Lies, lies and damned......

It's often said that you can make statistics say anything, and it's fairly true. The Advertiser's ludicrous daily "VOTE LINE" gives people an almost random question (yesterday's was 'Do computer games dull the imagination?') 91% voted yes and 9 % No.
There is a certain sense of irony about this since said paper is flogging CD roms of various games at the moment in order to increase paper sales.
But the totally ludicrous thing is that the paper reports there were only 20 callers. Now, these figures therefore must at some point or other be wrong. Because if there were only 20 callers then each call repesents 5 percentage points. Therefore if 18 people voted YES it would be 90%, or 17 would be 85%, 19 would be 95....No way can 91% happen.
Even allowing for stuff ups, and dither dathering (and because the phone system only allows you to answer Yes or No I can't see how that could be the case) all percentages would still have to bemultiples of 5.
Of course the real issue is that the sample is nonsense...it is too small and is self-selected.
The result is therefore meaningless on this count also.

What is perhaps as disconcerting is the question for today which is "Do you support the Liberal Party's plan to rebuild the Royal Adelaide Hospital?"
The qualitative difference in importance is striking.
Now I will guarantee that there will be 10 times more votes in the sample at least, which may signify that the result is more meaningful. But of course it will be fuelled on both sides by the political interests, and the process of self-selection (that is you decide yourself if you want to ring up) which means that essentially the self-interested and the politically-inspired are likely to respond vigorously (no way of checking if they ring twice, or more even)
Truth is it's a bit of a waste of time!

PS. There were over 600 calls about the RAH question...I sunsequently penned a letter to the paper

Anyone who has been inside the RAH surely cannot believe that more than 80%
of South Australians prefer that rabbit warren to be redeveloped in preference
to a state of the art new hospital.

Some, of course, may; and
clearly the Opposition is using this as a point of difference in the lead up to
next year's election.

Yesterday's phone poll would have us believe
that more than three quarters of South Australians think that it's better to
rework the tired old buildings; , but it makes us suspect (what we already
know) that phone-in polls are subject to blatant flooding by interested
parties and thus statistically irrelevant.

Cooperation - a new era?

During Q&A last week one of the participants (about to join Obama's media circus) noted that as the dust settled on the Obamaisation of American politics, one of the things that seemed to be emerging was a new political era in which political opponents try to work together rather than to rigidly oppose everything that the other side presents.
Only history, I suspect, will tell if this is indeed happening. But I think we see some possible signs of it in our own fair land and State. Whilst inevitably people are tiring a little of Kevin Bland (better that a leader should be bland than be carefree...government is essentially a conservative process), they are tiring ever more of the haphazard critique that comes from oppposition. Abbot for example couldn't help himself on the said program and just had to be cynical and snide. I think we are tiring of it.
I have blogged before that I think Turnbull is more cooperative than his role allows, and I suspect he too is tiring of just having to criticise the government.
Did the Queensland electorate, too, on Saturday reject an Opposition whose sole offering seemed to be not in new policy and/or vision but that they might get rid of long standing government who happen to have picked up a pretty rum situation?
Is this happening in SA...I tire of hearing Captain Marty never offering new initiative but simply whining about Major Mike. The Opposition spokespersons make fools of themselves (it seems to me) because their principal dynamic is not to offer a sense of new beginnings but a constant harping on about how awful the government is. Now that they are locking themselves into the ridiculous policy (for example) of revamping the RAH rather than build a new hospital...they are simply being driven by negative reaction to the government's policy instead of what is best for the state.
Add to that their other great gift...self and mutual immolation on the altar of political infighting...their political irrelevance seems assured.