CDR: Re: Close Elections and Causality

[Sampo A Syreeni]

On Sun, 12 Nov 2000, Kevin Elliott wrote:

>This is why people who don't know statistics should not be allowed to
>think... By no means is that number, by itself, of any significance
>whatsoever.  How many got canceled last election- one number I heard
>said 14,000.  If so then 19,000 is about what one would expect
>considering increased voter turnout and normal statistical
>fluctuations.

Quite. The problem here is what happens when the mean expected error of the
estimate given by the ballot starts to get significant with respect to the
mean popularity difference being measured. There is always some error, but
it is not often that the actual difference in votes given to the main
participants shrinks too low for the error to have any relevance. Simply
put, we are faced with the scourge of binary decision problems based on
noisy data.

Sampo Syreeni <decoy at iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university