One of the episodes in a long lifetime in statistics which, on
recoiiection,,gives the writer most satisfaction was a forthright
attack he delivered many years ago at ~a~Dublin Rotary Club
Luncheon on Opini0n-type polls. The immediate provocation
was a banner headline in a newspaper "XY Poll Does It Again"m
in a UK general election. The argument ran that as XY prophesied
that Labour would poll 49 per cent of the votes when the actual
poll turned out to be 5o per cent (both figures imaginary) this
represented an error of"only .I p e,rcent ."~ It was easy to point out
the falsityof this claim: no one in his senses.wouldhave anticipated
Labour’s polling as much as 55 per cent. oras little as 45 per cent~
a range of io per cent (and it might be less). The ;’i per cent
error" should be related to this io per cent (or less) giving a real
error of io per cent (or more), seriously raising the question of
whether the XY poll had any value at all
