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Originally posted by rue:
"For those not versed in statistics, that means that the researchers were 95% confident (not even 100%)"
I suspect you don't know statistics either. A 100% confidence interval is an invalid figure. You should not have brought it up.

http://techniques.geog.ox.ac.uk/mod_2/glossary/confint.html

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Originally posted by rue:
It depends on your measure - counting or continuous.
PS We've had the debate before, I believe, and this is where it got stuck last time.

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To compound the problem further, a server at Edison/Mitofsky malfunctioned shortly before 11 p.m. The glitch prevented access to any exit poll results until technicians got a backup system operational at 1:33 a.m. yesterday.

The crash occurred barely minutes before the consortium was to update its exit polling with the results of later interviewing that found Bush with a one-point lead. Instead, journalists were left relying on preliminary exit poll results released at 8:15 p.m., which still showed Kerry ahead by three percentage points.

It was only after the polls had closed in most states and the vote count was well underway in the East that it became clear that Bush was in a stronger position in several key battlegrounds, including Ohio, than early exit polls suggested.

Some problems are inevitable. A total of 12,047 randomly selected voters were interviewed Tuesday as they left their polling places, and those results were fed into computers. The accumulated results were reported several times over the course of Election Day.

Results based on the first few rounds of interviewing are usually only approximations of the final vote. Printouts warn that estimates of each candidate's support are unreliable and not for on-air use. Those estimates are untrustworthy because people who vote earlier in the day tend to be different from those who vote in the middle of the day or the evening. For instance, the early national sample Tuesday that was 59 percent female probably reflected that more women vote in the day than the evening.

That is why the early leaks anger Lenski. "The basic issue here is the leaking of this information without any sophisticated understanding or analysis, in a way that makes it look inaccurate," he said.

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Originally posted by rue:
Many exit polls did not match the final vote:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=industryNews&storyID=670
7692
"'We have an exit poll crisis,'said pollster John Zogby, whose own Election Day predictions that Kerry would take Ohio and Florida proved wrong. He said he had used the exit poll data to confirm conclusions he had based on his own polling."
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/elect
ion2004/10092541.htm?1c
"But the polling consortium used by the networks and The Associated Press came under scrutiny Wednesday for exit polls that showed President Bush trailing Sen. John Kerry in battleground states throughout Election Day."

Also, after voting closes, exit polls are adjusted to the vote tally.
"After the survey is completed and the votes are counted, the exit poll results are adjusted to reflect the actual vote, which in theory improves the accuracy of all the exit poll results, including the breakdown of the vote by age, gender and other characteristics."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23580-2004Nov3.html
That may be the reason for the congruence between the final CNN exit poll and the final vote in Florida, while real-time exit polls indicated a different outcome.
Which still leaves the question open - was the exit polling flawed, or was it the vote count? I haven't come down on either side, I would find a statistical study enlightening. I'm going to keep my eyes open to see if one comes out.

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If things don't improve in the U.S. now that the repubs hold all the cards, their party will be exposed for the corporate/christian right tools they are and 2006 / 2008 will not be pretty for them.

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Originally posted by Ghoulman:

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Originally posted by lissa:
i think i'm going to cry.

i changed my mind. i'm moving to canada.

and then i'm crying.

~lissa, spwhore

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Need a roomate?

Don't get so crazy, it's not the end of the wor... oh wait. Never mind.

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Originally posted by lissa:
i think i'm going to cry.

i changed my mind. i'm moving to canada.

and then i'm crying.

~lissa, spwhore

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Originally posted by piratejenny:

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Originally posted by UnchartedOutlaw:
...*sigh* Well, look at it this way...Bush can't be reelected in 2008! :)

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But there is always Jeb Bush and the rest of the Bush's

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Originally posted by Ruxton:
...We care about our country. You obviously don't, which makes you and your ilk traitors. A hangman's noose is too good for you.

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Originally posted by Ruxton:
JASONZZZ:
You said,
"Come on, the study that came out last month is full of statistical problems. Did you actually look at the statistics or are you just regurgitating what was in the news? I thought you actually do your own analysis. The confidence interval for the 100k figure was from 8000 - 194000. I could have polled a bunch of monkeys and gotten a tighter confidence interval. For those not versed in statistics, that means that the researchers were 95% confident (not even 100%) that the real interval lies some where in between 8000 and 194000. You simply cannot average it out between the two figures. The odds are all even that it could be anywhere in there, it's not more likely right in the middle with 100k. Good grief."

GOTCHA, you worthless turd.

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Originally posted by Ruxton:

You've just admitted that no matter the numbers, you think it's just fine that all these people died, and will continue to die, based on the lies of the Bush administration.

You'd rather fumble numbers than admit the Bush administration lied, and killed people. Let's not forget the administration also tortured people to try to find non-existent WMDs. Those of us who are aware of the massive problems with this administration are not going to go away, nor are we going to try to make amends with "the other side." We care about our country. You obviously don't, which makes you and your ilk traitors. A hangman's noose is too good for you.

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Originally posted by WaddleDoodle:
I'm pretty sure you folks have a bus station near campus, no matter what school your in at the moment. So write the parents for the money to get a one way to ticket to Canada. I'm SURE they'll love to have you. If not, maybe the UN will help you out? They sure as hell haven't helped ANYONE else!

Bu............Bye!

Jeb Bush in 2008!

George P Bush in 2016!

Edited to add: The above bus ticket is directed to the tin-foil hat wearing KoolAide drinkers who are whiney sore losers. The sensible conservative folks couldn't leave because they work and pay taxes that end up supporting the other lot.

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Originally posted by rue:
"If your samples *are* your population, you are no longer sampling. You can still calculate mean, and deviations, and the normal statistics. But when your samples *are* your population, there is no confidence level. It is 100% by definition and all means of it."
If you are taking measurements of a continuous property, even if you measure the entire population, you still have error bars (due to error of the measurement) - hence you must state your measurement (for example an arithmetic mean) AND your error and AND confidence that your measure is somewhere within the error.

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Originally posted by lissa:

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Originally posted by Mantichorus:
"There's an old cat saying, which has particular relevance here; it goes something like this: 'We are all gonna die!'" -Cat, Red Dwarf.

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i sort of love you right now. can the cat please be prez? at least then we'd all be dressed well in our graves.

~lissa, spwhore

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Originally posted by Conscience:
President Bush is a little to liberal for my taste, but hopefully in his second term with more Republicans in the Senate we'll finally get the Human Life Amendment passed. Although probably after 2006, when the GOP gets 61 members in the Senate.

This what that needed amendment will say:

Section 1: The right to life is a paramount and most fundamental right of a person.

Section 2: With respect to the right to life guaranteed to persons by the Fifth and Fourteenth Articles of Amendment to the Constitution, the word "person" applies to all human beings, irrespective of age, health, function, or condition of dependency, including their unborn offspring at every stage of their biological development including fertilization.

Section 3: No unborn person shall be deprived of life by any person; provided, however, that nothing in this article shall prohibit a law allowing justification to be shown for only those medical procedures required to prevent the death of either the pregnant woman or her unborn offspring as long as such law requires every reasonable effort be made to preserve the life of each.

Section 4: Congress and the several States shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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So Much to Savor

A big win for America, and a loss for the mainstream media.

God bless our country.

Hello, old friends. Let us savor.

Let us get our heads around the size and scope of what happened Tuesday. George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. This is huge.

George W. Bush is the first president to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988. (Bill Clinton failed to twice; Mr. Bush failed to last time and fell short of a plurality by half a million.) The president received more than 59 million votes, breaking Ronald Reagan's old record of 54.5 million. Mr. Bush increased his personal percentages in almost every state in the union. He carried the Catholic vote and won 42% of the Hispanic vote and 24% of the Jewish vote (up from 19% in 2000.)

It will be hard for the mainstream media to continue, in the face of these facts, the mantra that we are a deeply and completely divided country. But they'll try!

The Democrats have lost their leader in the Senate, Tom Daschle. I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor.

The elites of Old Europe are depressed. Savor. The nonelites of Old Europe, and the normal folk of New Europe, especially our beloved friend Poland, will not be depressed, and many will be happy. Let's savor that too.

