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Politics : Sioux Nation

DJT 10.47

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3:59 PM EST

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To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (545)	11/5/2004 7:52:23 AM
From: Oeconomicus	of 361633

"We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count." What a freakin' moron. Doesn't this so-called "journalist" understand the basic principles of statistics? Pollsters report those pesky "±3%" disclaimers for a reason, you know. It's called a "confidence interval". If they say "51% of respondents said they voted for" whoever, that means only that 51% of those polled said that, not that 51% of all votes were cast for that candidate. It is only an estimate of the population mean, not the actual number. When they say "51%, ±3%", they mean "we are 95% confident that the real number is between 48% and 54%." So what does this mean in the context of this article? It means that a "journalist" who extrapolates from an exit poll to find "proof" that ANY candidate won by any specific number of votes (or won at all if the confidence intervals overlap) is either lying (under the assumption that his readers are too stupid to know the difference, which may be a safe bet with Palast's target audience), or is simply ignorant. Take your pick. PS: Why does he assume that only "democratic voters" are too stupid to punch their chads properly?

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