simply put, the problem is that the original census is not pristine - not
unaltered. it is not simply a matter of separating clearly marked red cards
from clearly marked black cards. therefore, tho it is theoretically
possible to count well marked objects with close to zero sampling error, the
ballots in florida have been sullied and any attempt to divine what a voter
intended to do is problematic at best and corrupt at worst...
> Debate the standards about dimpled chads and what counts
> as a vote, but don't throw up your hands citing inappropriate
> probability theory and argue that Supreme Court Justice Rhenquist
> should toss a quarter in the air to decide who will be president."
my feeling is that *in general* across the country (altho i dont necessarily
like to make this argument, because the total vote is irrelevent (due to the
fact that campaigning strategy dictates maximizing electoral votes - not
popular votes)) and in florida the outcome satisfices the standard of a tie.
the legal posturing and wrangling and all the concomitant partisan bullshit
is pre-ordained because we have a society that is not mature enough to
recognize a tie and not smart enough to deal with it in an appropriate
matter. in other words, with this 50/50 split a coin should have been
flipped so that we could have moved on.
but that point is now past. i was a gore supporter (for mainly supreme
court nomination issues), but his posturing is ripping this country apart.
i can live with bush - not politically - but because the election was so
close and his narrow win was not dependent on multiple recounts that were so
subject to interpretation and partisanship. Gore may ultimately overturn
this thing, but at a huge price to our democracy and constitution. it aint
worth it when the country is this evenly split.
Gould is right - parts of the election may not have been fair or just, but
pragmatically this country needs to move on and eventually address whatever
legitimate election problems it has.
"Gene Gallagher" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
905iro$tmr$[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:905iro$tmr$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> There seems to be some misunderstanding in the press about a fundamental
> difference between a sample of a larger population and a complete
> census.
>
> J. A. Paulos in his NY Times article 'We're Measuring Bacteria With a
> Yardstick'
> http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/22/opinion/22PAUL.html
> stated:
> "Not to be too cryptic, let me simply state that the vote in Florida is
> essentially a tie. The totals for Al Gore and George W. Bush, out of
> nearly six million votes, are so close that the results are
> statistically indistinguishable from what one would get by flipping a
> coin six million times."
> Paulos's solution:
> "Flip a commemorative Gore-Bush coin in the Capitol Building in
> Tallahassee. To avoid another tie, we'd better make sure it has rounded
> edges."
>
> Steven J. Gould has seconded this opinion in today's (11/30) Boston
> Globe:
> http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/335/oped/Heads_or_tails_+.shtml
> "Unfortunately, in making a deadly serious, even prayerful, case for the
> fairness of coin flipping in this circumstance, we must fight both the
> greatest failure of education and the deepest foible of the human mind;
> our propensity to misunderstand probability ... So flip a quarter ...
> Let the fortunate man win, and the United States triumph."
>
> Neither of these authors explicitly use the binomial distribution (but
> Paulos certainly alludes to it), but in last Sunday's Boston Globe, two
> letters to the editor made the argument that if the vote difference in a
> state like Florida is within sqrt(n)/2 votes (about 1225 votes for
> Florida), we should call the state race a tie and divide the electoral
> votes equally. This embodies the false premise that an election is
> somehow a random sample of a larger population. It isn't. An election
> is a one-time only, finite, complete census. The votes cast by a
> finite population of those that actually voted can, in theory at least,
> be estimated without sampling error. Probability theory need not play
> ANY role.
>
> To repeat my main point. The votes now being shipped to Tallahasee
> represent a one-time finite sample. Using the binomial distribution to
> calculate the sampling error for this finite population is
> inappropriate. We are NOT estimating what the relative proportions of
> Bush vs. Gore voters might be in multiple Bernoulli trials of the likely
> Florida voters. Those who didn't vote are irrelevant. We are simply
> estimating the actual finite number of Bush vs. Gore votes.
>
> E. C. Pielou faced this problem when dealing with calculating the
> diversity of species in a sample. Many ecologists calculate diversity
> using Shannon's H' statistic, but Pielou (1969, p. 231-233) points out
> that for a fully censused population, Brillouin's H should be used and
> "When H is used as the measure of the diversity of a completely censused
> collection treated as a population, it is, of course, FREE OF SAMPLING
> ERROR. <emphasis added>'
>
> Undoubtedly, there are sources of error in the counting of ballots.
> Last week, several studies described the measurement error from punch
> card scanners. However, in a finite sample, even as large as 6 million
> votes, I can identify no "intrinsic" or a priori source of error that
> must be included in any propagation of error. What IS the error rate of
> 4 observers carefully inspecting each punched ballot? I can't find a
> theorem related to that in any of my probability texts, and I warrant
> nobody else can either. It seems to me that using probabilistic
> arguments, especially erroneous arguments that elections are Bernoulli
> trials, is not helping us resolve this electoral decision. When it
> comes down to counting a finite and relatively small number of ballots,
> with strict standards, there need be NO sampling error. Debate the
> standards about dimpled chads and what counts as a vote, but don't throw
> up your hands citing inappropriate probability theory and argue that
> Supreme Court Justice Rhenquist should toss a quarter in the air to
> decide who will be president.
>
> Reference
> Pielou, E. C. 1969. An introduction to mathematical ecology.
> Wiley-Interscience, New York.
>
>
> --
> Dr. Eugene D. Gallagher
> ECOS, UMASS/Boston
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
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