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Rolling Stone published a list in 2003 that ranked the 500 greatest albums of all time. The list was updated in 2020, and there was a lot of change. For The Pudding, Chris Dalla Riva and Matthew Daniels delve into the shift and ask what makes an album the greatest.
A lot of the differences appear to stem from who does the ranking, which makes for a good polling and statistical accuracy example.
Tags: Chris Dalla Riva, Matt Daniels, music, polling, Pudding
Posted by in Chris Dalla Riva, Infographics, Matt Daniels, Music, polling, Pudding
In a collaboration with Siena College, The Upshot is showing live polling results. The ticker moves in real-time for every phone call.
For the first time, we’ll publish our poll results and display them in real time, from start to finish, respondent by respondent. No media organization has ever tried something like this, and we hope to set a new standard of transparency. You’ll see the poll results at the same time we do. You’ll see our exact assumptions about who will turn out, where we’re calling and whether someone is picking up. You’ll see what the results might have been had we made different choices.
Gulp.
Posted by in polling, real-time, statistics, Upshot
For the past few months, Cards Against Humanity polled the American public to ask important questions such as whether or not it is okay to pee in the shower.
To conduct our polls in a scientifically rigorous manner, we’ve partnered with Survey Sampling International — a professional research firm — to contact a nationally representative sample of the American public. For the first three polls, we interrupted people’s dinners on both their cell phones and landlines, and a total of about 3,000 adults didn’t hang up immediately. We examined the data for statistically significant correlations, and boy did we find some stuff.
The poll is in the context of political leanings, which leads to some interesting cross-sections.
Maybe the best part though is that CAH will continue to poll for a full year, and you can download the data, which I am sure makes for a fun class project. They are also asking social scientists for question suggestions that would otherwise go unasked by more traditionally funded public polling.
Tags: Cards Against Humanity, polling, public
Posted by in Cards Against Humanity, polling, Public, statistics
I love the statistics lessons coming out of the Upshot, in the context of the upcoming election. In their most recent, Nate Cohn goes into varying statistical weights and how just one man can unknowingly shift the polls.
Our Trump-supporting friend in Illinois is a surprisingly big part of the reason. In some polls, he’s weighted as much as 30 times more than the average respondent, and as much as 300 times more than the least-weighted respondent.
Alone, he has been enough to put Mr. Trump in double digits of support among black voters. He can improve Mr. Trump’s margin by 1 point in the survey, even though he is one of around 3,000 panelists.
He also put Hillary Clinton ahead recently, because he wasn’t in the sample.
Posted by in election, polling, statistics, Upshot
With election season in full swing, as far as the news is concerned at least, we get to see poll after poll in the beginning of a voting day and then reports the next day about which ones were wrong. Based on the news alone, it feels like almost every poll is just plain wrong. Maarten Lambrechts shows what’s going on here with Rock ‘n Poll. It simulates a poll and then multiple polls, showing how small differences in the numbers can seem like a lot once the voting results come in.
Tags: polling, simulation, uncertainty
Posted by in Infographics, polling, simulation, uncertainty