Rush? In defense of John

[Paul Mather]

On Wed, 5 Feb 1997, John Majka (or was it his evil twin "Bryan?":) wrote:

> Dear RJ, and some others,
>         I believe John made his observation from what was presented by
> BOC/HW fans... so tell me how he can he be wrong? In the past couple of
> months people were asked to post there top 10 albums. Guess what... a very
> high percent ( a safe estimate would be 85% or more ) of the people on this
> list did mention bands such as Bad Company, Kansas, and even Reo Speedwagon.

As they say in the adverts, "85% or more of people on this list *who
expressed a preference*..."

> So how is his observation wrong?  I observed the same lists of top tens as
> he and the rest of you.
[...etc.]
>         Another point I would like to make is that John is not pointing
> fingers at every single person on the list. whatever........... General
> Obsevations!!!!! everyone is free to make them so quit your whining....

I think the issue that most people take umbrage at is that John appears to
be generalising from a very small sample size.  There are currently almost
250 people subscribed to this list.  When the "Top 10" pissing contest
last ran, I don't remember more than about 20 people taking the bait.
That is less than 10% of the total list population.  (Who knows how many
people are "read-only" subscribers in that they read the list solely via
the WWW archives?)

It seems a little presumptuous to make such strident generalisations based
upon the responses of so few listmembers.  I understand that Andy Gilham
earns his crust as a statistician.  Perhaps he can apprise us of whether
John's sample size was large enough a sample size to extrapolate from?
(Never mind whether the sample was collected in a statistically valid or
meaningful way; garbage in, garbage out.)

Cheers,

Paul.

obCD: Wall of Sleep, _Wall of Sleep_

e-mail: paul at csgrad.cs.vt.edu                    A stranger in a strange land.