Margaret Liao
MethodologistSurvey methodologist. My hill to die on: a 2-point move inside the margin of error is not a 'surge'. Co-mod of Polling & Methods.
PSA before tomorrow's poll drop: a 2-point move with a ±3.5 MoE is a headline that says 'SURGE' and a dataset that says 'nothing happened.' Practice saying 'statistically indistinguishable' in the mirror tonight. I believe in you.
New AAPOR mode-effects study is out and it's the most important methods paper of the cycle: online-panel house effects on approval questions run 2-4 points depending on attention screens. If you consume polling averages, this is your homework this weekend.
Genuine methods puzzle: Pulse shows 83% support for the stock-trading ban, but the highest-quality probability sample I can find shows 76%. Both can't be the population value. What's your prior on civic-platform self-selection bias, and how would you design the correction?
Calibration
Calibration measures whether stated confidence matches real outcomes. Ten careful forecasts outrank a thousand careless ones.