Texas Drought Turns Weekend Warriors Into Archaeologists Grabbing Dinosaur Bones

reply to post by LilDudeissocool


Wow, I had no idea that most of my relatives believed that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. I guess I'll have to tell them that you said their belief to the contrary is wrong and doesn't fit the stereotype of where they live.

WFAA is far from some "lil southern station", and is actually one of the more liberal reporting stations in the area.

That Texas Tribune poll only asked 800 registered voters of their opinion. I wouldn't consider that poll accurate when there are nearly 26 million people in Texas.

Originally posted by riddle6
That Texas Tribune poll only asked 800 registered voters of their opinion. I wouldn't consider that poll accurate when there are nearly 26 million people in Texas.

Why not? And what do you mean by "accurate"?

Every poll has a statistically derived confidence level which is a measure of how accurate it probably is.

I think it can be said that the polls have a very favorable success to failure ratio in predicting election outcomes, so from my perspective in looking at facts like that, it's far more likely that the poll is right (within the stated results of plus or minus so many percentage points), than the poll is wrong.

The fact that you cite the population is much larger than the sample size is typical of election polls. The fact that the vast majority of the people aren't included in the poll normally doesn't seem to cause election polls to give the wrong results, though there have been a few exceptions. The polls usually claim a 95% confidence level and they are right at least 95% of the time.

This link talks a little bit more about why 800 is a pretty good sample:

A Guide to Sample Size and Margin of Error

The bigger the sample, the smaller the margin of error, but once you get past a certain point -- say, a sample size of 800 or 1,000 — the improvement is very small. The results of a survey of 300 people will likely be correct within 6 percentage points, while a survey of 1,000 will be correct within 3 percentage points, a lower margin of error. But that is where the dramatic differences end — when a sample is increased to 2,000 respondents, the margin of error drops only slightly, to 2 percentage points.

Despite this, some surveys have sample sizes much larger than 1,000 people. But why ask two or three thousand respondents when 800 will do? Well, it sounds more impressive, but that's hardly worth the cost of interviewing all those additional people.

So while you may feel that 800 is not a very good sample size, the evidence of polling accuracy in elections and the statistics and mathematics of polling demonstrate that 800 is in fact a fairly decent sample size providing a 95% confidence level the answers are within 3 percentage points, even if the population is 25 million.

In other words, if you think the actual poll results of 800 representative people are not within 3 percentage points of the real population, there's a 95% chance you're wrong.

Those aren't very good odds, for you.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I am well aware of all of the reasons why 800 might be a high enough amount of people for the poll to be accurate. I just personally think that it is a small number compared to the 25 million in the state. If they were to have polled 2000-3000 people then I would feel differently. I know that resources are usually limited, so this normally isn't possible. Its just a personal preference.

Originally posted by The Old American

Originally posted by LilDudeissocool
reply to post by PhoenixOD

 

The link which was a second source news story, and has been obviously revised since my posting it. Here is the actual first source. www.woai.com...

Q- " When the weather is right, Lake Whitney State Park in Texas is a wonderful place for outdoor weekend athletes to get their fix. From boating, fishing, scuba diving and water skiing, the lake offers it all. But with Texas locked in a record setting drought, the sinking water levels have turned the lake into something Indiana Jones would love. Texans have recently uncovered 8,000 year-old secrets from the dinosaur age, reports WFAA Dallas. Read more… " www.wfaa.com...

All you would have had to do is cut and pasted by quotes, and you would have located the first source. It goes to show what spin was posted in that link to begin with.

BTW I do accept apologies.

I be waiting for one from you.

It's your job as the thread author to find and post accurate quotes and sources. Expecting the readers to do that for you is sloppy at best. There's no mention in the news story (either of them) about dinosaurs. The only mention is in a blurb leading to the story.

Mistakes occur like that thousands of times a day in news sites by copy editors (the second and third string in the editing world). It was caught and fixed, but you chose to focus on the banality of arguing about religion, while the real story is that artifacts were found showing a thriving culture in this area of the world.

/TOA

The content of the link was changed after I posted it. The information before the revision is still accurate. The quotes 100% remain accurate. I would had change the my OP, but there is a four hour limit to do so on this site. The link content had been revised after that time limit expired so it was beyond my control to post a new link that contained the quotes. All anyone has to do is cut and paste the quotes and paste them into a reach engine and they will get multi links showing the source of the original source.

Obviously you have no idea what you are talking about.


Please think for yourself next time?

Originally posted by riddle6
reply to post by LilDudeissocool

 

Wow, I had no idea that most of my relatives believed that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. I guess I'll have to tell them that you said their belief to the contrary is wrong and doesn't fit the stereotype of where they live.

It is wrong and on top of that it's not even Biblical. The belief is a product of buffoons who read in too much of what the Bible says.

WFAA is far from some "lil southern station", and is actually one of the more liberal reporting stations in the area.

That proves my point even more.

That Texas Tribune poll only asked 800 registered voters of their opinion. I wouldn't consider that poll accurate when there are nearly 26 million people in Texas.

The sample is well within statistical guidelines. It's a scientific poll.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Ditto right on!

reply to post by riddle6


800 is enough. 2000-3000 polled would have only statistically moved the sampling numbers no more than a few hundredths of a percent one way or another.

Every Texan knows god killed all those damn lizards 8 thousand sum odd years ago so that we could bathe ourselves in crude to our lil dirty hearts content.

Originally posted by Conspiritron9000
Sad really. what;s sadder is the people commenting saying "I've done my research! dinosaurs and people coexisted!" that's fine, but your small amount of so-called research (which is where?) is up against over a century of research in the opposite direction. Both views can't be right, so I would assume whichever hypothesis has the most supporting evidence is the one which must be true. Ergo, Evolution is popular.

We have found human bones that are millions of years old.

reply to post by 8ILlBILl8


SOURCE LINK PLEASE? How are you applying the term "millions?"

That is a range between 1,000,000 - 100,000,000

Modern humans? At which stage of the human evolutionary chain are you referring to?

reply to post by Lysergic


Cute, hilarious post, but that would be tiny sea creatures not lizards, meaning, I assume dinosaurs.