Friday, April 11, 2014

Run the Numbers. Run, the Numbers!

It's candidate filing time here in Oklahoma, which presages a a little attention paid to opinion polls. Little because most of these races are not anywhere near the funding level which allows big campaigns to afford the endless polls of more nationally important races. For which I think everyone involved can offer thanks.

Anyway, I thought about opinion polls and statistics and such when reading this piece on how almost any study could be tweaked to get the results the study creators want to get. Carefully choose your factors, select your cutoff date, tailor your questions' wording properly and you have got a fine supporting cast of numbers that show everyone just how right you were.

That was kind of depressing, so I went to read about a hand-held jet engine instead.

No comments: