Letters to the Editor
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@Uncle
A close friend who's a statistician remarked earlier today that the WSJ poll looks pretty contrived. Whereas she believes the mechanics of the Gallup polls look pretty sound.
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A Close friend?
Sounds just as quaitly contrived, as you sound as consistantly clueless as ever Kate. You quote an imaginary friend, and lo! Hold the presses.
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Kate didn't get the memo...
...that all the Southern Democrats were supposed to switch to Republican after LBJ forced them to accept the ni**ers at their kids' school...
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Oh, Kate, Kate, Kate
The premise, prevalent in the last two elections, was to tack toward the right. In other words, to beat a Republikan, be one. And here I had the notion we had at least a semblance of a two party system. Can you define what separates one party from the other (not, not red and blue on the map, Kate)? Just list the accomplishments of the last seven plus years. If you like that, you're a republikan. YOu should vote for Honest Johnny McLame, serial adulterer and POW, and you'd get four more just like 'em. If you want something different- not guaranteed better, but how could it be worse?- vote for the candidate with the little "D" next to their name. It will be one of two people, in all likelihood. If you want to take your ball and go home, you are enabling the fascists. It's that simple. I'd say simple enough for a Texan, except I know quite a few folks from the longhorn state, and they're quite bright. Of course, most are from near Austin, and are in the minority. We can't blame you for George, though, even though you elected the mumbling fool by wide margins twice. He's a Connecticut preppy peckerwood. Have a lovely evening.
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Results of My Poll
20 non-randomized, non-anonymous subjects, working at a small techie company in NYC thoughts on the Wright controversy:
12 thought his speech "fixed things"
4 thought that it would seriously harm Obama's chances of winning the general
3 were totally non-committal about everything
1 is convinced that the 3 minutes of Wright sermons on YouTube that everyone saw prove that Obama has poor judgement
The more interesting result, however, is that 19 of the 20 believe that it's a complete waste of time to be discussing the issue, and that there's no reasonable way to argue that Obama should be judged on the basis of a few selected out-of-context quotes of his preacher.
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As a statistician, I see nothing problematic about that poll
except, of course, it's bad for Clinton-bots.
The poll is fine. It's Hillary that's up to her ass in alligators.
The messages are coming in, and Hillary is going down. The relentless, unfair, biased, and Rovian attacks that Hillary has been launching have back-fired. She is not going to win PA by 20 points, which she must do. If she wins PA at all, it will be by 5 pts, which is a loss.
Remember, in PA, if she wins by LESS than 20 pts, it's a loss.
She must win IN by 20 pts. If she wins IN by less than 20 pts, it's a loss.
I'd feel a little sorry for you Clinton-cultists, but you have been so relentlessly unpleasant that my reservoir of the milk of human kindness is about tapped out.
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KateTeX and her Clinton-loving statistician
are biased.
"And what, pray tell, are the defects of yon poll? The WSJ is highly respected, at least pre-Murdoch, even if one finds the editorial board a little to the right of ones taste? It's not their first poll."
The WSJ poll is the "battleground" poll, with one pollster a Dem, and one a Rep. It's a perfectly fine poll, and all polls are wrong, but some are less wrong.
If you love Hillary, because she is so strong, so fine, such a FIGHTER, then anything that threatens "our girl" is evil, wrong, and of course defective. That's the problem with the poll - it's the wrong message. Polls conducted in pretty much the same way which result in more pro-Hillary results are, of course, better.
Yep, shoot that messenger...
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close friends who are statisticians
Could she get a salon account? Would be interesting to hear details. Always skeptical of any poll, myself. Maybe because no one ever polls me!
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Statisticians are not necessarily pollsters
"Could she get a salon account? Would be interesting to hear details. Always skeptical of any poll, myself. Maybe because no one ever polls me!"
Her friend, if she actually exists, is not a pollster. Pollsters are a specific type of statistician. Most statisticians don't know diddly about polling - that's me for sure. I'm a statistician, but know only a little about polling. Polling is a black art, not a science. So her friend, if she exists, who is not a pollster, has no special standing to comment anyway.
It's like doctors. You don't see a proctologist about your throat cancer.
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Wasn't McCain statistically dead only a year ago?
Smoking is one of the leading causes of all statistics.
Liza Minnelli
USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population.
David Letterman
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.
Ernest Rutherford
You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
David Lloyd George
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts—for support rather than for illumination.
Andrew Lang
I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.
George Canning
Statistics are no substitute for judgment.
Henry Clay
Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie.
Harry Reasoner
Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.
Evan Esar
Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won't stand up either.
Evan Esar
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Salon's Telling Omission
It is interesting that Salon failed to mention that Hillary's positives are at a new low in the poll and that she now has more people who think negatively of her than positively. I wonder why that was not considered significant enough to make it into their little write-up.
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new info
The new survey was released as new information came to light about Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which Obama attended for two decades.
A Christian publication called Baptist Messenger reported that the church published a pro-Hamas, anti-Israel opinion article in a church bulletin in July.
It said the church republished the article from The Los Angeles Times. In the article, an official from the Palestinian group Hamas defended the group's refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist.
Baptist Messenger said the column was posted on Wright's "Pastor's Page."
In addition, Trumpet Newsmagazine, of which Wright is the chief executive officer, published an article written by Wright in which he described the crucifixion of Jesus as "public lynching Italian style."
"(Jesus') enemies had their opinion about Him," Wright wrote in a eulogy of the late scholar Asa Hilliard in the November/December 2007 issue, according to CNSNews.com. "The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans."
Obama was asked about the latest information about Wright during a CNBC interview.
"I've, I think, talked thoroughly about, you know, the issue with Rev. Wright. And, you know, everybody, I think, who examines the church that I attend knows that it is a very traditional, conventional church," he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080327/pl_nm/usa_politics_obama_pastor_dc;_ylt=Amlsd55CpKYse_3TOReQo74DW7oF