...

 MM> My polls, conducted using face-to-face interviews on
 MM> randomly selected homes, were decried by Norman Kirk (a
 MM> former PM) as witchcraft - even when they got his electoral
 MM> landslide exactly right for the NZ Herald.

 MM> By contrast, to-day's telephone polls depend more on Lady
 MM> Luck's law of luminous lotteries rather than on any known
 MM> science.  Very wisely, Colin James (newspaper guru)
 MM> averages all their results to guess at the trends - even
 MM> though I personally would refuse to bet on his averages.

 MM> Any comments ?

 Don't forget, some of these polls may actually be intended to
 give the results asked for. And some may be "push polls", which
 are actually political advertising pretending to be polls. We
 get a lot of that around here.

 MM> :-))

 MM> (1) The calculations for these margins are clearly set out
 MM> in WG Cochran's "Sampling Techniques", 3rd Edition, Chap
 MM> 13, pp359-396. ___ MultiMail/MS-DOS v0.45

 These aren't word problems are they? You don't want us to do
 word problems, do you? We don't have to do word problems.

BOB KLAHN bob.klahn{at}sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... Sign found on Mars by Spirit lander... "Earth Beings Stay Home".
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