[523] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: Protesting Fun?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ezra Rosen)
Thu May 3 19:12:38 2001
Message-Id: <200105032312.TAA09528@melbourne-city-street.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 03 May 2001 19:11:51 -0400
To: Andrew M Starr <drew@MIT.EDU>
From: Ezra Rosen <erosen@MIT.EDU>
Cc: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <200105032256.SAA21331@all-night-tool.mit.edu>
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I'd like to apologize for my gross error. But as I said, I was there a
bunch of times, and there is a lot of visible support for this thing. Then
again, what the students want probably has no bearing on this anyway. Look
at the MIT admin, Krueger, etc.
-Ezra
"Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" -- Groucho Marx
At 06:56 PM 5/3/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>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
>|>
>
