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Darwin, Britain's Hero, Is Still Controversial In U.S.



 
 
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  #21  
Old February 11th 09, 02:11 AM posted to rec.collecting.coins
Bruce Remick
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Posts: 3,391
Default Darwin, Britain's Hero, Is Still Controversial In U.S.


"mazorj" wrote in message
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"Bruce Remick" wrote in message
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"mazorj" wrote in message
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"Bruce Remick" wrote in message
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...
I still would be interested in learning if Harris only counted a
response from individuals who already were familiar with Darwin and his
work.

Right away you run into trouble. Plenty of creationists and ID
advocates think they know their Darwin. You'd have to ask a battery of
questions about Darwin and evolution before you could get any idea of
the accuracy of the responses of "Yes, I am familiar".

For those who tested positive for knowing Darwin and evolution, can
anyone doubt that the percentage of those who accept evolution would be
significantly higher?


So from what you say, it would seem near impossible to corral enough
educated open-minded, unbiased individuals to ever conduct a meaningful
poll. If you know Darwin you're out. If you never heard of him you're
out. If religion plays a significant part in your life you're out. If
you're an atheist you're out. If you own more than one Darwin medal
you're out...........


Maybe I misunderstood what you were driving at with "I still would be
interested in learning if Harris only counted a response from individuals
who already were familiar with Darwin and his work." My point was that in
order to do that, you can't just ask the question "Are you familiar with
Darwin and his work?" to screen and limit the participants to those who
actually know enough about Darwin and evolution. Most anti-Darwinians
fancy themselves as knowledgeable, as in "Know thine enemy" even though in
the vast majority of cases, whatever they "know" comes from sermons and
diatribes reviling him (and maybe a feature episode or two on the History
Channel). And since most people don't like to admit ignorance even in an
anonymous poll, you'll have another block of respondents who don't know
jack about Charles but will say they do.


Not being a statistician, I really don't know how I would handle such a
survey if I wanted to get a true and meaningful result. First, I would
probably rule out anyone I asked about Darwin who had never heard of him or
his theories. That might be the subject for another survey. I would
probably like to uncover something more thought provoking than the
predictable opinions likely given by various groups of people.


What trips me up here is that you shifted your stated criteria from "only
including those familiar with Darwin and his work," to excluding just
about everybody because in your view they cannot be "educated
open-minded, unbiased individuals" if they know Darwin, if they don't know
Darwin, if they never heard of him, if they are religious or if they are
atheist. Sure, that excludes just about everybody, but that's not what
you asked in your original question.


I guess my thought was that it would seem to be impossible to conduct a
random survey while trying to ensure that a cross section of society is
included in it. It's not as simple as asking whether you're for Obama or
McCain because the majority of people have heard of them and have developed
opinions.


I took the original question to mean "Did they only poll people with
enough knowledge to intelligently answer the questions" or did they
interview "any warm body that answered the telephone"? In most surveys
you want true random selection (no, not evolutionary random selection,
just statistically random selection) because you want truly representative
slices of all members of the overall population.

So if you wanted to limit respondents only to people who have an accurate
and adequate (even if only a layman's) grasp of Darwin and evolution,
first they'd have to pass a moderately tough quiz on the topic. I don't
know why you'd want to do it that way. The results would only confirm
that "the vast majority of people who really know evolution think it's a
valid scientific model." As I said, that's already a no-brainer. Most
surveys want to know what the entire population thinks, not just one
limited slice of it. And in reporting the results of the poll, you would
have to state your findings with the limiting condition "Among people who
have an accurate and adequate understanding of Darwin and evolution..."


That would be one way. I don't see how you could conduct a poll asking the
entire population what it thinks of Plato when only the educated are likely
to have heard enough about him to form any kind of an opinion. If I
commissioned such a poll, I would want responses only from that educated
population segment.



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  #22  
Old February 11th 09, 10:31 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
note.boy
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Posts: 2,418
Default Darwin, Britain's Hero, Is Still Controversial In U.S.


"mazorj" wrote in message
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"note.boy" wrote in message
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"Jud" wrote in message
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Mike Marotta wrote:

Depending on where you live, you can probably take an accredited
statistics class at a community college for $350-$500. It will take
13-15 weeks of commitment, but you will know way more than everyone
else about how polling is done and the mental exercise will help stave
off senility.

There are liars, damned liars and statisticians. I took 'stat' in
college, and if there was one thing that I brought home from that
class was when the professor stated "Anytime someone quotes statistics
to you, they are lying. There are so many ways to make the statistics
work in any foregone conclusion."

Also, I am with the majority of the 93.4832% of the population who
don't believe in polls. (No jokes about Poland please!)


If your head is frozen inside a block of ice and your feet are on fire
then statiscally, on average, you are perfectly fine. Billy


You must be an engineer of some type. :-D

We'd kid ours with the a variant of that: "An engineer is someone who
thinks that if your left foot is in a bucket of boiling water and your
right foot is in a bucket of ice water, on average you're comfortable."
The funny thing was that 81.717% of them agreed!



