The clean statistical results (law of large numbers and central limit theorem) only hold for perfectly executed random sampling; in practice sampling plans are rarely executed perfectly because you never get near 100% cooperation, and the non-responders differ systematically from responders in unobservable ways, producing skews rather than mere random noise.

causalpending

Speaker

Doug Rivers

Evidence Quote

it's the magic of probability theory that enables you to say two things... the problem is that the sampling plans are rarely executed perfectly

Source

Doug Rivers on polling 7/21/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:54 AM

My Notes

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