[Peace-discuss] Re: The Power of Ten

[John W.]

At 12:31 AM 9/24/2007, Robert Naiman wrote:

>It doesn't mean anything unless you know what the other responses in
>the poll were.
>
>Some polls just give a few responses, because they want to classify
>people as e.g. supporting the war, or opposing it.
>
>Others allow a broad range of responses, because they're trying to get
>at shades of opinion.


As I understood the "poll", it was just a yes-or-no question.  "We (the 
U.S.) should keep our troops in Iraq and finish what we started."  Yes or no.

Drew Carey went on and on about how they asked a broad cross-section of the 
population - young and old, Republican and Democrat, people with relatives 
serving in the military, etc.  Beyond that, I don't know anything about 
their statistical sampling methods.  I just thought the result was 
interesting, and unexpected.


>The answer might be 13%. That would be really good news - unless there
>were other responses like "we should massively escalate," etc.

No other responses.  Just "We should keep our troops in Iraq and finish 
what we started."  Yes or no.

The female contestant guessed that between 17% and 37% of those polled said 
"Yes."  Like Laurie and Shirley, I thought she might be just a tad low.  I 
was thinking her answer (she was given a 20 percent spread) should be 
between 30 and 50 percent, because I thought that just under half, like 
maybe 40%, would say "yes".

And the correct answer was....



(drum roll, please)....



Only 12% of those Americans polled thought that we should keep our troops 
in Iraq and finish what we started.  Bob must have watched the 
show.  :-)  Presumably 88% said either "no" or "no opinion".  Drew didn't 
go into detail about the breakdown there.


At any rate, our tricameral, checks-and-balances government is failing us 
big-time.


John



>On 9/23/07, John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I just finished watching a quiz show called "The Power of Ten", which
> > follows "60 Minutes" on CBS.  Hosted by Drew Carey, the show requires the
> > contestant to predict how a random sample of Americans answered a certain
> > question.  The contestant's answer is given in terms of a range of
> > percentages, and the correct answer must fall within that percentage range
> > in order for the contestant to win.
> >
> > A female contestant just lost at the $100,000 level.  The question was,
> > "What percentage of Americans think that we should keep our troops in Iraq
> > and finish what we started?"  What would you predict the correct answer
> > was?  I'll supply the answer after a few people have hazarded a guess.
> >
> > John Wason