Learning About Polls

     Today in class, my group for the Google presentation about Christopher Columbus finished presenting. Yesterday, all of the different groups presented their projects about vikings, and Native Americans. After we took notes on all of the presentations, Mr. Schick moved on to a new topic. He taught us about polls and how they can work sometimes. He first showed us a map of the United States, including the state boundaries and the individual counties located inside the states. The map showed the locations in the United States in which the majority of the population for that area calls soft drinks a particular name, like: pop, coke, soda, and other. On the map, the various counties had many different results, so the map was a big vibrant of colors, indicating what the population calls the soft drinks. However, at the bottom of the map, it stated that this is a result of 120,000 submissions. Mr. Schick pointed out that this map is not completely correct. Out of the 312 million people that live in the United States, only 120,000 participated in the survey. Mr. Schick explained that not everyone is asked to contribute to the poll. Although polls give a good insight to what is or may happen, not all polls are 100% correct.

     Another interesting statistic is HOW people get the results. As an example, I will use a presidential election. Lets say that the people conducting the survey call someone, but they are secretly for President A. They call to ask who they want to vote for. If they say President B, then they will say a statement that will go against President B. If that changes their mind on who they want to vote for, then they check them off as wanting to vote for President A. That's one method in which people conducting surveys get people to vote for a particular thing. So you can also know that polls can be fixed to be in favor for a particular person.