cyrogeist said:
Davesdepository said:
This isn't even close to a random sample group so don't tell your teacher how you got this info (he or she will guess). I'm gonna go with fantasy/sci fi as a genre. Good luck withhe project.
may i ask why you think this is not a random sample? i don't know like 99% of you people (entire site included) and thanks..hope i can get it done by tomorrow...
A true random sample is impossible really, however this site is a bad site to use.
This is a site dedicated to Video Games and other nerd related interests. The average person here is likely a nerd and is more likely to give a nerdy answer than the average person.
Where as since everyone eats, if you were to interview everyone coming and going from a local grocery store until you had enough, you wouldn't end up with as bias a sample (however it probably will have some negligible bias)
Here's an example (with made up statistics, because I don't really have factual data to base this on) (also pretend all these categories are mutually exclusive)
Lets say 90% of the Escapist community are nerds (the rest are trolls who belong to a different category)
Pretend that nerds make up 30% of the world
45% of nerds prefer scifi
50% of nerds prefer fantasy
with the last 5% making up whatever
lets say 10% of this world are 90 year old ladies who can't use a computer (and thus won't be on the escapist)
and 90% of them prefer steamy romance novels
the other 10% who knows what they like.
30% are sports fans who aren't nerds
75% of which prefer sports non-fiction
and the last 30% of the world are scientists, and as is more or less true of the real world, they overwhelmingly prefer coloring books (80%)
an ideal sample will consist of:
-15 nerds
of which 7 or 8 will prefer fantasy, 6 or 7 will perfer Scifi and 1 other guy
-5 old ladies
who probably all prefer steamy romance (maybe 1 other person)
-15 Sports fans
aprox 12 will prefer sports non-fiction with the other 3 whatever category
and finally
-15 scientists
and 13 of them will prefer coloring books (with the last 2 in the whatev's category)
A typical escapist sample would be
-45 nerds
23 fantasy
21 scifi
2 other (or there abouts)
-3 scientists
3 coloring book fans
-2 sports fans
probably both prefer sports non-fiction
and that's why a sample from the escapist would not produce good results.
(Keep in mind while those stats are made up. This is still a nerd community, and geeks and nerds do tend to favor scifi/fantasy more than non geek and nerd communities do so while my numbers are not exact the point is this is a bias sample.)
