They're not perfect, but that doesn't mean they're useless.

by Anonymous 15 years ago

It's an average not an exact measurement :|

by Anonymous 15 years ago

We take a survey in school- everybody puts fake answers though, and then we laugh about it when they say on the news that 94% of high schoolers in a certain area are depressed.

by Anonymous 15 years ago

The department of education should know better than to give anonymous polls to kids. there was a question that said "can you read?" i said no, of course.

by Anonymous 15 years ago

If I'm following this right: You hassle the people giving polls to interfere with the results, therefore all polls are bull?

by Anonymous 15 years ago

if it's really that easy to mess with it; i'm sure most people would and therefore, it's pretty much all bull.

by Anonymous 15 years ago

"I made the input faulty, so the output's faulty! Obviously useless!" What kind of poll could possibly yield meaningful results if you lied on every question?

by Anonymous 15 years ago

i'm pretty sure most people have lied on a poll at least once; it's not just me. MY results may not make a difference but EVERYONE'S results [including the ones who lied] put together would really screw it up.

by Anonymous 15 years ago

Well, the majority of the people that take polls aren't immature assholes who attempt to fuck up the results of a poll. Also, people will lie both ways, and it will even out somewhat.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

@Lalalalucy and YeahIAm: YOUR COMMENTS LOOK LIKE CHRISTMAS

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I've since learned that pollsters screen their data for bullshit information and remove outliers. Your contributions were likely eliminated by an if/then script.

by Anonymous 12 years ago

How many teenagers have sex on average is a poll, but the percentage of obese Americans is more like a statistic. It is not like they give you questionnaires to fill that ask whether you are obese or not.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Statistics are never WRONG. They may be wrongly presented, but the numbers themselves remain correct.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

For a statistic to be entirely accurate, fucking every single person in a given population has to answer the survey question(s), and fucking every single person has to be completely honest. Seeing how this is basically impossible, you just have to be happy with how accurate the polls/statistics are, until mind-reading devices are invented and implanted into every human's brain.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I don't see what having sex with every person has to do with this.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Ha, that took me a while.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

please take a statistics class.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

That's why there is a margin of error, it gets accounted for..

by Anonymous 13 years ago

You're incorrect since with a lot of polls the subjects volunteered or are getting some sort of reward for doing so. The surveyors are able to extrapolate the data and get a fairly correct statistic. If you've taken a stats course or anything similar you'd know this. Just because _some_ kids screw around with small scale surveys it doesn't mean that they all become invalid. This can be proven by the fact that the vast majority of statistics prove to be accurate. Political polls, for instance, shown by the voting done later on. Also, the issue of obesity is based on more than simply polling- medical records come into play, as well as taking into consideration the eating habits of the average American. The issue of teenage sex, while also partly based on polling, is also based on other statistics, such as the amount of recorded teen pregnancies in hospitals/abortion clinics/etc, the average age of a consumer for products like condoms or birth control, etc. One does not simply take a poll. Its black gates are guarded by more than just deceptive teenagers. There is evil there that does not sleep, and one must extract data carefully. Congratulations to anyone who actually read this.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

*hallelujah chorus* You are god.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

A poll can't be fake. that's just what the questions are called. You mean statistics.

by Anonymous 13 years ago