even if you can’t find a source of demonstrable bias, allow yourself some degree of skepticism about the results as long as there is a possibility of bias somewhere. There always is.
The operation of a poll comes down in the end to a running battle against sources of bias, and this battle is conducted all the time by all the reputable polling organizations.
This bias is toward the person with more money, more education, more information and alertness, better appearance, more conventional behavior, and more settled habits than the average
it is not necessary that a poll be rigged—that is, that the results be deliberately twisted in order to create a false impression. The tendency of the sample to be biased in this consistent direction can rig it automatically.
But, of course, the truth is, what the company reports as profits is only a half or a third of the profits. The part that isn’t reported is hidden in depreciation, and special depreciation, and in reserves for contingencies.
Watch out for the general conclusion that the more you go to school the more money you’ll make. Note that this has not been shown to be true for the years beyond an undergraduate degree,
If your profits should climb from three percent on investment one year to six percent the next, you can make it sound quite modest by calling it a rise of three percentage points. With equal validity you can describe it as a one hundred percent increase.
The odd thing about percentiles is that a student with a 99-percentile rating is probably quite a bit superior to one standing at 90, while those at the 40 and 60 percentiles may be of almost equal achievement.
But arbitrarily rejecting statistical methods makes no sense either. That is like refusing to read because writers sometimes use words to hide facts and relationships rather than to reveal them.
