In the last state elections, we saw the high accuracy of the exit polls of the private news broadcasting channels & newspaper agencies in predicting the final results.
Similarly in the audience poll in the TV show KBC, we see the audience getting the answer right almost all the time when the contestant themselves are puzzled.
Both results have to do with psephology & it's really magical that with a small sample of a diverse population, accurate results or answers can be extracted.
I got thinking to how this is done & one day I stumbled on to something when we were studying the results of recruitment for a MLM company in Pune (India).
Out of every 1000 new batch of recruits (bi monthly recruitments spread over 5 years) , almost 60% in every batch had a surname beginning with the letter 'S' .
This looked like a freak chance, but on looking further, I connected it to the trend similar to prediction models of the exit polls which it seemed to to be.
The batches of persons recruited from a homogeneous would be alike. In the exit polls too the poll is conducted of persons just voted which is a more certain indication of the moment.
In the KBC show, a typical question about the first film of a popular leading actor is widely known to a cross section of an audience but maybe not to a single contestant with specific interests.
Perhaps the explanation will hold. But as a science psephology has huge promise in predicting trends. THE SECOND OPINION may well be a good platform to test out your theories too.
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