Comic Strip Artfully Dissects The Media's Obsession With Polls

As someone who frequently laments the media's obsession with polls and polling and poll averages and, I guess, alchemy, I've always looked for a way to simply encapsulate my frustration.

Tiny fluctuations in approval cause pundits to go batty. Internet polls that are designed as nothing more than a means to maximize click-through rates are touted as statistically sound. And what can one make of a poll that attempts to measure, for example, whether or not Americans think terrorists will attack us? It's not as if a collective belief in our imperviousness to terrorism is going to prevent an attack.

I'd wager in fact that if you had polled Americans prior to Christmas 2009, on whether or not they thought it was likely that al Qaeda would attempt to bring down a plane via a weaponized scrotum, the results would have suggested that most people thought it was outside the realm of likelihood.

That's why I really like what the good people at PhD comics have done here. They've managed to very artfully sum up the media's weird approach to polling in a very succinct manner.

I definitely approve of the inclusion of a "Don't Care" option, if only because it might provide an incentive to less polling, and less giving-a-crap about polling!

Please enjoy the work of PhD comics by clicking here -- why not?

[h/t: Peter Feld]

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