Hi, I can see that there are many problems for Gallup: who's got phones, how to define likely voter (BTW, the article does say they create three groups and weight them 1, less than 1, and 0), and on and on.
But maybe it's a case of looking at the other side of the proverbial coin: even with all of the warts, the sampling procedure is doing remarkably well. That's the end point of the article. It's the Literary Digest story all over again. People don't believe you can do a pretty good of predicting an election where millions vote by using a sample of a few thousand. I think scientific polling shows you can. I want to teach my students that it is hard to sample and that the "simple" in SRS does not mean easy, but I end up teaching them that it is impossible to do. All I do is create a bunch of critics who, no matter the design, rip it. How can I strike a balance? I want them to doubt, but not to refuse to believe. Humberto Barreto [EMAIL PROTECTED] (765) 361-6315 . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
