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BGonline.org Forums
Poll: Do you like green eggs and ham?
Posted By: Rich Munitz In Response To: Is SurveyMonkey a better tool for gathering and measuring opinion? (sebalotek)
Date: Saturday, 19 August 2017, at 6:52 p.m.
Polls can provide useful information for sure. But they can also be unscientific and they can be biased. We all know these things. But for some polls, the answer obtained can also vary significantly over time.
Imagine that we poll Dr.Seuss characters on the question of whether they like green eggs and ham. We would get one answer if we took the poll at the beginning of the story, and an entirely different answer if we took the poll at the end of the story. What changed? The character in question was convinced to try it and found that he actually did like it. Now surely in a larger poll on this question, some would never try and still insist that they don't like; some will actually try and reaffirm that they do not like. Some will try and discover that they like. And some will try and find that it isn't quite as awful as they had imagined. This last group is interesting when it comes to food. Sometimes you try something for the first time and you find that you don't gag as expected, but it is really weird and you don't care much for it. They you try it again and you find that it is a bit less weird. After a dozen or so tries, you find that your palate has adapted and you actually like it a lot, wonder how could you ever have not liked it and are hooked. So again, when the poll is taken during this period, greatly affects the outcome.
We don't have to wonder what a poll might look like if taken at some point in the past. Take a look at the various polls on Chicago Point. A number of them relate to rules. A number of things that are widely taken for granted today did not receive majority votes at the time. For example, in poll #2, we see that the fast roll rule that is now used everywhere today and that probably over 80% of players polled today would say they agree with, only had the minority support of 44% of those responding at the time. Poll #37 shows that a majority of responders are against players even being allowed to wear headphones during their matches.
http://chicagopoint.com/pollresults.html
Poll #35 is about dice-on-checkers. Several years ago, only 37% of the 323 responding said they liked the hypothetical rule. That was before almost anyone had actually tried playing that way. What do you suppose would happen if we took the same poll today? What do you suppose the poll would say 2 years from now? 10 years from now?
My own experience with dice-on-checkers is as follows. I answered that chicagopoint.com poll and I voted that I didn't like the idea. I expected lots of problems requiring rulings and didn't see it as a big deal. Then when this rule was actually being discussed by the USBGF and being tested with positive results, I tried it myself for the first time. It was weird. I found it a bit unsettling in a deer-in-the-headlights kind of way every time the situation arose. As I played more, I got used to it. No problem ever occurred where I didn't know exactly what the roll. I then started to actually enjoy it. I am now at the point where when I don't play that way I am saying to myself "why am I rerolling this"? I expect that many people will make the same progression through the dice-on-checkers transition that I did. In ten years, we'll all be playing that way and liking it and the large majority of us will be wondering "what were we thinking"?
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