Wednesday, July 20, 2005
I am not a statistic, despite what it says
MIT's weblog survey. In research methods class, we used to take surveys and statistics that were clearly biased and dissect them scientifically. This survey is a nice example - an online survey, word of which is spread online, about online matters. Do you think that there will be a higher percentage of respondents who will indicate that they participate in online matters? Blog more frequently? E-mail more frequently? Many of those who would answer that they do not e-mail frequently (if ever) will likely never even hear of this survey.
When you finish the survey, they encourage you to put a link similar to the one above on your blog and say that "The larger our sample is, the better chance we have of being unbiased."
(Editor's note: I feel quite sure that my little brother, currently taking summer classes at MIT, would have some smart remark about how my criticisms are unfounded. I have one thing to say to him: suck it up, sissypants.)
