Displaying items by tag: Survey

According to research by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners conducted in the first month of availability of the new iPhone in the US, most of the buyers were existing iPhone owners. However there was a growing number of those who have previously owned an Android device.

Popular Science, a famous magazine and portal dedicated to the popularization of science wants to know which invention, in the opinion of fans of science and technology marked the last 25 years. This survey will not affect the award of Nobel Prize, but its goal is to find out how ordinary people look to technological inventions and products that are most frequently cited in the media. This means that some of these suggestions may not be in line with what scientists and engineers considered the greatest achievements of science and technology.

Nothing spreads around the internet like a bad poll with dramatic data. As the launch of the “New iPhone”, or whatever Apple is going to call it, gets closer the ridiculous polls are starting to come out again. One of the latest is predicting that 1 in 5 Android users will defect to the new iPhone when it is released. This staggering study was done by techbargains over the phone to allegedly a random group of 1,300 people.  The poll has gotten quite a bit of exposure, but there are more than a few things wrong with the study and the numbers presented. This type of data manipulation is common in the industry and we have seen similarly limited studies conducted on behalf of Microsoft, Dell, HP, Android, and many, many others. Still when this type of misleading information hits the web it needs to be addressed and explained instead of just spreading it like the gospel truth.

Ok I love the surveys that seem to sprout like magic whenever we get close to anther iPhone launch. It is not just that these are ridiculous precepts of surveying a small sampling and thinking that you are getting an accurate depiction of what a market is interested it is more than they always have some of the most bizarre interpretations that I have ever seen. These are the types of analysis that would have given my statistics instructor a heart attack. I am getting ahead of myself so let me explain in a little more detail.