I recently ran across a collection of survey results--some from fashion magazines, some from advertising firms and one made for peanut growers. As you probably know, surveys are a lot like statistics, as in Mark Twain's wry observation that "there are liars, damned liars and statisticians." A well-designed survey can tell you exactly what you want to hear. If you want a "true" response in a series of true-false questions, make the alternative appear foolish, exaggerated, or somehow undesirable in some subtle way (or obviously so--but only if you have to). Or insert it in a series of questions to which the answer is obviously true, and make it confusing, counting on the respondent to just mark this one true as a guess. You might also try making the desired response sound a bit more clever, etc. Anyway, once you've designed and conducted this well-designed survey, who do you turn it over to for analysis and interpretation? Why, to statisticians, of course.
One More Clerihew, for my friend, Tom Durkin
As I mentioned once before, as I was wandering through
A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch, I ran across a special term, a clerihew. Anyway, it is right there on page 112, between "classic" and "cliche." Quoting Mr. Hirsch, "It consists of a skewed quatrain--two rhyming couplets of unequal length that whimsically encapsulate a person's biography..." (
How can you not just love a book full of definitions like this one?) Usually, the name of the person being sent up appears in the first couplet. He offers this example--Today
Geoffrey Chaucer
Could hardly have been coarser
But this never harmed the sales
Of his Canterbury Tales
Today, I pay tribute to an old friend of mine, the well-known racetrack announcer who called the Breeder's Cup races for many years and was the race caller for NBC Sports from 1984 thru 2010. He capped his career by calling the Triple Crown races for ten years (thirty races, in all), until he gave it up in 2011. Next month, he retires, calling his last race at New York's Saratoga Springs on August 31st. Here is his clerihew--
Tom Durkin, he was a grand racetrack announcer,
All the races he’s called, I sure could nay count, sir.
He coined many a phrase, and polished his words,
Methinks wasting such work on those old railbirds.
Congratulations, Tom. The A and W's salute you.
But back to the surveys, among the surveys, I found three to be of particular interest. The first was a survey among a group of potential female customers at a furniture mart. Respondents were asked to choose from among a series of fabric colors for leather desk chairs, The respondents were asked to choose from cherry red, ivory and brown. In the chair illustrating the question, the color of the leather seats and backs were brown). The survey results, women preferred brown arms. Next the women were shown three small jewelry chests, one made of plain-looking wood, another of hammered metal, and a third made of ivory, with very intricate carved designs. Women loved the ivory chests. I got bored with the obvious manipulation that the "helpful" illustrations were creating and moved on.
The next one was a "blind" taste test. No, participants were not blindfolded, the products were set in three identical bowls and the respondents, a majority of whom were women (the surveyors chose a tea room for a surveying location). The products were an assortment of peanuts, each from a different area of the country, including one packaged and shipped from a little township in Georgia called Red Neck (I am not making this up, I have seen the sign on the road between Atlanta and Athens). In any event, the women from the tea rooms preferred the peanuts produced in Red Neck over all the others.
Wait a minute, women prefer brown arms, an ivory chest and red necks--"Women want a man with a farmer's tan." (from the musical "Pump Boys and Dinettes," words and music by Jim Wann)
I know, I know, it was awful, but once the outline occurred to me, I just couldn't help myself....
