N. Bhaskara Rao Quotes

Our polling methodology has gotten outdated, and, in fact, it's not really telling us what it needs to be telling us.

Every time I think that political analysts and writers will finally recognize that most of them don't understand much about political polls, they prove me wrong. They don't know how to read them; they don't understand the importance of cross tabs within a given poll, and they don't know how to analyze them.

Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort.

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

My job as a pollster is to understand what really matters.

The value and utility of any experiment are determined by the fitness of the material to the purpose for which it is used, and thus in the case before us it cannot be immaterial what plants are subjected to experiment and in what manner such experiment is conducted.

[Discussing economic trends:] You can find a study that says anything.

I have never had an interest in opinion polls. They are merely an indicator, that's all.

I think polling methodology is broken.

I know that a lot of people love to say that polls are wrong or don't matter, and from time to time they are - it depends on who they are polling.

Sometimes you will hear me say right on the air, 'You just cited a poll that is not even part of Real Clear Politics,' which is an average, an aggregate. Yours is seeming to be an outlier. Give me the name of that poll and the date that it was taken. I will say it right on the air.

When you start using test audiences, it becomes more scientific than it is about the work itself, and that's boring.

The problem is that when polls are wrong, they tend to be wrong in the same direction. If they miss in New Hampshire, for instance, they all miss on the same mistake.

I don't think the Gallup Poll technique is going to be very helpful in determining the goals of our educational system.

I'm a believer in the polls, by the way. Rarely do you see a poll that's very far off.

It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion, the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give the data authenticity.

For 'Power of 10,' you can look at the methodology at CBS.com, it's a company called Rasmussen Reports. We poll thousands and thousands of people for each question, a real cross section of the United States.

Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word 'census,' and people fall asleep.

People will often take an interesting experimental study which has been done in the world, perhaps at small scale, and then it's touted as some big solution.

Here's a news flash: scientists can be wrong. That's no big deal (unless the scientist is you), since research is self-correcting. Consequently, most errors by scientists become historical curiosities, with little long-term importance.

Any one game in baseball doesn't tell you that much, just as any one poll doesn't tell you that much.

I think the biggest problem in clinical trials is that they are underpowered. And that fundamentally, the studies are just too small.

Statistics is the plural of anecdote.

I've learned a long time ago not to take polls too seriously.