By the way, Bob Kerrey (D-Neb) was quoted today in USAToday as saying that
the only way to have confidence in the outcome is to recount the votes (I
assume he means in FL, not the country) 50-100 times, then use the average.
reg
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Zaslavsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, November 10, 2000 11:03 AM
Subject: NY Times on "statisticians' view" of election
> The following might be interest for those following press coverage of the
> possible role of statistics in this dispute. (The printed version in the
> edition I receive contained additional comments by David Freedman, also
> downplaying the potential of statistics in this highly charged situation.
> I would not follow Persi very far on the analogy to census undercount
> adjustment, since anything that would be done now on the elections would
> be post hoc and supported by little research ... that's another argument!)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> IN RESEARCH, RECOUNTS ARE NORM
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/10/politics/10MATH.html
>
> November 10, 2000
> THE SCIENCE OF COUNTING
> By GINA KOLATA
>
> First George W. Bush led Al Gore by 1,784 votes in Florida. Then, an
> unofficial count by The Associated Press suggested his lead was slashed
> to less than half that. So, which number is right mathematically?
>
> Statisticians chuckled at the idea.
>
> "There's always going to be an error," said Howard Wainer, a statistician
> at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J. "Every time you
> count them, you're going to get a different answer."
>
> In research, said Diana C. Mutz, a professor of political science at Ohio
> State University, scientists will repeat a process multiple times and
> choose a number somewhere in the middle of their data as most likely to
> reflect the truth. But, she and others said, multiple recounts are
> probably not desirable in the presidential election because they would
> add to the delay and uncertainty, not to say the bickering. Whoever was
> losing could argue for one more recount.
>
> Even if it were just a research question, Professor Mutz was not sure how
> many counts would be needed to make her confident the Florida vote was as
> accurate as it could be. How many times she would count it "depends on
> how many graduate students I have," she joked.
>
> Then there is the problem of Palm Beach County, Fla., where residents
> said confusion over the ballot led more than 19,000 voters in a heavily
> Democratic area to mark two candidates instead of one for president.
> Their ballots were discarded as invalid. And, adding to the confusion,
> Patrick J. Buchanan won more than 3,000 votes in Palm Beach. Some
> Democrats said many people accidentally voted for Mr. Buchanan when they
> meant to vote for Mr. Gore. Isn't there a way to fix that? A statistical
> adjustment, perhaps?
>
> Sorry, say the statisticians. Any adjustment would only make matters
> worse. Persi Diaconis, a statistician at Stanford University, said the
> situation reminded him of attempts to adjust the census to correct for
> the undercount, the people who were missed. The census recount turned out
> to be a nightmare, he said, with new errors introduced and even more
> squabbling.
>
> "The process really degenerates," Professor Diaconis said. "It's not at
> all simple."
>
> Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
>
>
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