“Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” – Part II

[ptrubey]

Obviously I, Phil Trubey, am not “JW”, aka “Truth in the Ranch” or whatever it is called. I have no idea who that person is either.

[Rachel Laffer]

Dear Transparent RSF,

Thank you for your participation in the RSF Post Forum. We strive to make sure every voice is heard, which is why Forum contributions do NOT require editorial approval before posting.

The RSF Post made an executive decision to consolidate member input in one location, the Forum, so all readers could discuss published articles or any topic pertinent to Rancho Santa Fe in one easily accessible place. If your comment was made underneath a posted article, it may have been inadvertently lost when all member commentary was transitioned to the Forum. We apologize.

Again, thank you for joining the conversation.

Rachel Laffer, RSF Post Editor

 

 

[Bill Strong]

How come there have been no Emails signed by Director Trubey since May 10th, when he wrote:  “If you want a dysfunctional Board with stressed employees, vote somebody like Clotfelter in”.   What is that RSFA Director  afraid of ?

But since then the too obvious “JW” has been sending emails from a building in El Segundo almost ten times since May 10th, possibly to avoid “spam email” Laws.   There have been no emails signed by Trubey since.   Hmm.  Members need facts and information, not propaganda.

Should members of the Board with Fiduciary duties participate in selecting fellow Board members ?  Or is that best left to the Voters?

Just Wondering,

— StrongBill

[Transparent RSF]

Here’s the deal… We shouldn’t put any stock in whatever is being published in the RSF Post as it is SO BIASED it is insane.

While the editorial staff clearly stated in their: RSF Post: A Star Is Reborn

I will continue to be dedicated to encouraging wider community input and open dialogue from all corners

It also stated:

As a precaution, the Post is to be a proper group effort. Our online “kibbutz” has established an Editorial Board consisting of Ranch residents who will chip in, put a check on my balance, and ultimately better reflect RSF demographics and perspectives. 

Guess what… if you are not “on the list” you don’t get a voice. Attempting to address some of the misguided statements in the many recent articles, as suggested by the Editorial Staff I tried to make my voice heard through a forum post. The post had to be “reviewed”, wasn’t published, no explanation was given and thus my voice was being silenced.

The RSF Post should be taken down!

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 6 days ago by Transparent RSF.

[Adam Smith]

Truth in the Ranch author “JW” is back with another survey, once again using statistics as proof points to support their arguments. And, again, they’ve significantly overstated things on the way to concluding that the results are “clear and resounding” and “highly indicative of the overall community sentiment”.

I’ve previously addressed the open rates (they’re inaccurate) and click-through rates (there is no industry standard) that are used to claim “a very impressive response” and infer broad community support for their arguments.

However, this time we have some information from the Association that we didn’t have for the last post, which is that there have been 3,450 ballots issued for the election. So that tells us our total voter universe and helps us determine exactly how many members need to be surveyed to deliver a representative result of community sentiment.

The answer: we would need to randomly survey the community and secure answers from 346 Covenant voters to deliver a statistically meaningful result that had a 5% margin of error at a 95% confidence level. JW had only 160 responses – less than half the number needed.

In addition, JW’s survey method is not random and likely skewed based on respondent self-selection bias. If you put up a banner ad that says, “Love Trump? Click Here!”, you’ll get a high percentage of Trump voters. Any survey results from such a self-selected group of supporters would break heavily for Trump, delivering results that are not representative of all voters. The same is surely happening here given that the survey contained leading questions.

But, wait, let’s assume that their survey was actually conducted properly via random phone interviews and that members of all viewpoints were included – despite the leading questions. A survey that yielded 160 responses against a voter pool of 3,450 has a margin of error of +/- 7.6%. We add that margin of error to the reported results, arriving at the conclusion that as many as 20.2% of Members would answer “Yes” to JW’s first question, “Should former members of the Association Board continue making serious allegation of wrongdoing by the current Board as it relates to the PPP loan?”

That means that as many as 697 members might want the investigation into the PPP loan to continue. That’s likely not the possible result that JW would want us to focus on from the survey.

Seriously, though, we shouldn’t put any stock in these “survey” results. Sending out surveys via email with leading questions from an anonymous account and attempting to assert that 160 responses are “highly indicative of the overall community sentiment” is lunacy, indeed.

[Author]

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