From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Sampling M*A*S*H
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 15:27:27 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

	Ooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh!  No wonder I only got a "B" in college
statistics instead of an "A."  Certainly glad you're here to straighten me
out!  I also could have used your advice the last time I ran a national
survey for the government.  As it was, I only got a return rate three times
the expected, meaning that my sample size was six times industry standard,
and the results only stood up under political attacks by people who had
money invested in disproving the results.  Who knows what more I could have
done with your assistance?
	On a more serious note, Ted, were you ever a medical doctor in a
MASH unit?

-----Original Message-----
From: Ted White [mailto:tedwhite at compusnet.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 1:53 PM
To: WSFA members
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Sampling M*A*S*H

"Strong, Lee" wrote:

>         Steve makes some important qualifying points.  Blowing off steam
on
> one's off hours is necessary, human, and quite O.K. with me.  However,
what
> I saw in all the _M*A*S*H_ episodes that I saw was horseplay and
> breezeshooting with the serious business of combat medicine treated as a
> setup for humor.  One scene burned in my memory showed the TV doctors
> skylarking in the operating theater with a patient's chest open.  If that
> was "strictly business when the casualities come in", then I hope that
> everyone involved with the TV series all have doctors just like those they
> depicted.
>         When 100% of a sample shows X with no incidences of not-X, the
> researcher may reasonably conclude that the universe being studied is
> uniformly X.

Bad sample=bad conclusion.   You lose.

--Ted White