Basic HTML version of Foils prepared Mar 20 1999

Foil 3 Sources of Errors in Polls

From Java Academy:Polls and Throwing Dice NPAC Java Academy February--April 99 -- Mar 20 1999. by Geoffrey Fox
So if one makes a poll, the error comes from two sources – the so-called statistical error and the so-called bias.
  • The bias is like we discussed above – one must choose a representative subset of the voters.
  • The reason why one chooses some 1000 people to poll, is that this will give statistical errors of around 2% and the quoted errors combine this with errors due to a biased sample.
There is not much point in using more 1000 or so in a poll as you will decrease the statistical error but it will be hard to decrease the overall error much more.

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