Does society waste too much time with useless surveys

jas72

jas72

jas72

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Joined
31 Jul 2006
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Belgium land of chocolate
Every day there seems to be another study done by some University that links A to B in a round about fashion.

Only today I've read that should your child be banging into stuff he/she will now end up being a fatty. :rolleyes:

Presuming these people get paid to study these kinds of things I have to ask myself isn't their better things to be studying.

Everyone knows the fat equation calories out < calories in.

Now they are saying if you are clumsy you shall be fat. :confused:

Complete nonsense and really the BMJ should be looking at far more reaching problems linked with today's living than if a child can pick up 20 matches in X seconds. :mad:

It's hard enough being a parent bombarded with useless information criticised for smacking your kids then criticised for not controlling them if you don't and being grilled by Social services everytime your kid falls. (Yes it has happened to my friends.)

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/itn/20080813/tuk-clumsy-children-linked-to-obesity-dba1618.html
 
the dutch did a study and found that a person (of either sex) will orgasm more quickly if they are wearing socks :D
 
The funny thing is, they post the results of all these surveys regarding just about everything and build a consensus of the entire population based on it. I've been around for 37 years and I've never been polled on anything. Anything! In talking to my neighbours, they never have either. So how can the pollers say 20% of us are smokers, or 82% have health care concerns, or 86% are overweight? They don't even know what it's like in my neighbourhood!
 
Raist said:
The funny thing is, they post the results of all these surveys regarding just about everything and build a consensus of the entire population based on it. I've been around for 37 years and I've never been polled on anything. Anything! In talking to my neighbours, they never have either. So how can the pollers say 20% of us are smokers, or 82% have health care concerns, or 86% are overweight? They don't even know what it's like in my neighbourhood!
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They take a few hundred people and base it on that. I don't think they ever claim the percentages to be entirely accurate.
 
Raist said:
I don't see how they can be even nearly accurate. A few hundred, or even a thousand, out of a population of hundreds of millions?
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Obviously they will never be entirely accurate, but you don't need that much of a sample size to guarantee things to be pretty close.

There's a calculator here to see this:
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

and there is a lot of statistics to prove the theories about sample sizes.
 
Haircut said:
Obviously they will never be entirely accurate, but you don't need that much of a sample size to guarantee things to be pretty close.

There's a calculator here to see this:
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

and there is a lot of statistics to prove the theories about sample sizes.
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From that site:

For example, if you asked a sample of 1000 people in a city which brand of cola they preferred, and 60% said Brand A, you can be very certain that between 40 and 80% of all the people in the city actually do prefer that brand, but you cannot be so sure that between 59 and 61% of the people in the city prefer the brand.
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A 40% variable. Looks like precision to me. :p
 
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