

Congressman calls survey "unscientific" because it is random - azernik
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/sunday-review/the-debate-over-the-american-community-survey.html

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pavel_lishin
> “This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the
> Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators,” said Daniel
> Webster, a first-term Republican congressman from Florida who sponsored the
> relevant legislation.

I guess I don't have to take this guy seriously anymore. Perhaps tomorrow
he'll suggest disbanding police departments?

~~~
jamesbritt
Yet he voted for the NDAA.

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leot
In Canada, the prime minister did a similar thing, announcing soon before the
census's administration that the long version (administered to a random
subset) would no longer be mandatory due to "privacy-related complaints".

The decision prompted the resignation of the Chief Statistician, a man
appointed to the position by the prime minister. The people in charge of the
decision equivocated repeatedly over how and why it happened:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_2011_Census#Voluntary_lo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_2011_Census#Voluntary_long-
form_survey_controversy)

A cynic would say that the Prime Minister advocated for the position in order
to take advantage of the resulting lack of data and potential for
"truthiness", and only used liberty and privacy arguments as political cover.

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morsch
We had a random long version census in 2011 in Germany, too. It was mandatory.
There was a moderately large political debate about the privacy implications.
A very small number of people refused to participate, under a threat of
penalty that, afaik, was never acted upon. I wasn't asked.

The last real census (in the western part, anyway) before 2011 was in 1987. It
was originally planned for 1983, but had to be postponed and modified aftr it
was met with _huge_ , widespread resistance. This culminated in the German
supreme (ie. constitution,al) court issueing a landmark ruling on privacy
rights, establishing informational self-determination as a fundamental right.

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pwny
The apparent total lack of understanding from the US congress about the very
things they legislate upon strikes me lately.

I'm a Canadian myself and our current government isn't any better (or only
slightly) in this regard. It seems to me that the basic step would be to
ensure you understand what you're talking about before trying to make up laws.

What the hell is wrong with these people. Randomness in the chosen dataset is
an inherent concept of statistics. Any high schooler is familiar with this for
christ's sake.

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tankenmate
What's intriguing is that his bio on his congress homepage says that he has an
engineering background; it kinda makes you wonder what kind of engineering.

<http://webster.house.gov/Biography/>

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yzhengyu
Very few people I know are aware of statistical research and how it is to be
done to avoid bias, etc.

I would not be surprised that Senator Webster is unaware. Especially since he
has spent most of his working life as a politician.

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sp332
I think we should just explain that it's not totally random. The surveyors
very carefully choose specific numbers of people from particular demographics
and weight the responses, to make a representative picture of the population.

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didgeoridoo
>>“Knowing what’s happening in our economy is so desperately important to
keeping our economy functioning smoothly,” said Maurine Haver, the chief
executive and founder of Haver Analytics, a data analysis company. “The reason
the Great Recession did not become another Great Depression is because of the
more current economic data we have today that we didn’t have in the 1930s.”

Dr. Haver's "data analysis" company benefits enormously from the free
availability of ACS data, freeing her & her clients from having to gather
these data on their own. She is not exactly an impartial voice in this debate.

~~~
tankenmate
Sure, that means you should make sure you verify her claims more closely, but
that doesn't automatically mean she is wrong.

