RE: ID cards - What wasn't mentioned about the results of the consultation exercise

["Owen Lewis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Roger Hird
> Sent: 02 November 2004 17:57
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: ID cards - What wasn't mentioned about the results of the
> consultation exercise
>
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>    Owen Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >
> > > It doesn't matter what the population size is.
>
> > That's where I suspect that reality and theory may part company. If I
> > try to balance a sample of 2500 from a population of 75,000 (a large
> > town), there's a fair chance that I can do that. Balance the same sized
> > sample for a population of 750,000? ..... Glad I don't have to try.
>
> That's the skill polling companies have developed.  They have ways of
> constructing samples by crude bandings (eg by sex, age, class) to ensure
> approximation to a true random sample.  But the sqrt of the sample size is
> only the MINIMUM error (crude terminology, I know: its the standard
> deviation, if I remember) from a perfect sample if everything else is
> right.  Getting the sample wrong makes the error bigger. In political
> polls, people lying does too, as does not knowing what "don't knows" will
> do, not knowing whether or not people will actually vote, etc etc.
>
> It does work very well with measurements of radioactive decay!

If only the whole of what we need to forecast in life was so perfectly
arranged :-)

Owen