What is the problem with SE5?

[geoschmo]

AstralWanderer said:
As long as the poll is open to all though, that is about as fair as a website can get.

If by "fair" you mean accurate, then from a statistical analysis perspective a web poll open to all is just about the worst kind of poll you can do. Really the only way you could do worse would be to go out of your way to find a biased sample group. Something like taking a survey to see if people support tougher sentencing laws, but only asking convicted felons.

You have to do all sorts of random sampling and other statistical stuff to get a survey that produces data worth using. Web polls are useless are far as getting useful data. The only thing they are good for is driving traffic to whatever site they are on. People like to feel like their opinion matters, and a web polls gives them a nice warm feeling. But the only people seriously paying attention to the results are the other people who voted.

Geoschmo