JJ Vs. jfern: Poll on their statistical knowledge

[Alcon]

jfern, I shouldn't have to warn you again. J. J. didn't really even bait you this time. Watch it, please.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The community has spoken.  JJ lays claim to the title of Master Stastician of Atlasia.

Now, for the love of God, will the two of you stop discussing this stuff.

First, the Vorlon's title is quite secure.  :-)  What is described here is a very simplified version of how a poll works.  There is a lot more to it than the simplified description I've presented, and the math needed for those is beyond me.

As a simplified description, this is probably a good description.

Facts don't follow the will of the majority.
I can't beleive that all 32 people were qualified to vote on this.
The results look similar to the who would you vote for poll with me and J.J.

I am disappointed in the 24 people who did not carefully consider, is 940 heads and 60 tails significantly different from that of a fair coin? You were not qualified to vote.

I phrased the question so people would be by default qualified.  People decided they woudl rather hire JJ. 

Until you realize there is a difference between the theory of flipping a coin 1000 times and interviewing a thousand people you will never understand why JJ won.

I can only suggest that if Jfern is really a grad student at a major university, that he take a printout of my description and ask someone in the statistics department to explain it to him.  Maybe he'll understand a face to face explanation better than a printout.

I have to admit, I have a very hard time believing that anyone that passed even an elementary statistics course could not see the difference between a coin toss of 1000 and a sample of 1000 voters from a population of approximately 120,000,000.

It should also be noted that in the "election" my numbers were substantially lower than they were in this poll.  That is probably an indication that while people may thing I have a better grasp of statistical analysis, they don't like my politics.  That's fine, BTW.  I seriously doubt that grasping how a poll is conducted is required for the presidency.

I know the difference, I was arguing that everyone supports Bush or Kerry and that it's completely random with replacement.  The replacement part makes the finite population size be irrelevant.

My arguments weren't over polling methodology (I love how everyone assumes I'm an idiot on polling methodology), they were about deciding whether to reject the null hypothesis at some confidence level, which you have not shown you understand once.

If you thought I was talking about realistic opinion polls of Bush and Kerry, you shouldn't have voted.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

jfern, I shouldn't have to warn you again. J. J. didn't really even bait you this time. Watch it, please.

Yeah, well several people telling me that I misunderstand something that wasn't even part of my argument, and that I do understand really pissed me off.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Let me make this very clear:

If you voted for J.J., you voted for a sample of 940 heads and 60 tails not being statistically significantly different from a fair coin.

If you thought my talk about Bush vs. Kerry polls was supposed to be realistic of a typical opinion poll, you vastly missed the point, and shouldn't have voted.  I never said it was realistic, but I was using it as an argument, since I figured maybe more people would understand what statistically signficant differences meant with opinion polls. I guess no one on here understands statistical significance.

If you claim that I know nothing about a real opinion poll of 1000 people out of 120 million, you are intellectual dishonest, and f**ck you.

[Erc]

J.J....tossing a coin 1000 times is a sample.  It won't be a "population" unless you flip it an infinite number of times.  It's theoretically possible for a fair coin to come up heads 940 times, but extremely unlikely.

This is identical to the case where you have an infinite population (say that of the United States, which is close enough to being infinite at the sample sizes we're talking about [n is 300,000 times less than N (the cutoff for it mattering is usually what? about 100 times less than the population, if we're being picky)]), and we find that, in a sample of 1000, 940 say they're voting for Bush.  Now, it's certainly possible that they're actually dead-even...but it's incredibly, incredibly unlikely for such a result to come about if it were indeed evenly split.  Just as unlikely, in fact, as 940 heads coming up on a fair coin.

Assuming, of course, we do have a truly simple random sample, which is unlikely...but is a question of methodology, not statistics.

But jfern, I have to say, you're not helping your own case very much here.

[J. J.]

J.J....tossing a coin 1000 times is a sample.  It won't be a "population" unless you flip it an infinite number of times.  It's theoretically possible for a fair coin to come up heads 940 times, but extremely unlikely.

This is identical to the case where you have an infinite population (say that of the United States, which is close enough to being infinite at the sample sizes we're talking about [n is 300,000 times less than N (the cutoff for it mattering is usually what? about 100 times less than the population, if we're being picky)]), and we find that, in a sample of 1000, 940 say they're voting for Bush.  Now, it's certainly possible that they're actually dead-even...but it's incredibly, incredibly unlikely for such a result to come about if it were indeed evenly split.  Just as unlikely, in fact, as 940 heads coming up on a fair coin.

Assuming, of course, we do have a truly simple random sample, which is unlikely...but is a question of methodology, not statistics.

But jfern, I have to say, you're not helping your own case very much here.

It's a sample of a total population; that is my point.  You are not, in the example, attempting to apply it to a large population.  A poll, in theory, does that.

Now, if it was suggested that you drop 120,000,000 coins on a surface, and that you look at the first 1000 coins closest to a point on that surface, the analogy would work for polling (at least regarding the 2004 election).

[Speed of Sound]

I guess JFern, though I have never favored either of them in thier famed debate.

[J. J.]

I guess JFern, though I have never favored either of them in thier famed debate.

You have look at the question. 

[Speed of Sound]

I guess JFern, though I have never favored either of them in thier famed debate.

You have look at the question. 

thank you. however, im feeling too lazy to read it right now, so ill check it out when I get home from school and shall make a decision then.