The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

So, what does this mean?

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I left this confidence poll up a good long time (month or so) so we could have as many of you take it as possible. Shortly after I posted it, Bob added "Myself" to the list (presumably before anyone took the poll, because the polling software won't let anyone change the poll after those being polled start logging their answers).

The results are interesting, and I've chopped them up and reordered them descending to match the original Gallup poll on the left.

Now, I know there are math and science people reading the Forum, a few philosophers, and maybe even a shrink or two.

So before I launch into any analysis of what this might be pointing to (I probably won't by the way), I'm hoping some of you will take a shot at it. Keep in mind that people were allowed to give multiple answers. That's why there were 214 answers with just 65 people voting. That's about 3.3 answers per person, by my count.

Even so, our profile is markedly different from the Gallup chart, and decidedly less "confident" throughout. In short, I'm wondering what the Gallup poll would look like if Bob had been involved in the authorship.

One quick point of analysis though, if I may. I think at a minimum, our poll suggests that only self-confident people will voluntarily take a poll like this on an obscure South Dakota blog.

Ok Forumps, your turn, what the heck do these results mean?

(p.s. I know, I know, small sample size, non-scientific methodology, cookie this, vote twice that, yadda yadda, I mean beyond those things.)

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