George Soros cannot buy a presidential election. Savor. "Volunteers" who are bought and paid for cannot beat volunteers who come from the neighborhood, church, workplace and reading group. Savor.

The leaders of the Bush effort see it this way: A ragtag band of more than a million Republican volunteers who fought like Washington's troops at Valley Forge beat the paid Hessians of King George III's army. Savor.

As I write, John Kerry is giving his speech. He looks hurt. Who wouldn't? He fought to the end, for every vote, untiring and ceaseless. I told some young people recently who were walking into a battle, "Here's how to fight: You fight until they kill you, until they kill you and stop your heart, and then you let them carry you out of the room. But you fight until they carry." I think that's how the Democrats fought. Good for them.

To admit defeat with attempted grace is a moving sight. Kerry did well. His talking about his "good conversation" with the president was gracious and helpful. He was honest about the facts of the vote in Ohio. When he thanked his people from the bottom of his heart it was a real thanks. "Thanks to Democrats and Republicans and Independents. . . . Thanks to everyone who voted." "Don't lose faith, what you did made a difference . . . and building on itself . . . the time will come when your votes, your ballots, will change the world. And it's worth fighting for." A lot of pundits and editorialists are going to say, "His best speech of the campaign was his last." But that's not the point.

Mr. Kerry graced democracy today. He showed his love for it. Savor.

And now the president is speaking. He looks tired and happy. He looks as if the lines on his forehead are deeper. Maybe it's the lighting. "We had a really good phone call," he said of Mr. Kerry. "He was very gracious . . . and he and his supporters can be proud of their efforts." Good for them both. He announced his agenda: reform the tax code, privatize Social Security, help the emerging democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan. "And then our servicemen and -women will come home with the honor they have earned."

"Today I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. . . . I need your support. . . . I will do all that I can do to earn your trust. . . . We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us." All good. Savor.

Who was the biggest loser of the 2004 election? It is easy to say Mr. Kerry: he was a poor candidate with a poor campaign. But I do think the biggest loser was the mainstream media, the famous MSM, the initials that became popular in this election cycle. Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief--CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS's "60 Minutes" attempting to coordinate the breaking of bombgate on the Sunday before the election--the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country.

Last note. As much as anyone, the POW wives of Vietnam, who stood against the Democratic nominee for president and for the Republican, can claim credit for the Bush victory. Everyone with a computer in America, and a lot of people with TVs, saw their testimony about the 1970s, and their husbands, and John Kerry. You could not come away from their white-haired, soft-faced, big-eyeglasses visages without thinking: He should not be commander in chief.

Oh, another last note. Tuesday I heard three radio talkers who refused to believe it was over when the ludicrous, and who knows but possibly quite mischievous, exit polls virtually declared a Kerry landslide yesterday afternoon. They are Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. The last sent me an e-mail that dismissed the numbers as elitist nonsense and propaganda. She is one tough girl and they are two tough men. Savor them too.

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Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
Lastly, I almost say that this post was a joke by the way Conscience said GW was too liberal. Who the hell would call GW liberal? The man's a right-wing war-monger.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supports "civil unions" for homosexuals.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supports extending the Clinton Gun Ban.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supports expanding the size and scope of the federal government. Bush has actually outspent both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supports NAFTA, GATT, the WTO, and the FTAA just like the John Kerry and the rest of the Democrats do.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush has no intentions of making abortion- on-demand illegal.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supported the removal of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore for upholding his oath of office to acknowledge God by resisting an unlawful order by federal judge Myron Thompson to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush is a strong supporters of the United Nations.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

In fact, when President G.W. Bush addressed the UN in 2003, he said the reason he ordered U.S. troops to invade Iraq was for the purpose of supporting "the peace and credibility of the United Nations."

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supports granting illegal aliens amnesty.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supports a "one China" policy.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

*Bush supports "outsourcing" American jobs overseas like a socialist liberal would.

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Originally posted by Conscience:

The list could go on almost without end. Anyone who thinks George Walker Bush is a conservative is out of their mind.

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