X-Nico

unusual facts about random sampling



Alec Gallup

The company brought statistical random sampling methods to improve the accuracy of polling, with one of the firm's early triumphs being the successful prediction that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be re-elected in the 1936 presidential election, rebutting surveys that had predicted a win for Republican challenger Alf Landon.


see also

Asaph Hall

In this article Hall reported the results of an experiment in random sampling that Hall had persuaded his friend, Captain O.C. Fox, to perform when Fox was recuperating from a wound received at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

This paper is a very early documented use of random sampling (which Nicholas Metropolis would name the Monte Carlo method during the Manhattan Project of World War II) in scientific inquiry.

Social Psychology Network

Affiliated partner sites include the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP.org); the Society for Personality and Social Psychology; and Research Randomizer (Randomizer.org, a web-based tool for random sampling and random assignment).