Sampling Error Quotes

The tendency of the casual mind is to pick out or stumble upon a sample which supports or defies its prejudices, and then to make it representative of a whole class.

Sampling, statisticians have told us, is a much more effective way of getting a good census.

The errors in media polling rarely benefit a Republican.

We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

Polls are inaccurate in my opinion, based upon anecdotal evidence, based upon people that I know.

It is impossible, by the way, when picking one example of anything, to avoid picking one which is atypical in some sense.

Our polling methodology has gotten outdated, and, in fact, it's not really telling us what it needs to be telling us.

One of many problems with survey research in general is that you can only survey the survivors. In other words, if you were to do a survey of people who were known to have played Russian Roulette and you sent out the questions before the time they were going to play and then you come back six months after they played Russian Roulette, you would probably discover that among the people who did come back there was no harm done.

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.