[r-t] Survey #4: Naming of rotations. Results.

[Matthew Frye]

On 26 Oct 2014, at 14:06, John Camp <camp at bellringers.org> wrote:
> At 00:11 on 26 October 2014, Matthew Frye wrote:
>> So. Pretty much as inconclusive as it's possible to be, the slight
>> edge to option 1 is too small to be considered a "result".
> 
> How statistically significant is a poll of potentially over 200
> people with 33 respondents, self-selected and with a particular
> interest in (and firm views on) the topic?  The list itself is
> self-selecting to start with.

Well, the polls are intended to find out the opinions of the list, so that we only survey the list is by design. Presumably the 200 figure is an over-estimate for various reasons (duplicates, inactivity). And is it unreasonable only to gather the views of those who wish to engage with the debate? I think every possible opportunity has been given to list members to make their opinion know and if they choose not to I think it's reasonable to assume they either have no opinion, don't care about the issues, or wish to withhold their opinion (in which case there's very little we can do). I suppose the volume of correspondence could be an issue for some, but given we've got very similar numbers voting on this and the single-lead courses issue (which had *much* less discussion) I think that's a small minority if anyone.

As for a bare mathematical statistical significance, I confess I know little on the subject of statistics. I will, however, stick my neck out and say that a result of 16-17 is not statistically significant, whereas the previous 28-7 almost certainly was. I don't know where between those two you could draw a line.

MF