gallup polled
Whenever I read a poll about the President's approval rating or what Americans think about Terri Schiavo I wonder who was called. A group of 1000 (not really) random people out of the 300 million Americans were surveyed and from this selection the national pulse was taken. Being one who likes to voice my opinion I always think to myself "dammit Gallup, call me sometime."
Well, I answered the phone last night and much to my surprise it was Gallup asking for a member of the household at least 18 years of age. Sure enough they asked me the regular questions that you see on the news. Do I approve of how the President is doing his job? What do I think of the economy? Do I think the Iraq war is worth it? It was kind of cool to be polled. Since I am probably one of about 1000 people polled I suppose I represent 0.1% of the US population in this week's poll results. Nearly 300,000 people. Shut up fools, I'm speakin' now.
Watch for next week's CNN headline, "According to a recent Gallup poll Ryan Cox says Bush is a weenie".
posted by Ryan @ 12:50 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Finally, the long awaited call from Gallup! Did you hang up with a friendly "Call anytime"? I got a call, oh, maybe three years ago. I don't even know what it was about. I should've asked "Is this survey gonna be in TIME magazine or something?", but I didn't. My little data point was forgotten in the fog of so many others.
For all I know (and for all you know, Ryan), I was just part of that "plus or minus 3 percent margin of error".
You know how they get that number, by the way? It's just 1 over the square root of N, the number of people surveyed. Super scientific, I say. I guess the public is comfortable with a 3 percent margin of error, so they typically call 1000 people. To get a 1 percent error, they would need to call (via their high-brow science) ten times as many people, 10,000.
Interestingly, by that calculation, even if you called every single American, you'd still have a margin of error of 0.006%. I guess that means that at any given moment, about 17,000 Americans are lying.
wow i am so jealous. you take gallup, i'm throwing nielsen off.
Post a Comment
<< Home