Gene Gallagher writes:
>Neither of these authors explicitly use the binomial distribution (but
>Paulos certainly alludes to it), but in last Sunday's Boston Globe, two
>letters to the editor made the argument that if the vote difference in a
>state like Florida is within sqrt(n)/2 votes (about 1225 votes for
>Florida), we should call the state race a tie and divide the electoral
>votes equally. This embodies the false premise that an election is
>somehow a random sample of a larger population. It isn't. An election
>is a one-time only, finite, complete census. The votes cast by a
>finite population of those that actually voted can, in theory at least,
>be estimated without sampling error. Probability theory need not play
>ANY role.
I agree with your analysis of the situation. Using that criteria, you could
argue that anytime a bill passed in the House of Representatives (n=435) by
less than a 10 vote margin (or fails by less than 10 votes), they ought to
call it a tie and then flip a coin to decide whether the bill should
actually pass.
There is a lot of room for good statistical models for the Florida vote, but
applying a binomial assumption to the vote totals is not one of them.
Steve Simon, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Standard Disclaimer.
STATS: STeve's Attempt to Teach Statistics. http://www.cmh.edu/stats
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