Statistics was a subject I covered at school.

I love the TV adverts where 87% of women agree that super duper face cream
with extract of skunk improves the condition of their skin and the sample
size is something like 113 women questioned, such a small sample is
meaningless, I get the impression that they question 1,000 women and the
pick the sequence of replies that suit them best, e.g. replies 455 to 568.
Billy


  #23  
Old February 13th 09, 11:03 PM posted to rec.collecting.coins
mazorj
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,169
Default Darwin, Britain's Hero, Is Still Controversial In U.S.


"note.boy" wrote in message
...

"mazorj" wrote in message
...

"note.boy" wrote in message
...

"Jud" wrote in message
...

Mike Marotta wrote:

Depending on where you live, you can probably take an accredited
statistics class at a community college for $350-$500. It will
take
13-15 weeks of commitment, but you will know way more than
everyone
else about how polling is done and the mental exercise will help
stave
off senility.

There are liars, damned liars and statisticians. I took 'stat' in
college, and if there was one thing that I brought home from that
class was when the professor stated "Anytime someone quotes
statistics
to you, they are lying. There are so many ways to make the
statistics
work in any foregone conclusion."

Also, I am with the majority of the 93.4832% of the population
who
don't believe in polls. (No jokes about Poland please!)

If your head is frozen inside a block of ice and your feet are on
fire then statiscally, on average, you are perfectly fine. Billy


You must be an engineer of some type. :-D

We'd kid ours with the a variant of that: "An engineer is someone
who thinks that if your left foot is in a bucket of boiling water
and your right foot is in a bucket of ice water, on average you're
comfortable." The funny thing was that 81.717% of them agreed!


Statistics was a subject I covered at school.

I love the TV adverts where 87% of women agree that super duper face
cream with extract of skunk improves the condition of their skin and
the sample size is something like 113 women questioned, such a small
sample is meaningless, I get the impression that they question 1,000
women and the pick the sequence of replies that suit them best, e.g.
replies 455 to 568. Billy


That's unnecessary overkill and it can leave an obvious statistical
paper trail of how the books were cooked.

It's been known for years that consumer preference tests can be rigged
using human factors exploits: Subtle changes in the tester's voicing,
facial expressions, gestures, etc, when presenting Sample A and then
Sample B. The client's soda is served only at a refreshing chilled
temperature, the competition's is barely below room temperature. The
client's facial tissue is nuked for a few seconds to make it
pleasantly warmer to the touch than the competition's. The brightness
and color of the ambient lighting is more flattering to the color of
the client's product. The ice in the client's beverage is made from
pristine, taste-neutral distilled water while the ice for the
competition is made from some source of tap or bottled water with
subtle unpleasant trace elements. Then there's the old quiz show
gimmick of not so subtly interrupting the subject's decision-making
process if he/she appears to be heading toward the "wrong" answer.

It's not perfect but it's good enough to steer preference test results
to the point that marketing weasels can play around with them. Notice
how all our human senses are enlisted in their game of exploits.

It doesn't hurt if the subject picks up on these cues consciously or
unconsciously. In fact, usually it's better if they do. The test
subjects may not be rocket scientists but they get the drift of what's
going on and willingly play along because of three natural human urges
in most people: They want to please the authority figure (the
tester); some feel compelled to make sure they jump through the right
hoops to get the honorarium for participating; and the self-centered
show-offs are highly aware of the presence of a video camera (or the
possibility of a "hidden" camera) so they rightly calculate that
enthusiastic cooperation by over-reacting to the sponsor's sample
increases the odds that they will be used in a commercial that will be
seen all over the airwaves (and possibly at payment rates much higher
than the token honorarium for participating).

Consumer product marketers also take a page from the pharmaceutical
manufacturers' playbook: Run multiple, unconnected trials using small
numbers of participants and cherry pick only the best ones. Pharma
does that a lot because A.) The scoring is far less subjective (the
subjects either get better with greater frequency (or they don't) at
rates higher or lower than the national average, and B.) It's
extremely difficult to exert human factors exploits when the subjects
are taking their research meds over a long stretch and usually in the
privacy of their homes.

So when the respondents number in the low hundreds instead of the gold
standard of 1000+, randomly occurring wide variations in the test
scores occur over repeated independent trials That gives the marketers
a pool of (erroneous) above-average test scores. Bury the unfavorable
average and below-average trials and you can easily skew the
"results".

Big, reputable polling houses avoid these tactics because they want to
preserve their reputations. OTOH, boutique pollsters and doctors who
get paid 6-figures to be one of the test administrators know what the
client would like to get for his money. They're not all
intellectually dishonest but the client only needs enough favorable
test results - often just one will do! - to justify claiming that
"Four out of five compulsive hand washers prefer the soothing action
of Adolph's OCD Liquid Germicidal Soap."


 




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