@Insto - you're planning on voting Green to stop UKIP, based on polls two weeks before the election???
If you want to stop UKIP then why not vote for the party most likely to beat them to seat six - the Tories.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
White Paper (THE #indyref thread)
(2915 posts)- Started 11 years ago by Morningsider
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Posted 10 years ago #
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You must have missed it: http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=11722&page=31#post-152512
Like I'd vote Tory. There are limits.
Posted 10 years ago # -
For a variety of reasons I'm very interested in French revolutionary and republican ideas. As you may know, after the revolution they chose to uproot and overturn many things, including the Gregorian calendar. The Republican Calendar they came up with has always pleased me greatly. Converting current dates to Republican ones is uncertain due to trouble with leap years, but it would appear that our referendum will, in this system, take place not on Thursday the 18th of September 2014 but on Primidi the first of Sansculottides in the year 222. The first day of the Sansculottides holiday period is known as the 'day of virtue'. 'Sansculottes' are of course the ragged proletariat.
Other calendars are available - particularly the Mayan one, where the referendum takes place on Doomsday.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"You must have missed it: http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=11722&page=31#post-152512"
Oh. I was hoping there was something more than that.
To say that most of them are clustered together so they must be right (or less wrong) isn't logical.
Put it this way - those grouped closer together are there because they are using very similar methodologies. Those further out are more different.
If you use a very similar method to another pollster and poll at the same time, you'll obviously get a very similar result - on a sample of 1,000 you'll be within 3% 19 times out of 20. (That's not for your benefit, I know you know that, it's for anyone else sad enoguh to read this).
But that says absolutely nothing about the likelihood that their methodology is actually better than someone getting a very different result.
Pollsters tend not to want to report results much out of line with the rest of their competitors for fear that they'll be dismissed as outliers, so they tweak their methodologies to be more mainstream. They don't do it because they have a sound reason to think it's more accurate. They're just uncomfortable being out there on their own. Clients don't like it.
Unless they're a political party and you're telling them what they want, of course!
This kind of herd mentality is very common in science - a great example is the aging of the earth.
A number of pollsters have changed their indyref methodology during the campaign. Doesn't it strike you as curious that many are now using different methodologies for indyref and election polling?
To say all bar two are within 4% so, ipso facto, the other two are outliers, is a leap of faith.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@calmac If you want to stop UKIP then why not vote for the party most likely to beat them to seat six - the Tories.
What? This from the poster who professed to be an SNP voter and allegedly wanted to vote Green in an independent Scotland?
Vote Tory? Really? Is this a ploy to shore up the SNP vote so they get three seats and avoid some votes drifting to the Greens to stop UKIP?
There's tactical voting, and then there are lines that ought not to be crossed.
@IWRATS The Republican Calendar they came up with has always pleased me greatly.
Yes, but beware Thermidor.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@crowriver
Thermidor is a waste of a lobster. Thermite is genuinely dangerous.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"For historians of revolutionary movements, the term Thermidor has come to mean the phase in some revolutions when power slips from the hands of the original revolutionary leadership and a radical regime is replaced by a more conservative regime, sometimes to the point where the political pendulum may swing back towards something resembling a pre-revolutionary state. Leon Trotsky, in his book The Revolution Betrayed, alleges the rise of Joseph Stalin to power was a Soviet Thermidor."
Posted 10 years ago # -
@crowriver - personally, I would never vote Tory. Not even tactically. Or would I vote for them if they were the only option for beating the BNP? Mmm, yes, in that case I would. But only then.
I am aware that other opinions are available, and that some people actually are OK with the Tories. Some of my best friends are Tories. So, not knowing Instography, I didn't want to presume.
In this election it doesn't really matter whether the SNP or Greens get a seat - they're in the same group in the EP anyway. But of course politically it does matter, and anything that makes the SNP look weak or strong is important in the referendum campaign, whether that should be the case or not. So while the SNP could get 3 or even 4 seats, that's how I'll be voting. If it made no odds then I'd vote Green, but the margins here could be very tight.
Only in the Uk do we not realise how important the EP is. We don't want to read about it or hear about it, so our media don't bother reporting it. We are pretty much unique in the EU in that regard. Hey ho.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Quick question - how many people here know who David Martin is? How many know what he looks like?
Posted 10 years ago # -
The Dundee cyclist?
Or the MEP?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Some funny stuff going on. I bought socialist worker today, Monday outside my work. Lovely chap selling it could not remember why they weren't there Friday as normal then it came back. We had lovely chat about Alex callinicos and him being a uni lecturer and I mentioned Marxism the conference being at his uni and the seller produced the flyer (all same as thirty years ago). Lad with seller was very exuberant. My purchase was the second paper he had ever sold. The boy may or may not have had some issues he could recite at high decibel certain Trotskyite sound bites.
I said I hoped my purchase would help his confidence and senior seller said he thought it would and then in a very droll way suggested it might help his confidence too (he meant I think in coping with his young comrade). All very gentle.
