The Facebook poll: A Little Case in Statistical Bias | Hacker News Reader

The Facebook poll: A Little Case in Statistical Bias

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30 pointsjwb1196 comments

I see this all the time on morning 'news' shows and evening 'current affairs', most of which require voters to dial a premium phone number.

They say "87% of you agreed that poor Mrs Jones was harshly treated by the courts."

I hear "Even 13% of the people who were really passionate about this story ended up agreeing with the vast majority of you who realised Mrs Jones was an angry junkie with a chip on her shoulder who deserved what she got."

</the rant of an ex-journalist>

This drives me crazy too. All they need to say is, "87% of respondents to our poll blah blah blah." Not that viewers would understand the difference. Maybe that's why they don't say anything when announcing these polls.

The poll was most likely done by that application that had you add it to vote. Hereby giving the application your information and an open door for advertisement.

The fact that all applications, even simple ones like this vote app, require handing over access to your entire profile is still my biggest beef with Facebook.

I happen to like the redesign, especially after using it for a few days. I would like them to rethink their application permissions though.

There's really no reason that I can't use an app like this and only hand over some minimal set of information like just my name and profile pic/icon.

> I would like them to rethink their application permissions though.

They have. Since July 08, Facebook has opened up a bit to allow applications to run without requiring an "add" (opting in to the app getting your info). They call it "Automatic Authentication". (http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Automatic_Auth...)

The issue has been developer uptake. All the tutorials out there still assume you're going to require an add. Also, app devs on Facebook have been notoriously slow on the uptake of new features.

Cool, that is exactly what I had in mind.

So, I guess the real problem is just developer education.

There have been many times where I've refrained from using an app solely because it needed access to my profile when I felt that was necessary.

Then again, maybe only geeks/the paranoid care about stuff like this.

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