Nigel Henry
June 20, 2015
People don't trust polls Conceptually, it may seem counterintuitive that the views of a small sample (for example less than 1,000) can accurately estimate the views of tens of millions of people.
This leads to poor perception of public opinon polls.
This is how sampling error is usually taught… Error Equation Boring!
The user starts with an acutal population, of known distribution
population
DEM REP
500337 499663
He gets to see the actual results of the (few) people that he sampled
poll
DEM REP
314 286
Comparing he sees that with just 600 responses, he has approximated the population within 0.04
poll
DEM REP
0.523 0.477
The app is learner-friendly, so that one can see the effects of