At 10:41 AM 1/2/01 +0000, Bokhorst, Frank wrote:
>Bob Hayden asked:
>
> > Anybody have anything to say about statistical education???
>
>I would like to turn the question round, and ask if it might be
>possible to summarize relevant material from the recent discussion
>on the forum about the US election saga into a form suitable for
>teaching purposes?
this would be valuable ...
certainly, there are SOME issues related to sampling ... and errors thereto
... that have import ... but, there are also many other issues, not
necessarily related to statistical principles ... such as, measurement
errors ...
one issue that keeps coming up in this context is the notion of "margin of
error" ... and while this has a rather precise statistical meaning in the
context of sampling related to some statistic (in the context of estimating
a certain parameter), i feel that the term has been used in so many ways
that, it has lost that specific meaning JUST because of the election
in a previous posts, which i can't find now, i tried to categorize this
process into 3 rough categories which were something like: (under the
assumption that what we are trying to do is to find out the true wishes of
those who actually make the effort to vote)
1. pre voters' cognitive situation ... that is, how clear in the voter's
mind IS their choice PRIOR to election day
2. voting day ... the processes surrounding the actual voting .... (some of
which are in control of the voter, some are not)
3. post voting issues ... well, the votes get tallied somehow and we DID
have recounts, right?
anyway, whether this is a functional way to slice up the overall process or
not, i am not sure but however one might do it, we could attempt to see to
what extent "statistical" notions play some/no role in each component of
the process
so, i think it would be of value to follow up on frank's suggestion ... and
see to what extent we can separate the wheat ... from the chads (that is,
real statistical issues)
=============
dennis roberts, educational psychology
penn state university, 208 cedar building
university park, pa USA 16802 ... AC 8148632401
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ... http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
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