Not that I need to mention this but the comrades do not like Nigel Farage.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Callinicos raised in Zimbabwe as is the Green Party's MEP candidate.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Callinicos must have been quite young when he started writing in socialist worker according to kindly Trotskyist today. As he is only mid fifties.? Will google. The others largely gone Tony cliff - he could give a great lecture. Paul foot ten years dead this year. An urbane Trotskyite for sure. See also tariq Ali (IMG not SWP) and indeed mike Gonzalez.
Bit older than the kindly vendor was saying, but then he was being kind about that too. 63 but looks younger
Posted 10 years ago # -
"To say that most of them are clustered together so they must be right (or less wrong) isn't logical."
"To say all bar two are within 4% so, ipso facto, the other two are outliers, is a leap of faith."
I'll admit that it was the most succinct explanation of sampling theory I've ever written. I haven't made myself clear so I'll try again.
Sampling theory says that the estimates from repeated samples from the same population will, even if the population itself if skewed, form a normal distribution where the mean of the sample means is the population mean.
Several polls conducted around the same time should behave like repeated samples from the same population. They should all produce a figure close to the population estimate and the range of those estimates should be no more than the confidence interval for a single survey. I'll say that again because it's not just about the referendum. It is a fundamental feature of population surveys. If this bit isn't true then the whole theory isn't true. The consensus for repeated estimates should be close to the population figure with a variation no larger than the interval for a single survey (actually it should be much tighter than that - you can, in theory regard the repeated samples as a single sample since the probability of overlap in the samples is very small. So, for six samples the interval should really be no more than the interval you'd expect on a sample of 6,000 so I'm cutting them a lot of slack since their methods are far from perfect).
None of this is my opinion. This is what sampling is based on. The clustering of several estimates tightly around a single value is the core of sampling theory. So, if we have a series of estimates that lies outside that range we can conclude that there is either something wrong with the series of data or there is something wrong with the theory.
So, now that we understand what we should expect to find in data like this, we can look at the data and we find that the two series of data produced by both Panelbase and TNS do not fit. Including either of them causes the range of values to lie outside what should be observed if the samples are drawn from the same population and not otherwise methodologically flawed. Remove them and the remaining data is consistent with what sampling theory tells me to expect. They are, by definition, outliers - they consistently lie outside a range of values consistent with sampling theory. We can either have the theory or the data but not both.
That's it. It doesn't really matter what else is happening. It doesn't really matter why. Far from being illogical, it is brutally logical. Far from being a leap of faith, it is the cornerstone of the thing that you've been watching for 20 years.
I'm just going to let this go now. I've really got nothing more to add. You should notice though that people are finding ways to pull the data back towards a consensus around that central cluster of values.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@gembo
Duncan Hallas too. Although hardly surprising. I remember having to collect him from the train one Wednesday afternoon and try to keep him reasonably sober until 7.30. He was hugely entertaining although I was never given that job again.I was surprised to see that Chris Harman is also dead. Very young - 56 I think. He was a lousy speaker but a great writer.
Posted 10 years ago # -
re Calmac "Quick question - how many people here know who David Martin is?" I've seen him several times. googling his name and cycling turns up more policies that are pro-cycling/environment/road safety than other parties MEPs.
I also checked out other candidates and other MEPs whose names I recognised were Catherine Stihler and George Lyon. I can't remembering hearing of the Scottish Nationalists who have apparently been MEPs for 15 and 10 years. I was surprised to recognise one of the UKIP candidates too, from local elections years ago when he was a young Tory.Posted 10 years ago # -
Meanwhile, back to the question of independence, Salmond is clearly running out of ideas if this pension story is the best he can come up with. As the libdem chap says
“People are dying earlier in Scotland and the first instinct of the Nationalists appears to be to hit the calculator to work out how much pension they will miss out on.
Most people will think the bigger priority is working out how we can help more people live longer, healthier lives with their families.”Posted 10 years ago # -
@insto nice stories. I think it was Charles lamb who said you could either be a great orator or a great writer but not both well actually there was one guy - Charles lamb - I must check this. Is he the one the guardian has a society for? Lived with his sister, pub named after him.
I once had job of looking after visiting psychologist Brendan McG after he had given his talk. We went to Babbity Bowsters for the looking after process and after seven or eight gin and tonics for Brendan I was able to assist him back to queen street station as he had misplaced any sense of direction. Great fun, he is now alas also dead. I fear his wife would not have been happy on his return from the west. But she may also have been used to it.
Tone of a left wing paper is always tricky. Socialist worker written by clever enough journos who write in a very basic style, apart from the animal farm rhetoric. I find it faintly patronising to assume the readers will have short attention span etc. you do get some longer pieces that are sometimes interesting.
Also like sampling theory explanation. The longer is the same as the shorter but no less good. (I mean in a sample of your explanations of sampling theory). See also capture recapture statistics where you can work out the amount of say a virus in a community by assuming the community Is a finite pond, you catch a fish, tag it and wait until you catch it again. If this happens quickly the virus is rampant, you are at a stocked pond trout farm etc. if takes for ever you are in the real world or there is not much virus etc. I have not explained this well but the statistics are elegant.
