People here and on Reddit really think that polls are made with just a few calls and then some average/extrapolation and that’s it.
Meanwhile it’s an entire field with a lot of complex math and people with more knowledge about it than everyone in this comment section combined.
And then the classic “polls are shit, they always get it wrong”. By definition polls are correct because they just represent an objective data set. Then they translate it into a phrase that we humans can (somewhat) understand but people then take it wrongly.
They read “Poll X says candidate Y will win” when instead they should read “According to the data obtained for Poll X, candidate Y has a Z% chance of winning with a confidence level of W%”. And that isn’t wrong unless someone wants to find the mistake in the math.
Yes
People here and on Reddit really think that polls are made with just a few calls and then some average/extrapolation and that’s it.
Meanwhile it’s an entire field with a lot of complex math and people with more knowledge about it than everyone in this comment section combined.
And then the classic “polls are shit, they always get it wrong”. By definition polls are correct because they just represent an objective data set. Then they translate it into a phrase that we humans can (somewhat) understand but people then take it wrongly.
They read “Poll X says candidate Y will win” when instead they should read “According to the data obtained for Poll X, candidate Y has a Z% chance of winning with a confidence level of W%”. And that isn’t wrong unless someone wants to find the mistake in the math.