

How UK Government spun 136 people into 7m illegal file sharers - edw519
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/351331/how-uk-government-spun-136-people-into-7m-illegal-file-sharers

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tomsaffell
The extrapolation from 1176 is reasonable (I think the error is roughly +-2%
for n=1000) _if_ the sample is not biased..

But the real issues is how the question was asked. From the article:

... _11.6% of which admitted to having used file-sharing software_

So what question were they asked? If I use Instant Messenger to send a photo
to a friend, have I used 'file-sharing software'? Is Skype file sharing
software? I used to write surveys that tried to get at issues like this (sw
piracy), and I believe it is nigh-on impossible to get good data by asking a
direct question in this way. You either make it very pointed (e.g. ".. used
file-sharing software to illegal share files"), and then few people say _yes_
, or you make is less specific, and people accidentally say _yes_ because they
don't understand it. That's the real problem.

~~~
Donald
A study can be designed to account for embarrassing and/or incriminating
questions.

Say the question is about "illegal file-sharing" and Yes means the subject has
participated in this behavior in the past and No means the subject has not.
Under private conditions, have the subject perform the following:

1\. Flip a coin.

2\. Have the subject answer Yes if they have participated in the illegal
sharing of files.

3\. If the subject has not done this activity, have them answer No only if
they flipped 'tails' in step #1. Otherwise, if the coin came up 'heads', they
answer Yes.

The true Yes proportion in the survey population of size n can then be
determined by (Y_count - N_count) / n.

~~~
anamax
While that "works", what fraction of survey participants will actually do
that?

I suspect that many/most folks who are reluctant to admit that they've done
something won't admit it even if you tell them that other people "will"
falsely admit to doing said thing so based on a coin flip. That's completely
rational because I suspect that many people who haven't done said thing won't
say that they have just because the coin tells them to.

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hughprime
Title is silly. The wonderful thing about statistics is that if you have a
truly random sample of 1176 people you can extrapolate from 136 people to
seven million (plus or minus a certain error bar which I'm too lazy to figure
out right now).

The other points are somewhat valid, but by the usual standards of political
misuse of statistics this is pretty small beer.

~~~
ajross
Yeah, I was immediately screaming the same thing. Arguing that "only" a tiny
subset of a population is involved with a survey as a basis for rejecting its
results is just plain ignorance.

The other stuff in the article does seem dodgy though, like arbitrarily
tacking on 50% to reflect an assumed-but-unmeasured bias in the input sample.
Ridiculous.

Still, the title is innumerate, sensationalist junk, and the poster should be
ashamed.

~~~
dkokelley
The title was actually copied directly from the article. I completely agree
that the title appears to be linkbait, but the blame should be placed on the
editor and/or author of the post, not the poster.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The editor/author created the title to be sensationlist on purpose. HN is, I
hope, not here to offer sensational headlines merely to grab extra viewers but
as a way to share knowledge, information and wisdom. We should have higher
standards for titles here IMO.

What I'd like to see is a subtitle (or tagging) system with a descriptive
subtitle that can't be applied by the poster only by someone else. Poor
subtitles would be downmodded too.

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olkjh
Remember when they used to bust CD pirates and claim there were 1000s of
copying machines. They counted a 56x drive as 56 copying devices.

~~~
hughprime
At the risk of sounding cliched, citation required?

~~~
trezor
Sorry. I'm not going to bother digging up a source for this, but if it adds
any credibility to his statement I remember this as well.

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gaius
Everything New Labour says is a lie.

~~~
gjm11
In which respect they differ from other major political parties ... how,
exactly?

~~~
gaius
I'd say the Lib Dems are basically honest. Problem is they're batshit crazy
too.

