Talk:Biased sample
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(to Martin) Hi, this is your namesake, Mrdice. I'm into the logical fallacies at the moment, and I noticed you moved some articles around. For example, you put the spotlight fallacy together with biased sample. Is it alright with you if I give each fallacy, however closely related it is to another, its own page? Most fallacies are in some way or another related to eachother, and if we're going to put similar ones together, it would be a huge job, even more so because some of them belong to different catagories at the same time. My idea is to give each one its own page, and then mention at the bottom of the page to which ones they're related. Mrdice 03:19, 2004 Feb 16 (UTC)
[edit] "At best, this means the people who care most about an issue will answer"
This isn't necessarily best; it can be quite the opposite. Those who care most aren't bound to be true reflections of the population, especially if there's more room or inclination for people to care (or not) one way than the other. I can imagine this: Some government proposal has already been given the green light or even just been implemented. Many people were in favour of it, but they are already set to get their way and so might not bother voting. OTOH those who are against the idea are likely to flood the poll in protest.
It's also possible that the statment of a poll can be biased, by stating only one side of the argument. I can imagine this leading to biased results.... -- Smjg 15:31, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Some bad splitting occured here...
This article has turned into a childish description of one specific type of misuse of statistics. Biased sampling has many forms and is sometimes unavoidable, but when the type of bias in the sampling mechanism is known it can be taken into account and possibly corrected in the analysis (that is, one can draw inference for the unbiased population given a biased sample). So it needs a major rewrite I cannot provide at the time.--Boffob 18:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Cleaning up
This could use an overhaul in spelling and grammar check. If it weren't so late I'd do it myself. I'll come around and do it sometime if no one else wants to. (forgot to sign my post!)Imasleepviking 13:46, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
