I thought I’d spruce up the site a bit in honor of the holiday. The pictures of my sons at the top are there to honor them and everyone else serving this country’s interests around the world, and in uniform in our cities. The flag picture and the one of Dubya at the WTC in the left column come from this site which has a collection of 9/11 images by various photographers.
Have a wonderful weekend, ya’ll, and remember why we have it.
Tim Blair, the ever vigilent Aussie, points to this opinion piece in the New York Post:
The opening night of next month’s Democratic convention in Boston is set to feature an emotional party tribute to hometown hero Ted Kennedy, who has served in office longer than every other senator but one.
Guess no one at the Democratic National Committee took a close look at the calendar: That July 26 salute to Teddy just happens to coincide with . . . the 35th anniversary of Chappaquiddick.
How time flies when you’re having fun…at government expense.
The comments are pretty good, too.
Again, I will attempt to make a point without being branded a right-wing fanatic. Cops have a job which requires instinct like soldiers, but the patience of a monk.
It?s easy to gain headlines by declaring a war on crime, but the people who are sent to fight that war must have the backing of the civilian authorities. Cops are people too, and if they know they?re going to jeopardize their jobs every time they go into battle, they are going to avoid it like the plague.
As in the city where my son plies his trade (and risks his life), the city where my daughter lives has a problem with government. Mayors and police chiefs talk tough in the squad room, but wimp out in the court of public opinion. Cities have become so lawsuit-conscious that the streets become battlegrounds.
I’ve always been more concerned about my son who is a cop than the ones fighting the war on terror. He can’t shoot and sort things out later.
Sarah has received some grief over her post on polls. It comes from some folks who think they know more than she does, and are, therefore, eager to berate her for her “stupidity.”
Unfortunately, these folks all want her to learn something about statistics. Yet they obviously don’t understand the first rule of statistics which is they are not fact. Sarah also provides a link to a Den Beste article which explains things quite well. I doubt any of them read it. It might be contrary to their opinion, which they take as fact.
When I got my masters degree, I had to take a class called Research Methods. It was absolutely the most worthless class I have ever taken. It revolved around writing survey questionaires, and determining a method of sampling a population. I am an engineer, and statistics is a mathematical tool used to make some kind of sense about data collected. When we do a test, we take as much data as possible. Usually, this is sampling various sensors and transducers at a rate of anywhere from two to one hundred times a second. That rate is determined by the type of data. For ambient temperature, which might change a tenth of a degree every ten minutes, twice a second is ample. For more dynamic variables, we will sample at the highest feasible rate the equipment can handle.
What that means is that we may have hundreds of thousands of numbers, and these must be analyzed using some kind of statistical algorithm. When a piece of data is an outlier, or doesn’t fit nicely with the rest, we make a determination of whether that value is an error, or a realistic measure of what actually happened.
Polls use a different form of data collection and analysis. Pollsters TRY (if they are good, and really want a representative sample) to collect data from a wide variety of the population they are trying to measure. It is impossible to get a response from every person in the target population, so they use a variety of techniques to get a random sample. This is the primary failure in polling.
Most people are unwilling to submit the time to respond. And those who do may not even answer honestly. There is no way for the pollster to know. This separates scientific data analysis from polling. Pollsters make no effort to determine the outliers. Realistically, they can’t. They simply don’t have enough data, and what they have may be completely invalid. Add in to this the inability to write a valid question and the time necessary to ask different enough questions to validate other questions in a way the respondant can’t “game” the system, and you have an unwieldy poll. There is no way to tell if all the data are wrong.
Knowing this, pollsters use a factor to account for as much error as they believe they can. This is the percentage you hear about described as a Margin of Error. It, too, is a statistical quantity based on the number of people willing to respond to the questions, not the number contacted.
A well-written poll which samples a precise population can be pretty accurate. Unfortunately, most polls are done quickly to get a sense of how people “feel” about a given topic. This quick-fix precludes going in depth, and the tone of the verbal question, as well as the voice of the person asking, can cause two people who agree on something to give completely opposite answers. Polls written by someone with an agenda can bring out results in the direction they want without much effort. Question sequence, which may be used to lead a respondant down the path of thought a pollster desires, or options which don’t provide for all possibilities (Have you quit beating your wife?), can skew the percentages in any desired direction. Realistically, any poll not looking for a simple Yes-No response on a simple issue (Who will you vote for?) has major problems in accuracy unless it requires dozens of answers for analysis.
“Should we be in Iraq?” sounds like a simple question, but must be understood in its context within the poll. When in the list of questions was it asked? What questions were asked before? What answer did the pollster anticipate when placing the question in that sequence?
When you can answer those questions, you might have a vague idea of what the raw numbers in a poll really mean. You won’t get that information on most polls, and need to ask why before taking poll numbers as valid.
*****UPDATE*****
Sarah shut down comments for the post after taking abuse from no-nothings who claim to understand statistics. I was going to add this, but now will simply post it here.
When using statistical analysis of data, it is absolutely fundamental that interpolation and extrapolation are two very different sides to the coin.
Interpolation is the analysis which draws conclusions from data based on the point of interest falling within the bounds of the collected data. There are errors inherent in this within the statistical standard deviation. All in all, this can be used with some degree of certainty based on the amount of data collected.
Extrapolation, on the other hand, makes some assumptions which may be invalid because the point of interest is outside the bounds of data collected. It assumes the data behave nicely, and so a trend can be used. The amount of data collected must be considered, but a solid knowledge of the expected outcome must also play a role if you are to extrapolate knowns to unknowns. Extrapolation can be used effectively when Newton’s Laws are involved, but is not as consistent when discussing social questions.
Polling is extrapolation. The conclusions cannot, with any reasonable certainty, be used to draw further conclusions on variables outside the sampled population without having a solid understanding of that population. It is inherently inaccurate. If the pollster understands the entire population the sample is expected to represent, he may be able to draw some conclusions which are accurate within a degree he can live with.
For those who doubt it, check how much difference there is in polls reputing to ask the same population identical questions.
Pancho has the variety of answers.
From Jihad Watch, Hamas has spoken:
? We reiterate the Zionist Entity does not have the right to exist in its illegitimate capacity as the so-called ?state of israel?.
? The only legitimate solution is a solution derived from the Islamic Shari?ah. All other Laws including International Law have no legitimacy for Islam and Muslims.
? The Zionist Government and its citizens can either peacefully surrender, dissolve the Zionist Entity and migrate to non-Muslim territories (like Austria, Germany, Poland, UK etc), or face a permanent state of war against Muslims until the Zionist Entity is physically destroyed in its entirety.
Does that erase any belief that there can be a peaceful solution?
I’ve added a couple of links to my daily reads, and deleted a couple that were too hard to navigate or too extreme politically.
In particular, I’ve added an African blog, AfricaPundit, who has links to others on the Dark Continent (is it still okay to call it that?).
I’ve been reading more and more on Africa. When I got my masters in International Relations, sub-Saharan Africa was my primary area of study and interest. Muslim fundamentalism is taking hold in many areas, Robert Mugabe and his ilk are in power, and Ivory Coast and Liberia have had some problems of late. It’s all off the radar screen for most folks right now.
Sgt. Hook will soon be in Afghanistan and can give us first-hand information on that theater. God speed young man.
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