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From: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Statistics, polls: honest, no flames
Message-ID: <2015@hao.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Mar-86 01:33:19 EST
Article-I.D.: hao.2015
Posted: Fri Mar 21 01:33:19 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Mar-86 22:41:12 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 43


  I just want to correct a couple of misconceptions (which are probably due
  to my own poor writing anyway). I have been cast as the "bad guy" in this,
  because I have "opposed", in some sense, someone who is doing his best
  to gain information that everyone wants. Contrary to popular
  interpretation, I fully support this effort. What disturbs me is
  twofold: personal public criticism for daring to oppose this net
  'hero', and that people are so blind to the inaccuracies (very well
  explained by Lauren, so I have no need to repeat them) that they
  are ready to start using these results to determine what groups we
  keep and which we don't. THAT is all I object to, is certain
  potential USES of the results, not the survey itself. I think
  the data are quite enlightening; that so many want mod.movies,
  for example, suggests that maybe, just maybe, there is more
  support for moderated groups than the public discussions on the
  subject would tend to show. But this is a very GENERAL conclusion.
  What scares ME is the possibility of axing certain groups based
  solely on these results, like 'hey, look, net.blah has the highest
  cost per reader, let's get rid of it'. Brian has partially  counteracted
  this by admitting that the margin for error is large; but he also 
  claims that his survey is exempt from the 'self-select sample' effects
  brought up by Lauren. I do not agree with that assesment. There are
  other self-select factors that everyone is ignoring. My favorite example
  :-) is the use of the Bourne shell. Many older versions of UNIX, and
  smaller systems, do not support this. How does that enter into the self-
  selection process?
     Well, this is already longer than I intended, and I promise it will
     be my last posting on the subject. I encourage Brian to continue
     the survey; I still wish to hell he had posted a C program instead
     of a shell script so more could participate, and I caution everyone
     not to make too many far-reaching decisions based on the results.

     --Greg

--
{ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo}
       		        !hao!woods

CSNET: woods@ncar.csnet  ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA

"If the game is lost, we're all the same; no one left to place or take the 
blame; Will we leave this place an empty stone, or a shining ball of earth,
we can call our home"