It has been said that 85% of all statistics are made up on the spot including this one.
For example consider this one
But this one from The Hindu Online edition is the real winner.
Majority of Indians prefer smoke free zones.
92%, 96%, 95% on various counts are just unrealistic. Not that I am for smoking in public places, but falsifying data to push for reforms?
The first rule for a survey is that it take a representative sample. If you go to a anti smoking convention and ask the attendees for their opinion that isn't really a survey. Unfortunately the only fine print available is
"Around 1030 persons aged between 15-64 were interviewed between August 9 and August 24, 2008, the survey added."
By the way, what does AROUND 1030 people mean? Do you not even know the sample population size?
3 comments:
welcome to data analysis :)
On a more serious note, I am extremely disillusioned by the quality of journalism that is at display these days.
I thought that the job of journalists was to dig the truth out, and report it so that "we, the people" could analyse and make better decisions.
But all they seem to do these days is "Mr.X, the govt has initiated this new policy, what is your opinion on it?"
or
"Miss Y, Do you think that what Mr Z is going through can be justified?"
And to the people,
"According to our expert survey, 98% of the people have voted against that".
My question is what is the media's contribution here? Neither do they seem to have investigated the issue, nor have they explained it objectively. If soliciting others' opinions and collating them is what is defined as journalism these days, I could build a website which has nothing but opinion polls and call myself a journo.
@ Deep:
Yeah. It is becoming a little more evident in my normal life too huh?
@ Random Walker:
True. With the advent of 24 hour news channels and not enough news to fill slots, they seem more inclined to give people there 30 seconds of fame to catch eyeballs.
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