[522] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Protesting Fun?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew M Starr)
Thu May 3 18:57:06 2001
Message-Id: <200105032256.SAA21331@all-night-tool.mit.edu>
To: Ezra Rosen <erosen@MIT.EDU>
cc: mit-talk@MIT.EDU, drew@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 03 May 2001 18:52:54 EDT."
<200105032253.SAA06657@melbourne-city-street.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 18:56:38 -0400
From: Andrew M Starr <drew@MIT.EDU>
Ezra,
No, it was not an online survey.
From the article:
The poll used a randomly selected group of 600 Harvard undergraduates living both on-campus and off-campus and was run from midnight yesterday morning until 8 p.m. yesterday evening.
Respondents were first contacted via e-mail, and if they did not respond, follow-up phone calls were made. In total, the survey reached 372 students, approximately five percent of undergraduates. The maximum margin of error for any single question was approximately five percent and typically less.
So while electronic means were used for data delivery, the methodology of choosing respondents is statistically
fair.
Your confusion might be from the fact that there is an online survey on the front page of the Crimson. That survey is
asking the same question. And it is almost certainly inaccurate... as most online surveys have the URLs forwarded
out over and over again to groups who would support one side over another.
Drew
|> To continue the peep game:
|>
|> I believe in statistics and numbers, that's what MIT taught me. So when
|> Drew wrote about that survey, I believed it. It was, however, an online
|> survey, with after taking 6.033, probably lots of ways to be inaccurate.
|> Additionally, I took part in one of the noon rallys on Monday and there
|> were probably about 500 people picketing, most of them students. Sounds
|> pretty good for waning support.
|>
|> Also, if anyone is interested in facts or articles to hopefully end the
|> speculation and assumption game, a good website is:
|> http://hcs.harvard.edu/~pslm/livingwage/
|>
|> -Ezra
|>