@pintail - have they not all run out of ideas? This has been going on too long....
Posted 10 years ago # -
@pintail
How about you tell us something about how you would like the United Kingdom to develop after a No vote? I'll happily do the same for what I'd like to see after a Yes vote.
I fear there is little point linking to newspaper stories about politicians as no one here trusts either particularly.
@crowriver
Thanks for the link to the Thermidor Effect. I knew of the phenomenon, but not its name.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Meanwhile, Bitter Together lurch from crisis to crisis:
Posted 10 years ago # -
Out of ideas? Not really, if you listen, the Greens have ideas aplenty. Anyone see the Euro debate on Newsnicht last night?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Jim Murphy denies Alexander story, which means it's almost certainly true. You can call it a crisis but surely you'd prefer Darling to stay in charge?
Posted 10 years ago # -
"Several polls conducted around the same time should behave like repeated samples from the same population... If this bit isn't true then the whole theory isn't true."
The incredibly important caveat you're missing is: if the methodology is the same.
Because you know as well as I do that if you do face-to-face clipboard interviews in Buchanan Street on a weekday afternoon you'll get get a sample that's not representative of Scotland or the UK population. Same is true if you do online, or telephone, or a combination. And they'll be unrepresentative in different ways. So method matters.
George Gallup said something along the lines of, if the soup is well enough stirred you only need one spoonful to tell how salty it is. The critical point is that it has to be well stirred - your sample has to be representative. In opinion polling actual human beings there is no method that will get you a representative sample, and so you will have to do weighting to make it representative.
In the method you choose to do get your sample, and in the weighting, you are are having to make difficult choices. And you can never be sure you're getting it right until you have a fixed point against which to measure it.
Different polling companies use different methodologies. For the referendum, we won't be able to know which was more accurate until after the vote.
And the fact that some are clustered only tells me something about their methodology - not their accuracy.
So unless you can give me a critique of the methods used by the "outliers" and explain why they are inferior to the those clustered in the middle, then you can't back up your claim that they are "clearly" outliers.
Posted 10 years ago # -
For interesting and informed analysis of Scottish and UK political opinion polls I recommend scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk.
Posted 10 years ago # -
On David Martin, I wasn't critising him at all BTW, I was just pointing out that he's been an MEP covering the Lothians for 20 years and hardly anybody has heard of him. That's to do with the unfairly low profile of the EP in the UK.
As for the SNP MEPs, Alyn Smith is well-known in agriculture, and given that accounts for about 40% of the EU budget I think it's fair enough that he focus on it. I think Ian Hudgton is better-known in the North-East - about as well known thereas David Martin is here.
Posted 10 years ago # -
@Instography
I'm not sure it makes any difference who the figurehead of Better Together is. Unless of course the one man who both looks good in a kilt and naturally unites the nation should actually step forward in this time of crisis. The Duke of Rothesay, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.....surely now that his mother's Realm is in mortal peril he should step forward and accept this difficult burden?
Posted 10 years ago # -
This is clearly proving hard to grasp, and I know I said I'd let this go but the caveat of methodology is irrelevant to my central point.
I'll say it again. If each poll is sampling from the same population their estimates should be tightly clustered around a central estimate. If they are not this tells that there is a problem and deviation from the central estimate tells us where the problem is.
Methodology only becomes an important consideration after we've established that there is something wrong, when we're trying to explain why, for instance, Panelbase is so regularly an outlier.
Before we bother doing that we first establish if it is an outlier. After that we can wonder away to our hearts content about what YouGov is doing with its internet panel compared with what Panelbase is doing with theirs. Why two companies who are, on the surface, doing the same thing are so far apart.
But fundamentally, I think we have different interests in this and that leads us to approach the question differently. I can't afford to have a position and then try to shoehorn the information to fit that or ignore or play down the uncomfortable parts. I need to know right now, within reasonable bounds of uncertainty what the truth is. Saying 'they're all biased' or 'we won't know until 19 September' is no good to me. Frankly, it's a cop out. So I need to take all the data available to me and, never losing sight of the theory the underpins all of this, make my best assessment.
To be honest, I'm not trying to convince you. I said once somewhere else that I don't argue to prove that I'm right but to find out if I'm wrong. I was hoping you'd be able to test the logic, find the weaknesses or something. Never mind. Your James Kelly guy looks interesting. Is that you? I'll have a look and see how he constructs his poll of polls. But if he's not calculating house effects I suspect he's on a hiding to nothing.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I take it back. He's not interesting at all.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Posted 10 years ago #
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IWRATS we've all heard each other's opinions ad nauseum on this thread. The only things new to comment on are the news items appearing in the media.
I highlighted the state pension story because it depicts Salmond washing his hands of all responsibility for Scotland's sick man of Europe life expectancy figures. These are a direct consequence of his own health, transport and education policies. But rather than accepting his culpability he is talking as if this is out of his hands like some genetic condition that Scots simply die earlier. Such is his confidence in this that he is saying that they will confinue to do so even if he has full presidential power in an independent state.Posted 10 years ago #
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