Time for my opinion on my poll this week. The result showed that some people were trusting, and some people very paranoid. But it mainly shows not many people are visiting my blog so far... As for me, I would go with the smallest minority (ie. I do trust people, OK?!?! Just not everyone.) Internet polls have no statistical basis whatsoever - so keep that in mind when viewing the results to my polls (as this will be especially the case for ones that have very few votes). Internet polls are not a representative sample of anything, they are just who visits the site and wants to vote. So whenever the media quotes internet polls, or txt polls, I get really frustrated. They mean nothing! And many people trust them as being accurate polls, because there is a low level of statistical literacy out there. Sure, if a few thousand people voted it might give a very rough indication of the population's feelings, but it's nothing to be reported about. The purpose internet polls serve is to raise an issue (which is what I will use mine for mainly), add an interactive aspect to the site, and to show the media outlet the opinions of their viewers. So don't trust them!
As an interesting side-note, I heard that because the "scientifically" done polls (where they try and get a representative sample of the population) only use landlines to call people, they miss a disproportionate amount of less-well off people, as many of them only have cell phones to avoid paying landline connection charges. So polls are often slightly more right-wing than the actual truth. Don't know how true this is, but it reaffirms that it is very difficult to get a truly representative sample, even when your trying to.
Watch out for my next statistically-irrelevant poll, which I will put up tomorrow.
