Submitted by Sorin61 t3_113v9ty in technology
TbonerT t1_j8u1g85 wrote
Reply to comment by ZippyTheWonderSnail in Majority of Texans back shift to solar energy by Sorin61
A sample size of 1200 is plenty large enough to hit a high level of confidence.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j8u2qya wrote
There are 27 million people in Texas. We don't even know if the people in the poll told the truth, were in Texas, or weren't simply bots.
1,200 is fine for opinion on your favorite pizza or sushi. It is just noise when it comes to opinions on energy in Texas.
Heck, most people in Houston aren't even from Texas, and many are not even from the US.
TbonerT t1_j8u54ja wrote
The statistics says 1200 is perfectly fine for a population size of 27M.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j8u6b92 wrote
Fait enough. An online poll of that size is just too small for me. Any influencer can several times that in an hour.
TbonerT t1_j8u7xqn wrote
That doesn’t make their polls more valid, though, and they are often rife with all sort of biases. They’re fine for influencers but have no value outside that.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j8u8llq wrote
And this is a poll to decide legislation for 27 million people from plain to desert to beach to forest based on a handful of people who may or may not even be real.
Local Legislation, maybe. Staylte wide? Not a chance.
TbonerT t1_j8u9s69 wrote
> The survey was fielded between January 9 and January 19, 2023, in English and Spanish, with 1,200 YouGov respondents, resulting in a confidence interval of +/-2.8%. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race/ethnicity, and education and are representative of the population of Texas adults.
It is mathematically and scientifically sound.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j8u9yq9 wrote
But doesn't scale.
TbonerT t1_j8ub5hh wrote
Mathematically, it totally does. You can plug the numbers in to a sample size calculator yourself and see that it works. Or you can argue that pollsters around the world are wrong to declare the Hobby School of Public Affairs one of the top pollsters. These people know what they are doing and recognized for doing it extremely well.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j8vg7xb wrote
Pollsters are often wrong. Most recently, look at the 2016 election. Not only wrong, but so wrong as to be laughable.
Polls are often designed by partisan agencies to deliver the message they want all the time. Does anyone trust a FOX poll?
The way questions are phrased can help deliver the results the pollsters are paid to deliver. Do you back EVIL thing X, or are you on the side of righteous thing Y?
There are also audiences that are polled. If pundits are paid to direct people to the poll, the poll will be directed by those audiences. The HMS "Boaty McBoatface" can attest to this.
I know that the math is right, but the data isn't trustworthy.
TbonerT t1_j8w45el wrote
Those are good points, but they are very broad and not applicable to this particular situation. This school’s poll determined that Trump would win Texas by 5.3% and he ultimately won the state by 5.6%. Is that laughably wrong to you?
The Hobby School’s November 2022 midterm election polling was also highly accurate, finding that the Harris County judge’s race was too close to call, mirroring the final result in which incumbent Lina Hidalgo beat challenger Alexandra Del Moral Mealer by less than 16,000 votes. It found incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott held a 13-point edge over Beto O’Rourke. Abbott ultimately beat O’Rourke by 11 points, well within the poll’s margin of error. Does that sound like pundits asking leading questions?
> There are also audiences that are polled. If pundits are paid to direct people to the poll, the poll will be directed by those audiences. The HMS “Boaty McBoatface” can attest to this.
They go through painstaking efforts to ensure the sample surveyed closely matches the traits of those whose attitudes you are trying to capture, including age, gender, race, ethnicity and partisan affiliation.
This school isn’t posting simple polls on Fox News or Instagram and just straight posting the results. They are applying math and science to their techniques to deliver accurate and credible results. Not all polls are created equal.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j8zxiv2 wrote
Shall I make cite examples where polls were laughably wrong? Polls that used the same math?
Polls are only as good as the questions asked, and the data collected. The more local, the easier it is to get them right. A small sample size is a more accurate picture.
Any polling sample size needs to reflect the size of the group being sampled.
TbonerT t1_j9103ep wrote
No, you shall sit, down, shut up, and learn about what makes this a good poll versus to the bad ones you know about.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j92b6yo wrote
There are zero people who are dumb enough to think 1200 internet users, who can anonymously self report both demographics and location, represent the population of 27 million people.
No amount of "the math is sound" will translate into "the conclusion is meaningful".
TbonerT t1_j93dlxx wrote
They link the report from the survey, which includes the efforts they went through, which I already mentioned, to ensure it isn’t some bullshit survey like you see on IG. This is how actual scientific polling is done. I’ve already given you two examples of how accurate this school is in conducting their polls. If you want to wallow in ignorance, go ahead, but please wallow silently.
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j992pni wrote
There is a saying in computer science.
Garbage in, garbage out.
TbonerT t1_j9aap57 wrote
Yes, I’m familiar with that phrase. What you are seeing on insta polls is garbage in, garbage out. What you are seeing with this scientific poll is the opposite. I literally quoted previous results showing that their polls very closely match reality, because that’s what they do. What they do is data in, data out. Do you understand how that’s different?
ZippyTheWonderSnail t1_j9bfxhv wrote
I feel like this is a pedantic debate.
It is true that the statistics math works.
It is a non sequitur that therefore the conclusions are correct in a broader context than the sample warrants.
The data only tells us that, among the relatively small sample, there is a general consensus. However, the sample size is only large enough to draw conclusions on maybe a county level.
The sample would need to cover a broader sample of Texas citizens and be larger to be relevant. For 27 million people, you'd need a sample size of tens of thousands from a broad number of locations.
How many sock accounts do you have? I'm curious.
TbonerT t1_j9bh2t2 wrote
This isn’t a pedantic debate. If the math works and the results demonstrate the math works, what more is there?
> However, the sample size is only large enough to draw conclusions on maybe a county level.
Again, this is simply incorrect, as demonstrated by the math and backed up by actual results from polls conducted in this manner. You’re wrong and burying your head in the sand. Their polls of 1200 people arrive to the same conclusions within a fraction of a percent as the actual results. Is that really so hard to believe?
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