A story from the Economix blog which is intriguing on more than one level.
A journalist has identified the happiest person in America.
It is the process of identification which is intriguing.
The polling organisation which has provided data for the American well-being index for the past 3 years gave the journalist a demographic profile of 10 of the characteristics such a person would have, based on last years results.
The journalist then used standard journalistic methods to track down someone who matched the profile & would agree to be interviewed. So the polling organisation did not breach the confidentiality of any of their respondents.
It is interesting to play the game yourself, before reading the Economix story, to see whether your idea of the profile bears any resemblance to the one thrown up by the statistics.
And then to work out the difference between the simple probability calculation of being able to find anyone who matched, the odds which faced a journalist hot on the trail of a story, & the measure of uncertainty surrounding the pollster’s estimate given the size of their sample.
And then try to predict who will be the happiest person in Britain, according to the forthcoming surveys by the Office For National Statistics
