>About your brilliant East/West coast example: this is very nice and shows a *biased*
sample.<Hello? Are you awake? That's *exactly* what it was given for! It's akin
to your belief that the views expressed in this forum represent a statistically-valid
model for the Internet, which they don't (this forum is the *perfect* biased sample).
You say that the views in this forum are representative of the general Internet population
(you say 90% pro-IOD, 10% anti-IOD). But, according to your own logic, to find out
the percentage of general Internet users who support IOD, you would need to survey
NOT ONLY the people in this forum, but people who AREN'T participating in this forum.
And of course, you would need to have the following survey answers:
a. I support
IOD.
b. I don't support IOD.
c. I have no opinion.
d. I don't know anything
about IOD.
You now need to take those responses, go out and survey a fairly large
sample group that is made up of people NOT participating in the forums here. This
sample group would need to reflect the demographic makeup of the Internet user population,
so you'll need to do some research on the makeup of the Internet population itself.
Since
you're a physicist, it shouldn't take you long to research Internet demographics,
put together a sample group, survey the sample group and write a statistical analysis
for your survey. I expect to see the sampling methods used, as well as the derivations
of the formulas and proofs of your results. Please post your analysis to the forums
here by November 16. I look forward to reading your paper.