins of error are calculated. That’s why you’re being downvoted.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      -2
      edit-2
      8 hours ago

      Uh. 500 sample size. To estimate 19 million people’s thoughts?

      Ok. Sure. What’s a “representative sample” then???

      Edit: go read the source. The choice of wording alone gives away the fact that this is NOT a properly done analysis.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        48 hours ago

        Read a damn stats book. Jesus Wept! This could literally be a question on a sophomore-level undergrad stats class, and you would fail that question.

        • @AbidanYre
          link
          English
          27 hours ago

          They’re typically in the couple thousand neighborhood. <500 is crazy small.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            26 hours ago

            That was for the “Biden voters in swing states” poll, so a much smaller population than most polls. Most nationwide political polls of the general public were in the 1,000-1,500 range for a 2-3 point margin of error. Polls with larger sizes were likely to also get useful crosstabs.

            MOE for this poll was +/-4.9%, which is high, but not “this is meaningless trash, what even is statistics?!?”, especially when the headline numbers are just general sentiment rather than a head to head. In the worst case if “Gaza” was 24 and “the economy” was 29, it’s not a very large difference in the finding.