October 5, 2015
Our favourite bogus poll
It’s time for Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year competition. As with any bogus poll, we won’t learn what the true popularity of the various NZ birds actually is.
As long as it’s clear that bogus polls are being used for entertainment and advertising, not to collect information, there isn’t a statistical problem with them.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »