Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 09:59:48 -0800 From: Ade Lovett <ade@FreeBSD.org> To: Aryeh M. Friedman <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com> Cc: David Southwell <david@vizion2000.net>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, Ade Lovett <ade@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: [RFC/P] Port System Re-Engineering Message-ID: <ADB6E4A8-DDA2-4C0A-A5E1-EF9A45A53753@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <47544020.5090605@gmail.com> References: <200712030308.32301.david@vizion2000.net> <3BC04A18-86CD-4A93-831A-691EBD8D4A43@FreeBSD.org> <47543109.3050303@gmail.com> <7957A7E2-3ADA-4BD5-934C-F10A1F08F72F@FreeBSD.org> <47544020.5090605@gmail.com>
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On Dec 03, 2007, at 09:42 , Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: > If the questions are flawed then point out where. If the general > concept of a survey vs. user stories vs. what ever then state which > you think is more productive. If your problem is the medium/forum the > data is being gathered in see below. I'll say this one last time. It is not a question of whether the questions are flawed, it is the communications medium in which they were posted. You sent the "survey" to a single mailing list. ports@FreeBSD.org This is, statistically speaking, a self-selecting and exceptionally minor part of the community to which the survey is addressed, most notably: 1. The survey will only be seen by people that currently use FreeBSD (subset 1) 2. It will further only be seen by those that are aware of the ports@FreeBSD.org mailing list and have taken the conscious decision to subscribe to it (subset 2) 3. Within the readership of a relatively high volume mailing list (to wit, the aforementioned ports@FreeBSD.org), a significant minority, at best, will even notice the email (subset 3) 4. Further, within that subset, you are soliciting responses, whereas folks in general are notoriously lazy, or simply believe that responding to such a random survey is a waste of their time and effort (subset 4) 5. Taking the sub-sub-sub-subset of folks that use FreeBSD, are subscribed to the ports@ mailing list, have read your survey, and responded to it, you then have to do analysis on what percentage of responses are incomplete, flamebait, inaccurate, or otherwise flawed. For example, compare the number of discrete folks that are, to one extent or another, contributing to this thread, as a percentage of total FreeBSD installed systems. Care to guess what that percentage is? Unless it's significant, any results can be massaged into anything at all. Without a statistically valid sampling, it is simply not possible to make any conclusions with whatever dataset exists as a result of said survey. Stats 101. -aDe
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