Poll Position

Polls used to be conducted on a variety of items, but mainly for elections, products, and television shows. The costs of these polls were such that they occurred only when it was important enough and thus cost effective. The advent of the internet has changed all that. In some instances I know it has been beneficial to lessen the cost of conducting polls. Students at universities can illicit responses from a large enough group to make proper scientific conclusions at a fraction of the cost. The same goes for researchers working to identify causes of cancer, alzheimer's and other life destroying diseases. What bothers me is the other polls that occur all too often.

First off, I know I don't have to answer any of the annoying polls or read them for that matter so nobody tell me that. Just cause I can ignore something doesn't mean I can't state my position on the matter. There are now polls about whether you think Tiger Woods will be back soon or later, what the chance of a certain team winning is, who you think will be kicked off a show, etc. These to me are such nonsense! Who are the people that respond? Are they close friends of members of the team so they know who is secretly injured? I highly doubt it. Most the people are just regular individuals who by clicking a button give their worthless opinion on a subject. If 80% of the respondents think the Lakers will win the championship does that mean they will? Of course it doesn't.

Scientifically speaking most the surveys are not accurate because the sample is not randomly chosen; instead they consist of those individuals that have internet and go to the particular site and have the desire to respond to the given question. I have the ability to conduct polls on this blog. I did do one, but at the time my readership was low and the response was very little. Now, I don't foresee having any more polls because I can get an idea about what people think by reading the comments and not by a silly poll.

There are still important polls out there. The most important one being when we go to the polls to cast our votes. Also, it is important to take a small poll like asking everyone in the office what topping do they like on their pizza.

I am going to make sorted effort to not respond to any polls online unless they are for a really valid reason. Whether I like to put my toilet paper with the paper coming over or under does not seem like a good use of my time. I would like to get comments from you so I can find out what is your poll position.