We also discussed, quite tangentially and in a nonpartisan way, why this particular primary election was important even for people who don't live in Ohio, and what, given the mismatch between the exit polls and the results in 2004, the United Nations might have done in Ohio, if Ohio had been Sudan or Ukraine.What kind of statistic is .56 or 56%? What role does the Central Limit Theorem play here? How can the final results of the election be determined before all the precincts have reported, or in other words, what is the standard error?
About 50 of 70 students showed for today's lecture. When I asked them how many of them knew what had happened in Ohio yesterday, only one person raised his hand. Just out of curiosity, I asked them how many of them voted in our state's last election. Again, only one person raised his hand, not the same person who knew about the Ohio primary.
8 comments:
As a history prof, I've learned to stop saying things like, "You'd have to have been living in a cave for the past several months not to know that [X] is once again in the news."
I don't know the statistical notation for this, but X might equal "the 1977 FISA law," or "Coretta Scott King," or "the Gulf War."
Too many of my students seem to think I'm mocking them by accusing them of living in caves...
I've actually offered extra credit to students who vote in November, or in the spring primary in my state.
Sadly, it's rarely given out.
You might want to take a look at http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~isb9112/election/
for another possible explanation of the statistical oddities. This is not just paranoid crank stuff -- I had a paper on this stuff accepted at a UC Berkeley conference.
The Combat Philosopher
Dear AP,
Prof. Michael Berube, in filling in for General JC Christian over at Jesus' General http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/ , is making some interesting statistical points about immigration in a post called "If I may have your attention please." You might want to check the validity of some of his interpretations and graphs.
This seems like an excellent use of real data in the course, but in the current climate, I could see this being used as an excuse to include you in the next edition of the "Most Dangerous Professors". I teach the Big Bang and say a few words about Global Warming, and I'm honestly worried that I'm going to get accused of bringing politics in the classroom. It is very sad that presenting objective science is now considered a partisan activity.
Combat, I took a look. I never thought this was just more conspiracy theory. The statistical analysis of the Florida vote counts by voting machine had me convinced back in November 2004. I have to be careful at LSU, in LS, what I say to my students. I have to get them to think for themselves, and avoid having them tune me out because I'm just one of those liberal professors.
Chris, I would consider my inclusion on that list a high honor. I don't think I'll ever make it, though.
anonymous, please check out this site in regard to Bérubé's "analyses."
Dear AP:
In my comment, I was evidently being even more ironic than Berube. Probably comes from reading too many of the comments at Jesus' General. Besides, if I were that stupid, I wouldn't be reading your blog.
anonymous, this is what I had hoped. However, because you posted anonymously I didn't have enough context to resolve the ambiguity. And given the day I had yesterday (see my drunken student post), I was psychologically incapable of taking anything other than at face value.
It was a really funny post. Thanks for pointing me to it.
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