Do you remember Alcon/J. J. arguments?

[they don't love you like i love you]

Alas all these noobs probably don't.

Those were honestly literally (and everyone knows I don't misuse this word) the most one-sided debates I've ever seen, and that includes ones involving Young Earth Creationists. One thing Alcon's good at is not just demolishing an incorrect statement but making very clear point by point just how wrong it is and how stupid it is to say.

[Sol]

As such a noob, could you point me towards a good example?

[they don't love you like i love you]

Here's a good starter example: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=162123.0

The arguments over polls are a bit more hidden in various threads, but they are even more blatant since it's basically akin to J. J. saying "2+2=5" and Alcon saying "no, 2+2=4, you're stupid"

[they don't love you like i love you]

OK here's a good example of the trying to argue over basic mathematics: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=144974.400

The key statement being "Santorum was never 20 points behind Romney in Iowa, BTW." in the first post on that page, which is a factually incorrect statement and quickly debunked. After that occurs...well you'll see.

Here's an excerpt which I think works as a good microcosm of any Alcon/J. J. (or really anyone/J. J.) argument:

Five of those polls had Romney over +20 on Santorum.  Good lord, J. J.

Alcon, that was the question.  How many show a 20 point lead for Romney over Santorum?

[J-Mann]

I said "yes," but I think these debates started after I stopped being active on any of the political boards. I remember both of them very well, though.

[memphis]

Alcon is the best debater on the Forum. Just about anybody versus him is going to be a slaughterfest. Combine that with JJ's stubbornness and you have a veritable freak show.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It was very very entertaining...

[Bacon King]

this is a HUGE throwback here but what about jfern vs JJ debating on "the statistical significance of 1000 coinflips" or whatever

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Alcon is the best debater on the Forum. Just about anybody versus him is going to be a slaughterfest. Combine that with JJ's stubbornness and you have a veritable freak show.

This. BRTDs obsession with JJ is ridiculous. 

[bullmoose88]

Alcon is the best debater on the Forum. Just about anybody versus him is going to be a slaughterfest. Combine that with JJ's stubbornness and you have a veritable freak show.

This. BRTDs obsession with JJ is ridiculous. 

FIFY.

[Beet]

this is a HUGE throwback here but what about jfern vs JJ debating on "the statistical significance of 1000 coinflips" or whatever

That's immediately what came to mind. In fact, I voted "yes" in the poll mistakenly thinking it referred to jfern/J.J.

[Bacon King]

THREAD ONE: JJ CALLS OUT "JFRAUD"

THREAD TWO: someone makes a poll about who's right and they argue in it

THREAD THREE: Jfern makes a rebuttal; more arguing

THREAD FOUR: Some time later jfern makes an unrelated thread, Goldwater reignites the debate after JJ criticizes jfern

THREAD FIVE: They start arguing in unrelated threads again

THREAD SIX: Even more thread derails to argue about it!

Choice quotes from the debate to follow shortly

[Bacon King]

J.J.'s SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT

On another thread, our old friend JFRAUD has raised statistal questions unreated to the topic.  Though he has, charateristically, declined to address the topics, and has declined to start a separate thread, despite repeated requests.  So, it falls to me to address them in the appropriate forum.

JFRAUD asked:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=20462.195

You must be logged in to read this quote.

There are several problems.  First, if the sample group were the Kerry delegates to the Democratic National Convention, this would indicate that Kerry was in big trouble as he should win all of them.  The "expected value" here woulld be 1000 for Kerry and zero for Bush.  In that case, with the expected value being 1000 Kerry, there would be no statistical correlation.

The second problem is trying to tie these factors to another event.  Is it because the economy is perceived to be bad, the war in Iraq, voters don't trust Dick Cheney, or that the X-Files are not in first run any more?

The significance here is not how well this describes the population, but how far off the expected value is this number.

You seem to be confusing the sample confidence interval with the confidence level.  What ever the result, there is still the chance that it's wrong; from a statistical standpoint, results that are below 95% are not statistically significant.

Let's say that there is another poll, conducted randomly with the same sample size at the same time.  Could that show Bush 94%, Kerry 6%?  Yes. 

One of two polls is obviously wrong, but it's wrong because of the nature of statistics.  The pollster randomly polled in a bad sample.  About one in twenty will be those bad samples; this probably accounts for some wide swings in the tracking polls.  When the sample passes through, the numbers drop back to where they were.  We really couldn't tell which of these polls.

What the poll result really says is that the poll, in 19 out of 20 cases, shows that the result is +/- 3 points of the reported result, if we poll 1067 people.  The problem is, we don't know it the 20th case or not.

That statement is true if the result 50/50 or 99/1.  What it does is change the confidence interval, known to most of us as the margin of error.  A 50/50 result of polling 1067 people would yield a MOE of +/- 3 points.  A 99/1 result of polling 1067 people would yield a MOE of +/- 0.6 points.  Both of those results would still be accurate 19 out of 20 times.

All that is does is change the MOE; it doesn't reflect on the possiblity that the sample size is the 20th case.

You don't seem to understand the difference between MOE and the accuracy of the poll.

