Flag text analysis
The group in charge of the flag candidate selection put out a summary of public responses in the form of a word cloud. Today in Insights at the Herald there’s a more accurate word cloud using phrases as well as single words and not throwing out all the negative responses
There’s also some more sophisticated text analysis of the responses, showing what phrases and groups of ideas were common, and an accompanying story by Matt Nippert
Suzanne Stephenson, head of communications for the flag panel, rejected any suggestion of spin and said the wordcloud was never claimed as “statistically significant”.
…
“I think people misunderstood it as a polling exercise.”
“Statistically significant” is irrelevant misuse of technical jargon. The only use for a word cloud is to show which words are more common. If that wasn’t what the panel wanted to do, they shouldn’t have done it.
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 »