BTW:  Any one interested in reading about it can go to the web site http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm  They can run the numbers themselves.

I'm more than happy to let anyone interested to read it and make their own judgment.

JFRAUD, now you are disagreeing with the website I quoted.  That is quote from it.  E-mail the author and tell him he's wrong.  I should warn you that before you do, my of stats textbook says the same thing.

So does the website you quoted:

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm


You reading comprehension skills are the problem. 

You've said quite a lot that bears little resemblence to fact, the earliest one that I recall being your call for a "civil war" and most recent claim that something that happend in July of 1933 triggered something that happened March of 1933 (I'm still wondering where the Vatican keeps it time machine).  You've said so little that is accurate, very little of what you say will be believed.  Of course, when you post links, people do read them, and unlike you, they do understand them.

That's possibly why more and more people are calling you JFRAUD.  It doesn't descibe your politics by qualities of the mental processes as illustrated in your post.

JFERN'S SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT

I have addressed the topics, but I'm bringing this up to show how intellectually dishonest you are, and why I shouldn't waste my time arguing something less black and white then statistics, where you're clearly wrong.

I said a RANDOM poll of people who are likely voters. If you're prefer, lets change it to an actual 1000 person random sample of people who actually voted. Set up the Diebold machines to randomly recount 1000 votes cast (suppose everyone votes on Diebold). Nice attempt to distract from the real issue, but I'm not letting you get away with that intellectual dishonesty.

OK, so I have a 1000 random vote sample of the 120+ million vote sample (I would not have to word this way if you weren't so focused on trivialness in an attempt to avoid answering the actual question I posed). 940 of those are for Kerry, 60 are for Bush. Is that a statistically significant lead for Kerry?

How are you so ing stupid? It's an approximation. It doesn't prove that my better approxmation is wrong.  Here do the calculation yourself:


The actual normal density function is 1/sqrt(2*Pi) * e^(-x^2/2). We get the following
1 standard deviation each way gives 68.27%
2 gives 95.44%
3 gives 99.73%
4 gives 99.994%
5 gives 99.99994%
6 gives 99.9999998%

Busted, yet again, you hypocrite.

Anyways, since you claim you can't ever say that a poll shows a significantly signifant difference then you can explain to me what, in J.Idiot land, the pollsters mean by statistical significance. They only have one poll, and they don't know the true population value. I'd love to see you try to explain that one away.

I noticed you ignored my comment pointing out that you are yet again a lying hypocrite for telling me that the 95% confidence interval radius is 2, not 1.96 standard deviations.

Not that you being a lying hypocrite is anything new.  When will you ever admit that you're wrong?

That calculator uses 1.96 standard deviations for its 95% confidence interval. Look at the source if you don't believe me. I see you haven't gone to that website, you g fraud. 

You didn't quote the part where I talked about this link. I bet you hope this site will go away. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
http://americanresearchgroup.com/moe2.shtml

J. Idiot., you lose. Argument over.

 2005 was truly the best of times

[they don't love you like i love you]

As much as the forum has gone downhill since then, there is one improvement: If someone came up with a derisive nickname for another poster as immature and unfunny as "jFRAUD" and used that EVERY SINGLE TIME they referred to them they'd be labeled a troll and mocked for that alone. Back in 2005 it was beloved by moderate heroes because that evil terrible dishonest Dem hack jfern was getting attacked by someone who by the standards of the time was inexplicably not seen as dishonest or hackish in any way. 2005 was a weird time.

Also:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=150682.0

[MaxQue]

jfern would have been voted for using ARG website for an argument about statistics, through.

[they don't love you like i love you]

jfern would have been voted for using ARG website for an argument about statistics, through.

Huh? Not sure what you mean.

And I don't recall jfern ever citing ARG. While they were a notoriously awful poster, the argument in question didn't involve their polls.

[J-Mann]

J.J.'s name calling was a classic.

[MaxQue]

jfern would have been voted for using ARG website for an argument about statistics, through.

Huh? Not sure what you mean.

And I don't recall jfern ever citing ARG. While they were a notoriously awful poster, the argument in question didn't involve their polls.

The last post you quoted links to their website.

[they don't love you like i love you]

jfern would have been voted for using ARG website for an argument about statistics, through.

Huh? Not sure what you mean.

And I don't recall jfern ever citing ARG. While they were a notoriously awful poster, the argument in question didn't involve their polls.

The last post you quoted links to their website.

Oh you mean Bacon King.

To be fair though that's just a MoE formula and calculator. It has nothing to do with ARG's actual junk polls.

[Foucaulf]

this is a HUGE throwback here but what about jfern vs JJ debating on "the statistical significance of 1000 coinflips" or whatever

I've read through those topics and it's completely insane how long that argument went on for.

For those hopelessly confused: testing for statistical significance comes after establishing a null hypothesis. If you null hypothesis is that the coin is fair, then a lopsided result is significant in rejecting the hypothesis. If your null hypothesis is that the coin is lopsidedly biased, a lopsided result won't significantly reject the hypothesis.

Even more loosely, if you believe a poll is biased towards Kerry, then a pro-Kerry result will not change your belief of that. This is partly why a biased sample isn't good for any statistical inference.